Description

Using genre literature and video in homelessness research: A feminist sociological experiment in insurrectional textuality

MARY TERESA MADDEN

Research Fellow, Department of Health Sciences, University of York, York, UK

ABSTRACT

It is a truism that research does not occur outside of the life which researches and that ‘things happen’ which impact constantly on the development of thinking, knowing, theorising and writing/ making (Oates, 1992). Such things for me include reading novels, watching films and listening to music. Here I discuss the use of a literary feminist gothic style and the interjection of video excerpts and montages/mashups into a written academic text as a means of exploring the source, affect and dis/crediting of knowledges about homelessness at a time when British neo-liberal capitalism was on the rise.

Keywords: methodology, epistemology, ethnography, auto/biography, feminist cultural studies, qualitative research, homelessness