ABSTRACT
Because much of the instructional approach in this book has been based on showing rather than saying (each chapter is meant as an exemplary political theory–cinema articulating composition), some important things about the method of inquiry that have been implied in the analysis thus far need to be addressed more fully and explicitly. For that purpose, I am reprising a section in my 2012 Studies in Trans-Disciplinary Method book, where I reflected on the research protocols in a methods text that was part of my graduate student training. After reproducing what the authors referred to as the “major steps in research—
1) A statement of purpose is made in the form of formulating the problem (my emphasis). 2) A description of the study design is given. 3) The method of data collection is specified. 4) The results are presented. 5) Frequently, there follows a section on conclusions and interpretation 1
I noted that most of the research handbook’s coverage was devoted to steps 2 through 5 and called attention to the lack of “sustained attention to the historical context of inquiry, for example the methodological concern with why particular problems emerge at particular historical moments.” 2 Certainly the importance of that “methodological concern” remains relevant in this investigation. It is treated in the Introduction, where I refer to the significance of “events” that mark important breaks in the histories of philosophy, political theory, and cinema. Here, however, I want to point to a different concern that is also unaddressed in the mid-1960s’ methods book whose protocols I have reproduced. That book’s research agenda presumes a writing subject with no experiential duration, “an isolated epistemological subject that must somehow leap out of itself into a relation with the world.” 3