The Embodied Subjectivities of Videography

Abstract

In recent ethnographic research, videography represents the “gold standard,” promising to bring more into observable view of an investigated reality than the mere human eye possibly could. While some approaches to videographic research do reflect on the social-constructional contribution of video-technological methods of visualization, they do not reflect on this aspect with regard to researchers as researching subjects in the practices of videographic research. This commentary addresses this “black box.” From a praxeological and subjectification-theoretical perspective, it is interested in the construction of “videographically researching subjects” in the various social sites of videography, focuses on the materiality and (inter-)corporeality of these subjectivation processes, and addresses the epistemological risks inherent in the videographic privileging of the visual sense as well as the videotechnological possibilities of analyzing the collected data material, such as the risk of “scholastic fallacies“ (Bourdieu 2000). In conclusion, some consequences are drawn from this framework for videographic research on violence and for reflecting on the meaning of the body in videography.