Feral Methodologies - Elizabeth Harrison

Mel Y. Chen’s book “Animacies” takes up the concept of animacy as it applies to disability, race and queerness. They draw upon their background as a linguist to dissect the term and apply it to divisions between living/dead or thing/non-thing as relevant to multiple marginalized groups. This blog post will take up the issue of ‘feral methodologies’ described by Chen in their introduction.

Chen was originally trained in linguistics, but they venture into many other disciplines to create this book. Chen draws upon shifting and varied archives and many different theoretical lenses. Chen states, “Animacies steps out of and around disciplinary closure, particularly since my objects of concern seem to call for movement,” (p. 18). They describe using close readings of varied sources, from popular media to linguistics to archival research and films, to reach their conclusions. Chen describes this methodology as ‘feral’, explaining that it is their, “intention and design that the archives themselves feralize, giving up any idealization about their domestication, refusing to answer whether they constitute proper or complete coverage,” (p.18).

I see immense value in this aggressive interdisciplinarity, especially given my background in a profession (occupational therapy) that strives too hard to build walls arounds itself. In occupational therapy, scholars are notorious for taking concepts from other disciplines and renaming them, or slapping the world “occupational” in front of them, then proceeding to completely redefine and rebuild the concepts, ignoring all scholarship from related disciplines. For example, the Model of Human Occupation labors greatly to define the term “personal causation” which, as far as I can see, is perfectly equal to the concept of “self-efficacy” in psychology. The profession then labored to build up a new body of evidence about “personal causation”, rather than consulting the existing decades of psychological research on “self-efficacy”. I think in this way, and in many others, the OT profession could benefit from looking outside the rigid bounds of the profession, consulting other bodies of evidence in a ‘feral’ manner, to build up our own knowledge. Nowhere is this more important than when it comes to disability – OT is shockingly isolated from disability studies despite the fact that all OT courses teach about disability. OT should take a more feral approach in drawing connections with other disciplines.

Studying broadly across disciplines can lead to fruitful, creative connections between parallel scholarship discovered in surprising places. Just as Chen found that the linguistic concept of animacy was well-represented (if by other names) in other fields, we can make connections between conceptions in our own work and those outside our discipline. While I am excited about this approach (and the rest of Chen’s book), I have some questions about ensuring the rigor of such methodologies. If the archives are feralized to the point of “refusing to answer whether they constitute proper or complete coverage”, how can claims be verified or replicated by future scholars? Is this even important in a humanities context – or is this just my social science training showing?

Questions:

1.      Vegetarianism/veganism is more common in queer and trans communities than in cishet communities. Some theorize that queers have an empathy for the powerless due to their marginalized position. Others still theorize that vegetarianism/veganism represents a departure from hegemonic norms of gender and sexuality – wherein eating and preparing meat serve as performances of traditional gender roles (see The Sexual Politics of Meat or “A Queer Vegan Manifesto”). Perhaps queers are more willing to transgress these dietary rules, as they are already stepping outside the norms in other areas of life. How might Mel Y. Chen’s theorizing about animacy help us further understand queer vegetarianism and veganism?

2.      How can scholars best be trained to engage in feral methodologies? While I see huge benefits in crossing disciplinary borders, I also see methodological vulnerabilities when we foray into fields outside our areas of expertise. In what ways are these real vulnerabilities – and it what ways am I merely feeling uncomfortable with the transgression of disciplinary boundaries I was taught to value? How can scholars who were trained in one field rigorously utilize and produce knowledge in another field?