Emotions and reflexivity in feminised education action research

Abstract

The paper addresses contemporary relations between emotions, gender and feminist action research. Starting from analysis of the increasing emotionalisation of everyday life, it explores the quasi-feminist-or what the author calls 'feminised'-forms of incitement to reflexive confession that are increasingly gaining favour within professional and higher educational contexts and draws on literatures and sets of debates that inform education action research, including: childhood and governmentality; feminist research; and international development critiques. The author proposes that reflexivity as an educational and research practice has come to stand in for, and thereby limits, the contemporary focus on 'participation' to reduce its radical collaborative and action agenda and instead incite researchers to work on ourselves, and only on ourselves. The paper warns against underestimating the speed and flexibility by which neo-liberalism absorbs and co-opts creative strategies-such as reflexivity-for its subversion, and returns them to old-style individualism.In this paper I attempt to characterise contemporary entanglements of emotions, gender and feminist action research, arguing that they belie contrary political tendencies. My principal target is the quasi-feminist-or what I will call 'feminised'-forms of incitement to reflexive confession that are increasingly gaining favour within professional and higher educational contexts. My primary address here is at a rather 'in-house' and mundane level of institutional activity, but, as I will show, the political stakes are higher, wider and deeper. Hence I am taking a rather broad understanding of action research that is neither purely action oriented nor methodological. Indeed it is a feature of 'reflexive' approaches to research that the topic vs. process and theory vs. practice polarities are seen as fluid and interconnected. It is-in part-through such an attention to questions of process and participation in research that emotions

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