Affect and the reparative turn: Repairing qualitative analysis?

ABSTRACT

Contrary to social constructionism, affect theories are less concerned with privileging the epistemological problems of knowledge construction than with attending to the ontological. This raises questions about what should be constituted as data as well as how we view, read, and interpret it. This article introduces to qualitative psychology the currently overlooked work on affect and the reparative turn inspired by queer feminist theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. We outline close reading techniques and reflect on sources of data to contribute to a new approach that could be called reparative methods. We present an empirical example, exploring how the techniques outlined can be applied to data collated from an evaluation project of a psychoeducation intervention for mental health service users. Finally, we reflect on the potential of a reparative approach, suggesting it opens novel ways for engaging qualitative psychology with contemporary concerns related to feelings, senses, being, and belonging. Rather than rejecting established methodological approaches such as discourse analysis, we invite others to engage in their own creative adventures with the reparative as a means to extend our methodological tools for working between the epistemological and ontological toward social transformation.

KEYWORDS:

• Affect theory
• discourse analysis
• Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
• mental health
• Melanie Klein
• psychoeducation
• qualitative analysis
• reparative turn

Notes

¹ The data excerpts quoted in this article were originally uttered in Catalan or Spanish and have been translated by the first author, trying to keep as much intact as possible the exact words used by the participants, even to the extent of favouring literalness over accurate English wording and grammar.

² We thank the Institut Català d’Avaluació de Polítiques Públiques (IVALUA) for allowing us to draw our reflections on the first author’s involvement in the project “Avaluació de la implementació del programa ‘Activa’t per la Salut Mental’ de la Federació Salut Mental Catalunya”, the final report of which is currently in press.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Eduard Moreno-Gabriel

Dr. Eduard Moreno-Gabriel is a postdoctoral researcher at the Social Psychology Department of the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain. His current research interests are affect theory, qualitative research, psychosocial studies, and policy evaluation.

Katherine Johnson

Professor Katherine Johnson is director of the Social and Global Studies Centre at RMIT University, Australia. Much of her current research is about LGBTQ+ health and mental health experiences, policy, and practice explored via qualitative and participatory creative methods. She is the author of Community Psychology and the Socio-Economics of Mental Distress (Palgrave, 2012), Sexuality: A Psychosocial Manifesto (Polity, 2015) and is Routledge Series Editor for Transforming LGBTQ Lives.