Provoked perplexity in live methods

Abstract

This article contributes to literature on live methods and specifically to the idea of research as an informed provocation of experience in the context of growing methodological experimentation in social science research. The liveness of our method sits with our close attention to inquiry as encompassing of human/non-human relational encounters that, drawing upon a materialism of lively matter, come together in the form of material thinking. We sought to foster a creative encounter between people with experience of self-harm and published narratives about self-harm in the light of ‘provoked perplexity’. We suggest that deliberately ‘provoking perplexity’ in creative and live methodologies, opens up possibilities for inquiry into the unimaginable and unthinkable. Participating in a series of collaborative, creative (visual art) response workshops, our participants troubled the idea of meaning as neat and coherent, linear and final, showing instead how it dwells precisely in the very process of inquiring by means of creative making that constitutes practice as research.