This is an abbreviated version of the discussion we had on the upgrade and on the relations between so called ‘theory and practice’ that are the particular stakes of “Research Architecture”. The formal requirements are set out at the beginning followed by the more conceptual possibilities. At its best, the upgrade can function like a ‘super tutorial’ with a focused discussion of your work by readers who are not directly involved with you, but may have something very valuable to contribute. It is possible for you to consult with your advisor in the selection of readers. Below the formal components, followed by the slightly more interesting possibilities the occasion offers.

Formal requirements;

The upgrade determines whether candidates can go through to the Doctoral phase of their studies. If the work is found to meet the requirements and standards of research and writing, then the candidate continues with their research incorporating the suggestions made by the readers at the upgrade. If the work is found by the examiners not to meet the standards of a PH.D, then there are two options; proceed with the research and complete an M.Phil or withdraw from the program. It is very rarely possible to contest or change the decision of an upgrade examination.

The examiners are two readers, at least one from the Department of Visual Cultures, the second can be from another department in the college. They will need to receive the materials at least 3 weeks prior to the upgrade. The supervisor is present during the discussion but cannot intercede on behalf of the candidate. It is advisable for all those going through upgrades to prepare a 10 minute presentation on the project as a whole, to be presented in advance. This presentation should focus on the general issues of the work and on the research methodology

The most important thing to keep in mind about the upgrade materials is that they cannot to be promissory, meaning that they cannot be a description of what will be done, but must be the actual research and writing itself. The examiners need to see the realised work and the decision is made not on the quality of ideas of what may or may not be included, but by the ability to ground them in research, in a larger argument, and to articulate them convincingly.
These required materials are;
- One chapter of the dissertation of about 10,000 words. This does not have to be the first chapter, it can be any of the chapters which you have chosen to begin with. The place of this chapter within the entire scheme of research can be shown in the plan of the work described below. The aim of the chapter is to demonstrate how a component of the research operates. It needs to have an independent thematic that is linked to the overall argument of the dissertation. It needs to set out the research problematics and the research materials. It needs to reference sources (more later on incorporating your own work) and make methodology apparent.
- A Critical Literature Review – For those who are doing a straight research dissertation, this is aimed at demonstrating that you have read your way through the various relevant fields and have an informed position on whether they have anything to contribute to your work. This is perhaps best done by grouping literature around themes and discussing what it puts forward and in what ways in does or does not contribute to furthering your work. In short this is not a book list but a critical evaluation of what is out there in relation to your project. For those who are combining different categories of material, I’ve tried to set this out further on under ‘archives’.
- Plan of the Work – this is the overall scheme of what you are planning for the dissertation, a chapter by chapter layout with a time plan for the duration of the work until submission. It is important to know that you can change your mind, in consultation with your advisor, about this order or even the content of the chapters, after the upgrade, should the work require such changes. This means that the upgrade is to demonstrate your ability to produce work at PH.D level but not to lock you into anything that might prove not useful to your work down the line.

Theory / Practice - Emergent Archives

The biggest problem set up by a dissertation that attempts to combine various spheres of theory, academic research and practice (whatever practice) is the assumed distance between these. Increasingly we find the division into binary spheres of theory/practice to be not useful, as it sets up a set of false oppositions and divisions between doing, reflecting and grounding in existing thought, which assume that different forms do not share common concerns and drives . Equally such a division privileges one mode of academic knowledge over others, which is an increasingly redundant notion. Instead these oppositions could be replaced with a complex relationship between the materials put forth. The question which would then arise would be; How do different materials interrogate one another? What kind of questions do materials produce? This means that material is no longer illustrative of a theoretical thesis but is able to interrogate it at another register.

Such a possibility leads us to consider the question, which is central to any body of innovative research, of ‘how is a subject produced in the world”?

Each given intellectual tradition and each academic discipline has a cannon of agreed upon subjects, ones whose paths are clearly navigated; if you want to answer such a question or add to an existing body of knowledge, you follow certain particular paths and protocols. But in emerging fields, both the relation to informing disciplines and the articulation of its driving questions is less clear and well charted.

Instead of producing a ‘strategy’ for how to proceed (which is argument specific) we might here consider re-conceptualising the possibilities of a ‘structure’ which would take on board the ‘drive’ to do the work, the ‘dynamic’ of navigating it through the different disciplines, practices and discourses available and the ‘narrative’ which allows us to recount it in a somewhat coherent mode. (some outstanding examples which come to mind are; Peggy Phelan “Mourning Sex”, Keller Easterling “Enduring Innocence”, AbdouMaliq Simone “For the City Yet to Come”, Gilles Deleuze “Kafka- Towards a Minor Literature”, Sara Suleri “Meatless Days”, Amitav Ghosh “In an Antique Land” , among many others).

For those pursuing dissertations that will combine different materials from academic research, theoretical reading, their own and others’ practices – it would be advisable to think in terms of setting up an archive that would investigate the relations between these outside of their usual categories. This might mean that some of your own work might find points of connection with other bodies of work and cease to circulate under your name, but suture with an unexpected subject or set of issues.

The contemporary archive is the site of much troubling of inherited knowledge, it is not the expanded continuation of some traditional repository of knowledge but the opportunity to set up unexpected entities as ‘knowledge’ and to insist on a relationship between these and the more conventional forms of knowledge that we have inherited. (It would be important to look at Foucault “The Archaeology of knowledge”, Spivak “The Rani of Sirmur” (variously anthologised), Derrida “Archive Fever” , Alphabet City “Lost in the Archives, Alphabet City: Toronto (2002) and B.von Bismarck et al. “Interarchiven” Walter Koenig Books, Cologne, 2002)

Currently one is able to pursue research by asking - what is imperative to know at this point? - why is it important to know? -what ideas and methodologies and historical materials do we have at our disposal from every which source for such a knowledge? -and finally what would this knowledge enable in the world once we have explored it to some extent ?

Therefore starting a research project that combines all of the above, it would be useful to think archivally, positing oneself not as the author of this or that body of work but as one who is in several interesting dialogues backwards and forwards. This might help produce the dissertation in a relational structure; bringing together materials that do not formally belong together and exploring the production of new subjects.

Good Luck !

Irit Rogoff