RISE OF PERFORMATIVE SOCIAL SCIENCE: TOWARDS NEW FORMS OF PRAXIS

Abstract

This paper discusses epistemological, technical and scientific-strategic specificities and implications of the “performative turn” in social sciences. Although still a subject of numerous (non)academic discussions and controversies, performative methodologies, i.e. research strategies combining qualitative research approaches and art forms, beyond doubt, increasingly impact on mainstream in social sciences. For decades now mentioned methodologies successfully undermine the dominant positivist discourse in social sciences, as well as the vision of “normal science” based on foundationalist epistemological assumptions in general. The most evident effects of dispersed influence of performative methodologies within social sciences are in increasing rejections of academic elitism in favour of lay epistemologies. Concretely, it is evident in rejection of academic hermeticism and promotion of democratizing and communicative dimension of scientific research. In other words, performative methodologies are based on experiential gathering of purposeful knowledge - praxis. The research presented in this paper is based on meta-theoretical and methodological analysis of performative social sciences’ heuristic and emancipatory potentials. Research results indicate that performative social sciences enable for individuals and social groups (as partic[1]pants or audience) direct insights into the complexity and inconsistencies of their social realities, as well as possibilities for empowering and overcoming specific problems they are faced with (inciting social changes). Additionally, by promoting transdisciplinarity, i.e. using different theoretical (pre)assumptions and research strategies, performative social sciences contribute as well to preserving the public status of social sciences in the post-humanistic era.