Abstract

This dissertation is an investigation into conversation practices of transformative inquiry examples of which lie across philosophical, therapeutic, spiritual and pedagogical disciplines and include: Socratic dialogue, Community of Philosophical Inquiry, Philosophy for Children, Psychodrama, Psychoanalysis, Authentic Relating practices, Quaker Meetings, confessionals, dialogic pedagogies. My central claims are that these practices contain linguistic and paralinguistic techniques which: 1) perform functions of transformative inquiry 2) can perform these functions apart from the institutions, communities and ideologies typically tied to these techniques 3) can be aesthetically re-combined and re-deployed within artistic formats to expand the scope of these performative functions.

I begin this study by a close investigation of a singular practice – Socratic dialogue – arguing how it was a live, performative practice which relied on techniques of questioning, clarifications, brachylogia, facilitation and role-play, and showing how these techniques moved in and out of play through interlocutory negotiations of power, desire and investment. The focus widens as I create a glossary of conversational techniques of transformative inquiry drawn from dozens of conversation practices. This glossary arranges techniques by their linguistic, paralinguistic and non-linguistic functions and analyzes how each technique performs transformative inquiry through the following variables: noticing, affective and conceptual clarity, opening and closing, expressivity, and focus. What follows is an analysis of Tino Sehgal’s This Progress which draws on the performative functions of the glossary to show how a contemporary work of art can utilize conversation techniques of transformative inquiry. I then conduct a more systematic analysis of how artworks can utilize techniques of transformative inquiry by examining: how conversation is deployed in artworks, how semantic determinacy or indeterminacy is negotiated, how determinate aspects can be notated or scored, questions of audienceship and witnessing, and how the transformative inquiry itself changes when conducted within a work of art. This leads into an extended study of my own art practice of developing conversation pieces for transformative inquiry, a practice which expands the reflexivity and reflectivity of transformative inquiry itself. I conclude with a brief investigation into how my own practice is para and pata-philosophical by examining key concepts of philosophical inquiry – expertise, techne, poiesis, eidos, immanence, logos, repetition.