Carrying as Method: Listening to Bodies as Archives

Abstract

Carrying as Method unpacks the notion of ‘carrying’ as an embodied set of influences that bear upon our research practices and journeys. It is widely recognised that we acquire and carry a body of books as intellectual companionship. It is not however readily acknowledged how we as researchers carry sounds, aesthetics, traumas and obsessions, which stay with us and take time to appear before us, as methodological projects within our grasp. Researchers are carriers embarked on exchanges in a double sense. Firstly, we are embodied and affected by our life trajectories. There is a temporality to our research which is entwined with the very knots of our lives. Secondly, we are carriers through the specific ways in which we activate our research materials and relationships. In this article, the two elements of carrying are underlined as being intimately related.

“Intensity, anxiety … but also, hope?” Reflections on care, whiteness, and emotions by women of color during the virocene

“…But I also understood how my body “carries” data made up of these experiences. These data, in turn, became “productive points of exploration and intervention” (Puwar, 2021, p. 11) when trying to make sense of the political forces that shape the experiences of a vulnerable sector of the healthcare workforce. I could better visualize all of those concepts I learned in my public health record because my body became a tool through which I gained a deeper understanding.…”

Social reproduction, labour and austerity: Carrying the future

“…These examples also indicate how future reproduction is always relationally negotiated (Holmes et al, 2021). Carryings from intergenerational, racialised and classed exchanges play a key role (Puwar, 2021), alongside carrying negotiations with past and future selves about how decisions could turn out. Past experiences were constantly balanced, carried, and held together with desires for the future.…”

“…It also went against the cultural grain of expectations, that Sze-Kei should instead be the one looking after her parents. Thus, Sze-Kei carried and embodied intergenerational traditions (Puwar, 2021). Unable to afford time off work or to pay for a private nursery, the decimation of local children's centres, and with no family childcare for times when a baby might be unwell and need to stay at home, a lack of other carrying bodies was a significant obstacle to having another child.…”

“…Such instabilities had often been carried for a long time, formed through past experiences, memories and aspirations that met with new instabilities presented by austerity (Hall, 2022a;Lebano & Jamieson, 2020). As such, the labour of carrying instabilities can be understood as a temporally mediated experience and, connecting with the previous section, carried by the body as something of an archive (Puwar, 2021). When describing her past, present and possibly future experiences of financial difficulties, and how this has shaped her reproductive decisions, Sze-Kei stated that 'at the back of your mind, you still have to think about the financial side of things'.…”

“…With this article I aim to develop new avenues for theorising social reproduction in austerity, by bringing together work on social reproduction, emotional labour and relational work, and developing the concept of 'carrying' (Puwar, 2021). Carrying, I argue, beholds embodied, emotional and laborious qualities to conceptualise reproductive decisions that ideas about 'managing' emotions do not fully grasp.…”