Fucking Law (A New Methodological Movement)

Brooks, V. 2018. Fucking Law (A New Methodological Movement). Journal of Organizational Ethnography. 7 (1), pp. 31-43. https://doi.org/10.1108/JOE-09-2017-0043

TitleFucking Law (A New Methodological Movement)
TypeJournal article
AuthorsBrooks, V.
Abstract

This paper sets the groundwork for a new methodological movement. I claim that methodological strategies must take as their object the laws with found sexual identity, or rather should be ‘fucking with’ law by creatively confronting, occupying and agitating limiting ethical frameworks that control access to the field. The movement is ethnographic, since it finds research ethics and ‘straight’ academic space’ to be where these rules are the most harmful in limiting access to the field, for female researchers in particular. The approach (but also to some extent the target) is Deleuzian and post-Deleuzian philosophy whose theoretical leaps have sought to shift and cause slippage in laws of sexual identity. However, when these laws are tested by researchers proposing to access the field, specifically ethnographically and autoethnographically, it is clear they have not ‘slipped’ at all. This is clear through the questions raised by ethics committees. Fucking law therefore becomes a methodological movement intimately connecting ethical agendas and sex as an encounter in the field. I claim the methodological movement of ‘fucking’ law captures, or at least attempts to capture, the slipperiness of the body, the encounter, the research project and sex itself. The movement that is ‘fucking law’ is essential in agitating and occupying not only philosophy, but limiting institutional research agendas and their ethical frameworks. The implications of ‘Fucking Law’ will be necessarily unpredictable, but the main practical and connected social implication is a questioning as to why more women are not practically questioning arguably one of the biggest questions: the ethics of sexuality. Fucking law argues for the questioning of these laws with bodies, and experimenting with philosophies which underpin and create institutional ethical rules.

KeywordsLaw, Sexuality, Autoethnography, Research ethics, Fucking, Radical method
JournalJournal of Organizational Ethnography
Journal citation7 (1), pp. 31-43
ISSN2046-6749
Year2018
PublisherEmerald Publishing Limited
Accepted author manuscript
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.1108/JOE-09-2017-0043
Publication dates
Published15 Mar 2018

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