Hysterical inquiry and autoethnography: A Lacanian alternative to institutionalized ethical commandments

Introduction

In so far as it has its origins in the constitution of the superego, ethics becomes nothing more than a convenient tool for any ideology which may try to pass off its own commandments as the truly authentic, spontaneous and ‘honourable’ inclinations of the subject. (Zupančič, 2000: 1)

Reflected in this quote from the Slovenian philosopher Alenka Zupančič is Sigmund Freud’s sustained criticism of what Immanuel Kant called the ‘categorical imperative’, that is to say ‘the moral law’ (2000: 1). In this article we argue that Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) ¹ are examples of agents of this ‘moral law’ with regard to research ethics. In prescribing ethics commandments for the conduct of researchers these boards can function as if they have an inherent unquestionable authenticity/authority, a direct path to truth. We question those ethical commandments, particularly in relation to autoethnography, and point towards an alternative – one based on an examination and application of the psychoanalytic ethics of hysterical inquiry (Rogerson, 2014).

Frustration with institutional research ethics regulation is a common experience for researchers in the humanities and social sciences (Dingwall, 2008; Israel and Hay, 2006; Schrag, 2011). It is an experience shared across national borders, disciplines, institutions, theoretical and methodological approaches, types of research participants and topics of research. Of particular concern is that abuses in biomedical research have led ethics committees to adopt an overly cautious approach to all types of research, even if they pose no greater risk than one would encounter in their everyday lives (Fitzgerald, 2005; Van den Hoonaard, 2001). This has prompted some scholars to question the legitimacy of the biomedical model of ethical regulation as it is used to govern research in areas where there is no evidence of harm to research participants (Dingwall, 2008).

The notion of ‘ethics creep’ has been used to refer to the tendency for ethics committees to expand their role beyond their purview of protecting human participants to issues that ought to remain within the control of researchers (Haggerty, 2004). The consequences of this expansionist tendency may include restricting academic research, creating unnecessary work for research ethics review committees and a homogenization and pauperization of social research (Haggerty, 2004; Van den Hoonaard, 2011). There is a perception that researchers in the humanities and social sciences can be particularly disadvantaged by systems of ethical regulation that do not understand their methods or that are closely tied to health or medical models of decision making (Iphofen, 2011; Ramcharan and Cutcliffe, 2001; Tolich and Fitzgerald, 2006). In the US, Lincoln and Tierney (2004) argue that the stances of IRBs have shifted to monitoring, censoring and outright disapproval of projects using qualitative research, phenomenological approaches and alternative frameworks for knowing and knowledge. Critiques of ethics review document numerous examples of the lack of fit between prospective ethics review and qualitative research practices (Schrag, 2011) as well as highlighting how research ethics committees have become mechanisms for managing reputational risk to the university (Hedgecoe, 2015), highlighting the problems that can be created when the independence of ethical review from the organizational structure in which it sits is threatened (Iphofen, 2009). While acknowledging the important role of what they refer to as procedural ethics (that being the completion of a research ethics application form for approval by an ethics committee), Guillemin and Gillam (2004) emphasize that a gulf remains between ethics at this level and ‘ethics in practice’. This article seeks to navigate this space with reference to guidelines for autoethnography and consideration of autoethnography in practice through the lens of the hysteric.

Autoethnography is a relatively young research approach that has substantial epistemological potential as an alternative method(ology) that falls ‘somewhere between anthropology and literary studies’ (Denshire, 2014: 831). It is one of several approaches that emerged in the wake of the response from the social sciences and humanities to the inadequacies of the scientific method’s attempts to represent human subjectivity (Wall, 2008). Refusing the problematic notion of objectivity, autoethnography instead embraces the relational, arguing that it can ‘break through the dichotomy between selves and others’ (Denshire, 2014: 832). It is this breaking down of the barrier between the ‘I’ and the ‘other’ that we argue brings autoethnography squarely into the scope of ethics committees and those that research them. Evidence of this can be seen in recent work directed at anticipating and managing the perceived risks (Tolich, 2010). Arguing that autoethnographers need to apply more thought to ethical issues prior to undertaking their research, Tolich presents 10 ‘foundational ethical considerations for autoethnographers’ (2010: 1599) that he argues should function as tools of the trade for ethical autoethnographic practice. Echoing Denshire’s uneasiness with these ‘somewhat prescriptive and unidirectional’ (2014: 841) guidelines, we offer a more sustained critical engagement with Tolich’s framework. Tolich’s critique of the practice of autoethnography is problematic because, we suggest, it signifies that the radical potentiality of autoethnography is becoming de-radicalized and, more problematically, subject to the disciplining effects of what Lacan calls the discourse of the university (for a full discussion of Lacanian discourse theory see Dickson, 2015; Fotaki and Harding, 2013; Sköld, 2010).

We challenge Tolich’s analysis by applying the logic of the ethics of the discourse of the hysteric, which we derive from psychoanalysis and specifically the psychoanalytic theories of Jacques Lacan (Lacan, 2006; see also Dickson, 2011; Garratt, 2015; Lather, 2004). Our aim is to demonstrate how an ethics of Lacan’s hysteric can operate as a philosophy for autoethnographers and other qualitative researchers. While we firmly agree with Tolich’s argument that ethical issues need to be seriously considered prior to conducting research, by following an ethics of the hysteric we argue that a more ethical direction exists for qualitative researchers, one that does not privilege the disciplining rationality of the university by prescribing ever more commandments that act as proxies for the superego, but one that reinstates the radicalism that Lacan argues is inherent in hysteria (Lacan, 2007 [1969–1970]: 94).

This article has four sections. The first introduces Lacanian discourse theory and traces three of the figures that Lacan uses to theorize how humans are bonded together (master, university, hysteric). The second section introduces an example to demonstrate the interaction between Lacan’s hysteric and the discourse of the university, and links this directly to ethics committees. The third section combines the theoretical elements of the article with the example to demonstrate the ethics of the hysteric in action. And the final section contrasts the philosophy of ethics promoted by Tolich with an ethics of the hysteric.

Lacanian discourse theory: From the master to the hysteric

Presented by Lacan in his 17th seminar in 1969–1970, Lacanian discourse theory (Lacan, 2007 [1969–1970]) has only recently entered contemporary academic debate. Sköld (2010: 365–366) presents a useful summary of the structural logic that underpins Lacan’s four discourses, that of the master, university, hysteric and analyst. Of particular interest for our analysis is the structural relationship that exists between the discourse of the university and the discourse of the hysteric (Dickson, 2014, 2015; Fotaki and Harding, 2013). However, before focusing specifically on this relationship it is important to elaborate on Sköld’s explanation of the four discourses, and particularly to discuss the position and relationship between the master, the university and the hysteric.

Lacan’s master’s discourse can often be witnessed in the medical clinic, when the doctor addresses the patient with a definitive diagnosis. ² The patient as the recipient of the master’s discourse already ‘knows’ something about their condition – this knowledge is arranged in a ‘signifying chain’ (how that knowledge is made sense of by the patient) that tells them things about their own health. When the doctor speaks to the patient with a conscious statement that might be ‘you have condition “x” …’ this has the effect of structuring the rest of the patient’s signifying chain (hence why Lacan calls this a ‘master signifier’). In other words it provides a formative piece of signification around which their symptoms can now circulate. For example if a patient has been suffering with back pain and also has slightly elevated blood pressure the doctor may diagnose a muscle tear. This ‘naming’ creates a situation of temporary relief for the patient, because it arranges the symptoms into order with respect to the master signifier ‘muscle tear’.

However the interaction above is only one side of the exchange between the doctor (master) and the patient (other). In Lacan’s theory of discourses there is an ‘other side’ (the unconscious) of the master’s discourse. This other side underwrites the deployment of master signifier and marks a split in the master. And, there is also an ‘other side’ for the patient, as what emerges (unconsciously) from this exchange for them is the objet a, the object cause of desire, which is produced through this discourse.

What this ‘other side’ means in practice is that the split subject that is the doctor is actually not as definitive as they may appear in consciousness. The doctor attempts to provide mastery through the diagnosis but this assurance is underwritten by a split, a lack in the master; they do not know (unconsciously) even though they must appear consciously knowledgeable. This produces anxiety for the medical establishment, which is alleviated in part via a systematic and comprehensive evidence based body of knowledge. The product of the master’s discourse is not (only) a satisfied patient; it is also and paradoxically a reaffirmation of the object cause of the patient’s desire. It is another step in the never-ending hunt for the cause of desire, the answer to the unanswerable question – ‘What is wrong with me?’ (in all the senses of this highly perturbing question). Picking up on the example the patient may leave the clinic with a slip from a prescription pad and a referral to a physiotherapist but they also leave with a renewed unattainable desire. What if it’s actually heart disease, they might secretly ask? This makes communication with the master so frustratingly tempting for the other – the discourse is a powerfully delivered, a seemingly unshakeable facade – but one that misses the mark of desire.

Whereas the master’s discourse is authoritative on the surface, while reaffirming the subject’s search for desire, for Lacan the university’s discourse is more problematic than the master’s discourse because of its relatively easy ability to ‘reproduce’ itself by enrolling students into its own belief structure. The agent of the university’s discourse is knowledge, and it is addressed towards the desire to know, hence the role of institutions called universities – the production of knowledge. But underpinning the agent is the truth of the master, thus the university already unconsciously ‘knows’ what it should produce, a steady stream of ‘new’ knowledge that aligns with the existing master signifier. This is seen easily in positivist research, which almost never challenges the dominant paradigms that guide the research approach, but is also very alluring for critical social scientists, as Dickson describes: ‘as a member of a university I am “in the game” of knowledge production and it is alluring to want this knowledge to seduce you. In essence, I want (you) to believe (me)’ (2011: 316). What is produced on the other side of the discourse of the university is what Lacan calls ‘the split subject’. That is, a subject marked by a lack – a subject who experiences at some level the simple impossibility of the knowledge that the university is selling – it is not that coherent, you do not ‘know’ me. This subject becomes the agent of the hysteric’s discourse – this subject is Lacan’s hysteric.

A case of the hysteric in action

In this section we introduce an example in order to explain the interaction between Lacan’s hysteric and the university, and to link this with the practical experience of interacting with ethics committees. The discourse of the hysteric is in direct opposition to that of the university. This discursive position is one ‘in which the subject refuses to take up the gendered positions available to her/him through language’ (Fotaki and Harding, 2013: 165). Reading ‘gendered’ here in psychoanalytic terms is important, it does not refer to the biological differences between men and women but instead to the association with the master signifier (which Lacan equates with the phallic signifier) that governs the university’s speech. In contrast to the agent of the university the hysteric (unconsciously) refuses to align with the master signifier, while paradoxically attempting to do exactly that, as Fotaki and Harding continue: ‘This refusal is hysterical because it is articulated through a desire to take up those very subject positions it refuses’ (2013: 165). Thus we can see the hysteric emerging during enterprise that is often representative of the university, and we suggest that the example that follows fits this profile. In introducing this here we are not suggesting that the author purposefully attempted to inhabit the discourse of the hysteric in this interaction, but that through the engagement the unconscious desire to push back against the master signifier can be seen.

The second author has written about an ethics committee’s concerns about her ethics application to interview people about their mental health experiences (Holland, 2007). Based on their concerns she sought to unpack ethics review processes and their potential consequences. In particular the committee questioned the appropriateness of her disclosure of a past diagnosis of mental illness on the participant information sheet, which for her was a form of positional reflexivity in the context of a research project that was seeking to talk to others about their own mental health experiences. She argued this concern could be seen as an attempt to maintain the illusion that the academic and the personal self are separate and that a scholar’s research interests are not influenced by their personal worlds. This illusion is undermined by feminist, disability and postmodern perspectives and qualitative forms of inquiry, which call for greater self-reflection in research (Rhoads, 2003), but its perpetuation by ethics committees may work as a barrier to overcoming the split between the academic self and the personal self. And, as Bochner (1997: 436) laments, ‘We pay a steep price for producing texts that sustain the illusion of disinterest and neutrality by keeping the personal voice out’. In the context of disciplinary constraints that control the way we write and impose a split between the academic and personal self, Bochner argues:

This is not so much an issue of standards – that is whether to have standards – but rather a question of which standards to have and whose interests are served by the standards that are accepted and upheld. What is excluded by the rules of conformity that discipline our writing? (1997: 435)

The letter the second author received from the ethics committee rather tellingly used the word ‘appropriate’ four times in referring to its concerns, while the word ‘ethical’ was not used once. One explanation for this is that the aspects of the proposed research that provoked concern failed to meet the standard of appropriateness, but did not actually contravene any ethical guidelines. Playing the hysteric, in relation to her disclosure, it may be that in taking up the position of a subject of psychiatric discourse, to use Phillips’s terms, she violated the ‘bounds of decorum’ (2006: 316) that surrounded her prescribed subject position as a postgraduate student affiliated with the discourse of the university. As Phillips has observed:

The integrity of a given subject position is maintained in large part through notions of appropriateness via decorum – the sense that given one’s position one is entitled to speak in certain ways and about certain things, but also limited in these regards. (2006: 316)

The use of ethics review to govern and prescribe the subject positions that researchers are allowed to take in the conduct of their research poses a serious threat to our ability to move between subject positions and, thus, challenge the illusionary divide between our academic and personal selves.

Our argument, which continues in the next section, is that the position of Lacan’s hysteric as illustrated by the above example can be a productive ethical position, which should be embraced in scholarship (including by ethics committees) as it gives voice to desire – in all its convoluted and confused glory (Lather, 2004: esp. 27). In spite of the understandings it can generate, the discourse of the hysteric currently occupies a relatively marginalized position in relation to qualitative research and autoethnography in particular, and is only irregularly referenced in relation to its potentiality.

What can the ethics of the Lacanian hysteric offer qualitative researchers?

In this section we want to continue our demonstration of the ethics of the hysteric in operation in qualitative research via a sustained examination of an autoethnography by Elizabeth Dauphinee (2010) in contrast with a paper ‘on’ autoethnography by Martin Tolich (2010). Dauphinee’s article is one of several in the last decade considering the ethical issues raised by autoethnography as a new methodological tool. She wrote the paper in an attempt to trouble the dominant research epistemologies and writing practices employed by researchers in her discipline of international relations, and particularly to uncover what is often ignored when doing research. Any new technique will eventually become subjected to the rules and regulations of the regime within which it attempts to gain ground – for autoethnography this regime is governed by the discourse of the university as this applies to ‘qualitative research’. Some of these rules and regulations do not sit easily with respect to autoethnography (Dashper, 2015; Denshire, 2014; Tolich, 2010; Wright and Cunningham, 2013) and the process and practice of research ethics is one of these. We start with Dauphinee’s article and particularly her description of how she ‘heard’ a conversation with one of her informants, recorded in a footnote:

I did not record Stojan Sokolović’s words that night. I have written here my impression of what he said to me; the feeling it left with me that I had failed incontrovertibly. Perhaps some scholars would charge my ‘methodology’ as suspect, but I invite anyone who has ever interviewed another human being to dare say that she herself has not served as the sole interpreter of the significance of words captured on tiny little audiocassettes and manipulated them to fit carefully into the text she has crafted around the interview – or the text which has itself crafted the interview and the interview’s content. We craft these statements to serve our own purposes – we tease them out in ways that serve us – to underwrite and legitimize our own intellectual projects and projections. I do not pretend to have spoken for Stojan Sokolović – instead, I have rendered the substance of what I heard in his words, what it meant for my scholarship, and for my ability to be responsible. I have rendered what I heard in the charge – and so the translation is mine (as all translation invariably is and will ever be). I make no apologies for this. It is the state in which all of us who write necessarily find ourselves. (Dauphinee, 2010: 801, footnote 4)

In her text Dauphinee does an impressive job of representing how Stojan Sokolović’s words found a home within her subjectivity. For us this is a fine example of ethical qualitative research as she is making no attempt to say ‘this is what Stojan Sokolović believes’ but is instead describing how his articulated beliefs find a home in her subjectivity as researcher. You can feel Stojan Sokolović in her text; you have an impression of him just as you develop an impression of someone from a physical description – what is more powerful, more legitimate and more ethical is the feeling you develop about Elizabeth Dauphinee as the subject of the research. Further on in her article Dauphinee directly confronts the legitimating power that is the discourse of the university: ‘The academic gaze is an all-encompassing gaze. It seeks to make sense of everything it encounters and, more significantly, to master what it encounters’ (2010: 806; see also Dashper, 2015: 514 for a discussion of this gaze). For us this is explicitly unveiling the master signifier that drives the discourse of the university.

In the position of truth the mastery demanded by the university already knows what it then purports to want to know. The sense-making is completely defined by the literature that has gone before and the voice that does not fit is the voice that is passed over (our argument is that this is the voice of the unconscious). Autoethnography, Dauphinee argues, accomplishes something different; it focuses ‘attention on the relationship of the self to the world that is investigated. In this sense, it is not an appropriation of others … but rather a reflexive awareness of the self as a perpetrator of a certain kind of violence in the course of all writing and all representation – a violence, incidentally, that cannot be avoided’ (2010: 806). This analysis of the worth of the method resonates with us, primarily because in Dauphinee’s approach she is working around the rules and regulations of her discipline of international relations, while simultaneously acting with some of those disciplinary conditions (just like we are doing when publishing this article, as Fotaki and Harding [2013] would argue). We suggest that this is a hysterization of the discourse of the university.

Martin Tolich’s paper is framed around scholarly concern, specifically scholarly concern for how the ‘other’ is treated in any autoethnographic text. The question he addresses in his paper is: ‘how the rights of the “other” in autoethnography are weighted against the interests of the self when the starting point of research is one’s own sociological imagination and is likely to involve others’ (2010: 1599). This is certainly a valid and reasonable question to be asking for any researcher; Tolich approaches this question as something of an academic exercise, one that needs to be subjected to, rather than liberated from, the legitimating power of the discourse of the university. Our argument is that if we approach the question (how should we treat the ‘other’ in research) from the position of the hysteric, as we argue Dauphinee does, this is a more ethical position as it allows the voice of the unconscious a place.

The reason we consider Tolich’s perspective on ethics and autoethnography to be a quintessential product of the discourse of the university is the absolute adherence his analysis and conclusions have to the commands underpinning the IRBs. To explore the specifics of this in more detail we want to draw from Cormac Gallagher, a psychoanalyst and long-time translator of Lacan’s work. In the conclusion to his paper on the background of Lacan’s 17th seminar Gallagher quotes from Jean Clavreul’s book Le Désir et la loi:

Our time, which has witnessed the birth of psychoanalysis, is one in which the discourse of the Master has achieved complete success. It brings with it an ethic of the Good and of commodities, but it also produces an ever more severe segregation with regard to its minorities. The mad, the addicts, the delinquents and all those who do not participate in a competitiveness that has been exalted into a principle, confront our society with problems that it resolves in the same way as it deals with industrial or radioactive waste.

Psychoanalysis takes this remainder, these symptoms, into account . . . It is based on an experience inaugurated by Freud, and takes care to ensure that Knowledge will not be an obstacle to the emergence of Truth. It is an ethic of the Subject. (in Gallagher, 2002: 21)

The remainder that Clavreul here is pointing to is the ethical position of psychoanalysis – as ethic of the hysterical subject, ³ rather than ethic of the Good. The ‘Good’ is what Tolich is creating in his paper; he takes the stories that autoethnographers tell and uses the discourse of the university’s knowledge to analyse, categorize and criticize, in other words to subject them to ‘the new tyranny of knowledge’ that tells us the correct way to do research in a university. In this task he is uniquely successful, he creates a compelling (master)piece of ‘knowledge’ direct from the mouth of the university that we imagine could be extremely appealing to the supposed swathe of students flocking to join the autoethnographic revolution. It is conceivable, in fact, that Tolich’s contribution will become the ethical bar, the list of edicts, by which autoethnographic researchers will approach this subjected discipline. To that end, Tolich details resources to aid ethical autoethnography, referring to an authoritative ‘Position Statement of Qualitative Research and IRBs’ developed by the Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, and the anticipatory ethics associated with photovoice methods. He argues that autoethnographers could learn from the researchers who employ the latter technique and the emphasis they place on anticipating and seeking to prevent harms that may arise from photographing others. He critiques the advice given to novice autoethnographers by some of its leading exponents as ‘ambiguous’ (2010: 1605).

Segments of Tolich’s commentary tread a precarious line between practical advice and feeding unnecessary or overly dramatized fears about using authoethnography especially in relation to certain topics. He offers this advice to novice researchers in relation to their choice of research topic:

My advice for a novice researcher planning to write about their bulimia or attempted suicide, or any other stigmatized experience, is that they should imagine dressing up in sandwich boards and walking around the university claiming their stigma. Imagine living the moment now, not in the future. Like an inked tattoo, posting an autoethnography to a Web site, or making it part of curriculum vitae, the marking is permanent. There are no future skin grafts for autoethnographic PhDs. (2010: 1605)

On one level this might be seen as sensible, even responsible, guidance for young researchers to think and act judiciously when approaching autoethnographic research. We do have some sympathy with Tolich’s position if it is taken as highlighting the important role that doctoral supervisors should assume in thinking about and advising their students about the potential harm that might befall them. However, as advice directed at students, it also carries some implications that we would like to unpack and trouble. Apart from signalling what we have already discussed as the relatively marginalized place of autoethnography within the methodological armoury of academics and the idea that it poses certain kinds of risks that are unlikely to be associated with other research methods, it is difficult not to detect in this extract a paternalistic concern about others (namely, authors of such risky autoethnographies) experiencing embarrassment. We would suggest the ‘problem’ posed by such autoethnographies is less a problem for those who choose to write them and perhaps more a problem associated with a particular way of seeing. Furthermore, what if heeding such advice and resorting to silence actually reinforces rather than challenges stigma? Some researchers may be compelled to write about their bulimia or suicidality and, while Tolich merely suggests caution rather than advising against such autoethnographies, his words can also be read as reproducing a discourse that legitimates these experiences as objects of stigma, instead of challenging their identity as such. Tolich goes on to emphasize the need for autoethnographers to anticipate the vulnerable position they put themselves in through telling their stories. We agree that writing about one’s deeply personal lived experiences can be difficult, but doing so may also be an important means of self-understanding and healing and a powerful way of challenging some of the misconceptions that underpin the risk of stigma that Tolich outlines, not to mention a potential counter to the discourses that those in more powerful positions produce about such experiences.

Further, an examination of the ethics that lie at the root of Tolich’s perspective reveals the privilege of a certain kind of ‘knowledge’ over the truth. An alternative is the ethic of the hysteric. What follows is a consideration of just one example that would challenge Tolich’s approach along the lines of the ethics of the hysteric. In part four of his paper he offers 10 guidelines that he hopes will provide ‘a clear pathway for those approaching an autoethnography’ as although the ‘autoethnographer might have rights to his or her story … so do the others mentioned in the text’ (2010: 1607). The first of these guidelines designed to ‘protect’ the aforementioned ‘others’ reads: ‘Respect participants’ autonomy and the voluntary nature of participation, and document the informed consent processes that are foundational to qualitative inquiry.’ It seems almost impossible to argue with this rational statement, but we will prise it open and think critically about, at least, its first part. It talks of ‘participants’ and their assumed autonomy and the importance of ensuring that they understand that they can participate voluntarily. In a previous publication (Dickson, 2011) the first author offers as an autoethnographic excavation a story about his family’s Christmas dinner experiences when he was a child. Mentioned are his parents, brother and a few other family members. The story told in this paper is a construction of events. It is analytically redundant to attempt to disentangle an autonomous individual from this experience, as each subject acted only in relation to the others. There are no autonomous participants from which to gain consent. In addition, enforcing a ‘voluntary nature of participation’ is particularly troublesome. One is not voluntarily part of a family; we cannot disengage from the relationship in such a way that would allow any realistic volunteering (as understood by the discourse of the university) to occur.

The reason that autonomy and voluntary participation are not often contested in research processes resides in the nature of the researcher–researched relationship. If the first author had pursued a more typical in-depth interview strategy in an attempt to answer the research questions he would have shelved his personal relationship with the topic (at least on the surface) and instead focused on a group of participants unknown to him. In this scenario autonomy and voluntary participation are benign concepts. If the researcher does not know the participants then it is easy to coat the relationship with the veneer of autonomy, and voluntary participation becomes simply a performance. We argue that qualitative researchers need to trouble the facade of autonomy and voluntary participation particularly when it disrespects the established relations between subjects, such as in a family. It is highly problematic to suggest for instance that we insert a stranger between a mother and daughter, as Tolich does (2010: 1604) – just consider the potential harm that might result from that polarizing betrayal of familial relations? What autoethnographers (and we would argue, all qualitative researchers) need is an ethics that recognizes the worth of the hysteric.

Lacan’s hysteric opens an avenue to consider Tolich’s guidelines in a radically different way. For instance, the subjects in the first author’s family story are not the same subjects as the people who exist today. What his mother or brother would have said/done then is not what they would say or do now. In this way by telling and analysing and reflecting on this family Christmas story we argue the door is opened to resignification, by all involved. If deemed risky in terms of potential harm by Tolich, the risk is insignificant in comparison to the harm that would befall family members if a third party was asked to gain (the facade of) ‘permission’. Tolich’s ethics are clearly those of the university, which privileges the minimal liberal subject who seems to be found in the singular, live human being. These ethics screen out the historical location of subjectivity, ignoring the dead, the past and the multiple – the larger and more nuanced units of human subjectivity. So it would make sense to suggest inserting a third party between a daughter and her mother to gain ‘voluntary consent’, as under this system of ethics, these people only exist in the now. Our argument is that the harm this suggestion could cause is relational, in that by inserting someone in the space between a mother and daughter, we enforce the now, but crucially outcast the past. As the unconscious does not adhere to the same timeline as IRBs, the past is potentially as contemporary as now ‘actually’ is. By following the ethic of the hysteric instead we suggest that qualitative researchers can be ethical in a rather different sense.

It would be fair to say that moving from Dauphinee’s text to Tolich’s is an experiential shift. Let us, for a moment, place Tolich’s text as a representative of the discourse of the university and Dauphinee’s text as a representative of the discourse of the hysteric. By contrasting these texts and seeing the collapse of Tolich’s argument under the questioning of Dauphinee’s hysteric an ethical pathway emerges, one based on the ethics of hysterical inquiry (Dickson, 2015; Fotaki, 2013; Fotaki and Harding, 2013; Rogerson, 2014). The origin of Tolich’s ‘speech on the ethics of autoethnography’ is the university – as author he disappears as he becomes represented by the legitimating force of the university, his knowledge is revealed as driven by the master signifier that masquerades as truth, the IRBs’ ‘commandments’ are examples of this, and the desire of the subject is shrouded with the university’s knowledge as the 10 foundational principles emerge. The origin of Dauphinee’s ‘speech on the ethics of autoethnography’ is, in contrast, her hysterical position – as author-subject she appears when she becomes represented by her desire, and her resulting text demonstrates her vulnerability and potentiality as she questions how the university conducts its business – the hysteric addresses the master signifier. Moving between these positions in our own discussion provides space for an ethics that does not become solely subjected to the discourse of the university and instead addresses the subject from the position of desire.

The ethics of the Lacanian hysteric in practice: Rejecting commandments in favour of desire

In actively critiquing Tolich’s approach to theorizing ethics in autoethnography we are not attempting to absolve qualitative researchers of any ethical responsibility concerning the use and abuse of data. In fact, we suggest that radical qualitative researchers make every attempt to stay with the ethics of hysterical inquiry, and its agent, desire. This is what Dauphinee does in the first part of her text, as she engages with her ‘participant’, not by filing his signed consent form, carefully transcribing his exact words, and then freely analysing them as if she ‘knows’ something, but instead writing out the participant in her, and what it means for the academy (2010: 799–802). This is how she ethically presents the story of Stojan Sokolović, via her desire to confront the research practices of the academy. In a similar way, and with a much more banal example, I (Andrew Dickson) felt uncomfortable publishing my family’s own recollection of Christmas time eating experiences, instead I wrote out mine (Dickson, 2011). I discussed these with my family, not to gain their specific consent however, but because it is how we do things in my family and was at times cathartic despite them having a range of different recollections of the events. We could anticipate here that Tolich would be uncomfortable with not gaining the direct written consent of family members mentioned in the story, and it is uncomfortable – this is the allure of the informed consent commandment issued by the university. We need to shoulder this discomfort, and ask that ethics committees also shoulder it.

Thus we would suggest that scholars (and here we are thinking more widely than those who are engaged in autoethnography) should identify commandments that arise from ethics committees (as we have done here) and pick at their seams of truth – what falls out, what does not fit? In other words, play the hysteric – confront the university with an incessant questioning and resist when you feel your desire becoming colonized. It is important to note here that we are not advocating that researchers put their own self-interest ahead of participants and ethics committees, who we acknowledge do ask important questions of researchers and may be able to see risks to participants that may be obscured from researchers because of their passion or intimate involvement with a research topic, especially in the context of autoethnography.

When researchers do engage this way and recognize the worth of desire scholars can write in a dirty way (Pullen and Rhodes, 2008) that illuminates the ‘messy moral quandaries’ that research in practices involves (Halse and Honey, 2005: 2142). While such transgressive acts may be risky given the disciplinary rationality of the university, they are also necessary to identify the ‘moral crevices of ethics policy and practices’ (Halse and Honey, 2005: 2142). Moreover, we would argue they help us to imagine how ethical research may be otherwise conceived.

Certainly qualitative researchers have written about and critiqued restrictions that ethics committees seek to place on their research and sought to change the thinking of ethics review committees. We would suggest that many of these existing scholarly critiques and descriptions of ethics review processes and experiences are reminiscent of Lacan’s hysteric. It is illustrative here when drawing to a close to discuss in particular Halse and Honey’s (2005) experience. In discussing their interview study with ‘anorexic’ teenage girls the authors detail their negotiation of what they describe as ‘two pillars of ethics policy: defining the research population and eliciting informed consent’ (2005: 2141). They write, ‘The challenge we faced was how to describe the study’s population so that it accommodated girls’ perspectives and summoned the essential “anorexia” subjects that the ethics officers and research ethics policy urged us to find’ (2005: 2146). The dilemma they faced resulted in some delays to the research and they noted the potential implications of this given their role within the institution of the university, including the competitive funding they had received, the timeline and associated reporting requirements. We see this as an example of the way in which the discourse of the university as manifested in ethics review procedures can be at odds with a researcher’s desire to be true to their own ethical sensibilities and moral responsibilities to potential research participants. And, as they note, the outcome of these kinds of stalemates is frequently compliance and hence reinforcement of a depersonalized regime of so-called ethical research.

How might the hysteric react to being confronted by the mismatch between the requirements of ethics committees and the realities of research in practice? Potential responses may take the form of writing about one’s experiences of ethics review, as several scholars have done, or creating a repository for the sharing of information and commentary about ethics review as Zachary Schrag has done with his blog on IRB review, ⁴ or examining the hidden documentation associated with the work and decisions of ethics committees, as Hedgecoe (2015) has done, or scrutinizing the content and function of the letters from ethics committees, as Dixon-Woods et al. (2007) have done.

In conclusion

We would like to take a moment to anticipate charges that the ethics of the hysteric as articulated in this article suggests a form of relativism and leaves no room for judging the worth or ‘truth’ of interpretations of research realities. How much does the ethic of the hysteric relinquish one’s commitment to ensuring that we accurately render those worlds, people and experiences that we encounter in our research? If it takes this commitment as an unattainable artefact of the discourse of the university, what does it mean for academic legitimacy? We acknowledge that there are realities and constraints of working in the academic field and that those who are not willing to play by the rules or commandments have the option of researching and telling their stories through other means. What we have sought to trouble is the real potential for ethical commandments to become institutionalized and internalized by individual researchers to the point where their merits are assumed to be universal and whereby a compliance approach replaces that of a considered thinking through of ethical questions pertaining to a particular study (see Halse and Honey, 2005). This article, through an articulation of the discourse of hysterical inquiry, is indeed seeking to challenge the belief that academic legitimacy and ethical research is assumed to derive only from blind compliance and adherence to a facade of ethics as prescribed in the positivist model of research ethics.

To the reader, it might seem prudent for us at this point to produce a set of general guidelines for following the ethics of the hysteric, perhaps even a revised version of Tolich’s edicts, as was suggested by one of the reviewers. However this would be in error, in fact it is imperative for us to ensure that our argument for a hysterical approach to the ethics of autoethnography and qualitative research more generally is not framed in such a way as to be read as issuing commandments. We recognize that all research projects are different and so are research ethics committees, making it in a practical sense difficult and undesirable to provide universal recommendations or guidelines, even though doing so may be encouraged or rewarded in the context of the discourse of the university and associated requirements and expectations of academic publishing. But perhaps more importantly than any practical concern is the concern that any commandments issued would likely become silenced, sanitized or colonized by the university’s discourse, thus undermining the radical potential of hysterical inquiry. Because of this purposeful inability to prescribe ‘the method’ the ethics of Lacan’s hysteric is undoubtedly a challenging position to occupy for qualitative researchers, in that it is open to easy criticism from the university. Despite this we would argue that research conducted in accordance with the ethics of the hysteric is guided by an ethic not encumbered by the facade of universal commandments, thus allowing for discovery not possible otherwise.