La Recherche Pour La Recherche

A researcher's role is often driven by the consumption needs of the academic community, other researchers, policymakers, and/or practitioners. Research then becomes an attempt to address a perceived gap in knowledge, which is an externally dictated agenda. Recently, I’ve been witnessing professors pressed to ride the wave of scientific popularity by chasing after topics that are timely and/or lucrative.

Photo Credit: tate.org.uk

I took a Modern Art class in undergrad... it feels like it was ions ago but many things about this class really stuck with me. Prominent amongst which were l'art pour l'art and l'art pour l'artiste: French expressions that mean art for art['s sake] and art for the artist['s sake], respectively. The former is a progressive expression that captures the essence of movements in art built to eradicate the didactic element of art required by communities in the early 19th century (think James Whistler and impressionism). It revolves around the concept of doing away with social obligations and just creating something that is pleasing to look at. The latter is an even further deviation from what was traditional, in that it does away with even the need to please the audience. It is a concept that embraces the artist, and not merely the art. It is the belief that art should have no purpose at all, but just be an expression of the artist, in whatever shape or form the artist pleases (think Vincent van Gogh and post-impressionism). In the 20th century, this became the foundation on which movements like fauvism, cubism, and dadaism emerged... traces of these movements are still very much alive today. 19th century France is given credit for most of the revolutionary transitions that had to take place to lead to this and the game changers are always the ones that braved the fundamental questions: What is the purpose that art fulfills? Does it have a purpose at all?

Today, I find myself reflecting on this thought as a researcher. If we approach research with the same audacity as Marcel Duchamp’s approach to art, what would that do to our research agendas? What would it mean to conduct research for research’s sake? What if we did away with the need for researchers to publish in areas that would further elicit readership and funding? Can we be bold enough to explore agendas we set for ourselves? Can we let our own voices drive our research and not that of other academics and/or funding agencies? I fear that the academic community's incessant need to publish, to respond to calls in order to get in on popular discourse only accessible to academics takes something away from the research experience. And if so, I wonder what research institutions (academic or otherwise) can do to counter the current climate that is competing with this notion of research-dadaism?