Gender, Knowledge and Art: Feminist Standpoint Theory synthesised with Arts-Based research in the study of domestic violence

Recording of presentation given at Vital Signs 2 Conference, 7-9 September 2010, University of Manchester
This paper sets out the ongoing development of an arts-based methodology for the documentation, representation and dissemination of women’s experiences of domestic violence. Of particular concern is the ways in which an arts-based approach to the acquisition of expressions of lived experience has the potential to provide access to multi-sensory and embodied knowledge that words alone might struggle to articulate. The possibility of using the arts to generate different kinds of knowledge and multiple perspectives would seem to fit with the concept of 'strong objectivity' as articulated in Sandra Harding's defence of feminist standpoint epistemologies and with David MacDougall’s identification of ‘stereoscopic knowledge’ within film-based ethnography. The place of imagination in feminist standpoint epistemology’s central concept of beginning thought in the lives of others would also appear to justify the synthesis of standpoint and creative research methodologies. In bringing together feminist and arts-based methods, several critical questions emerge. These are: how might art and language be considered to be gendered , and how might gender influence this researcher’s relationship to the different kinds of knowledge made and shown by the women participants of the study? This paper seeks to tackle these challenging questions.