8.05 Methodological Considerations
e) Ethics:
One has a responsibility to
the relationships formed. This is conventionally realised by allowing the
subjects access to the draft report with a 'right of reply'. In practice I have
found that reading long academic texts is burdensome to most people, especially
when they are offered in draft form and is not an adequate reply to this
question of ethical responsibility.
The central ethical question
may be as to whether the PhD ritual offers up vulnerable subjects as sacrificial
victims of knowledge - a knowledge that would then be used by the state to
better control such groups. In the light of the previous theoretical discussion
of the social pathologies produced by the systemic invasion of the lifeworld,
we might take this seriously. If the authority of this theory carries enough
weight - and a PhD study is a part of this systemic invasion - then all I
can offer as a defence is that the object I produce will not be a palatable
or reductive representation but rather one that resists closure and is quaquaversal
(an Exploding Galaxy word meaning to move outwards in all directions).