Research Entanglements, Race, and Recognizability: A Psychosocial Reading of Interview Encounters in (Post-) Colonial, (Post-) Apartheid South Africa

Abstract

Psychoanalysis has become increasingly concerned with issues of race and class and the ways in which they play themselves out in the therapy room. Alongside other psychosocial scholars concerned with the interleaving of the self and other, the psychological and the social, I argue that psychoanalysis is a valuable resource, particularly, as demonstrated in this article, for thinking through how we might theorize and "read" race and class in interview contexts when conducting qualitative research. Interview moments between myself, the researcher-a White, middle-class, educated, South African woman-and the researched-Black, working-class, lesser educated, South African men-are subjected to a psychosocial reading drawing specifically on Lacanian psychoanalysis which emphasizes a critical, tentative approach that aims to disrupt understanding.

Raced Repetition: Perpetual Paralysis or Paradoxical Promise?

“…Of course, within Western modernity, codifications of the body have been and remain central to processes of alterity and marginalisation-the use of physiognomic features, accent, language, dress code and skin colour have all been markers of difference in the convoluted process of Othering. As such, the body is the quintessential psychosocial zone (Saville-Young, 2011), the interface between the individual and the social, as it is critical to the formation of the Self as well as being simultaneously socially inscribed. The import of this analysis for studies of race, embodiment and affectivity should of course not be lost on us, as the bodily realm comes to represent a site in which the individual and the social converge, where the social is translated and enacted personally and interpersonally, and the Self is mobilised or activated within interactional moments: "Here, the body can be seen variously, for example, as a canvass, as an instrument of power, as a communicative tool, as a mode of reinstating citizenship, and of course, as means of reconstituting obliterated psychic space" (Stevens, 2016b, p. 94).…”

The clinician in the university: Reflections on a South African psychoanalytically oriented doctoral programme

“…This affective turn has seen the application of psychoanalytic tenets to broader social and cultural phenomena, often highlighting the value of what has sometimes been referred to as (socially) applied psychoanalytic analyses. Importantly too, the extent to which psychoanalysis has been deployed in more socially critical ways in South Africa, has meant that this context has become a powerful test‐bed for the intersections between psychoanalysis and Marxism (for example, Hayes, ), post‐colonial psychoanalytic theorising (for example, Hook, ), and the utilization of psychoanalysis in the emergent area of psychosocial studies (for example, Saville‐Young, ; Stevens et al ., ).…”

Key concepts for quality as foundational in qualitative research: milkshakes, mirrors and maps in 3D

“…This reflexive approach is analogous to looking at yourself in a mirror, in the way that one might in a room full of mirrors; one accepts that your particular viewpoint limits what one can and cannot see and uses this viewpoint to offer a perspective that is also always grounded in the data. There are various ways in which reflexivity employed in this way can be facilitated including: making notes of one’s observations during data collection, including the personal reactions that the data evokes (see Saville Young, 2011) and keeping a research journal in order to reflexively analyse how one comes to particular interpretations (see McLeod, 2015 for further discussion of these specific procedures). It is important here to note the link to the key concept of coherence – the way in which researchers are reflexive in their research must be coherent with the philosophical assumptions on which that research is based.…”