Vitellone Nicole, Theodoropoulou Lena, Manchot Melanie
AF Warr Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK.
Lecturer in the Sociology of Public Health, Department of Public Health Policy and Systems, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK.
Br J Sociol. 2025 Mar;76(2):423-441. doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.13177. Epub 2024 Dec 27.
In this article we consider the theoretical and methodological implications of Deleuzian fabulation for research on recovery from drugs and alcohol as an alternative way of making and doing methods in sociology. The article draws on data produced as part of an ongoing interdisciplinary research collaboration, begun in 2019, with the visual artist and filmmaker Melanie Manchot, social scientists Nicole Vitellone and Lena Theodoropoulou, and people in recovery from drugs and alcohol engaged in the production of Manchot's first feature film STEPHEN. This project attends to the methodological practice of filmmaking as a way of thinking with and alongside colleagues from divergent disciplines about the role of methods, concepts and practices for confronting and resisting processes of stigmatisation. Investigating the research participants' engagement with Manchot's filmmaking practices in STEPHEN as a way to tell stories otherwise, our goal is to engage the social life of creative methods and in doing so, propose an alternative narrative of recovery. In this investigation, we use the term fabulation as developed by Deleuze. In Cinema II, Deleuze makes a distinction between the cinema of reality, where storytelling derives from the camera's objective gaze and a given character's subjective actions, and cinema verité where the boundaries between fiction and reality are blurred. In cinema verité, the camera is not an objective observer but an active producer that keeps reminding the viewer that the on-screen characters are neither fully real, nor fictional. Attending to Deleuze's description of fabulation as it emerges through this process of challenging the existence of 'real' identities in cinema, and beyond, we investigate the use of cinematic devices and fabulative processes of filmmaking in the production of STEPHEN. In doing so, the article develops a methodological account of the activity of fabulation as a material and embodied practice that resists processes of stigmatisation. Through this interdisciplinary project, we propose a new arts-based research agenda which points to the ways in which fabulation as a minor mode of recovery concerns an engagement with the creation of a people to come.
在本文中，我们探讨德勒兹式虚构对于药物和酒精成瘾康复研究的理论和方法论意义，将其视为社会学中一种构建和运用研究方法的替代方式。本文借鉴了2019年开始的一项正在进行的跨学科研究合作所产生的数据，该合作涉及视觉艺术家兼电影制作人梅兰妮·曼肖特、社会科学家妮可·维泰洛内和莉娜·西奥多罗普洛，以及参与制作曼肖特首部故事片《斯蒂芬》的药物和酒精成瘾康复者。该项目关注电影制作的方法论实践，以此作为一种与来自不同学科的同事共同思考方法、概念和实践在应对和抵制污名化过程中所起作用的方式。通过调查研究参与者如何参与曼肖特在《斯蒂芬》中的电影制作实践来讲述别样的故事，我们的目标是探究创造性方法的社会生活，并借此提出一种关于康复的另类叙事。在这项调查中，我们使用德勒兹所阐述的虚构这一术语。在《电影II》中，德勒兹区分了现实电影，其叙事源于镜头的客观凝视和特定角色的主观行动，以及真实电影，其中虚构与现实的界限被模糊。在真实电影中，镜头不是一个客观的观察者，而是一个积极的生产者，不断提醒观众屏幕上的角色既不完全真实，也不是虚构的。关注德勒兹对虚构的描述，它是通过挑战电影及其他领域中“真实”身份的存在这一过程而出现的，我们研究了《斯蒂芬》制作过程中电影设备的运用和电影制作的虚构过程。在此过程中，本文阐述了虚构活动作为一种抵制污名化过程的物质和具体实践的方法论。通过这个跨学科项目，我们提出了一个新的基于艺术的研究议程，指出虚构作为一种次要的康复模式涉及与未来群体的创造相关的参与方式。
