Only when I laugh? Notes on the becoming interview

Abstract

This paper starts from the observation that particularly rewarding parts of a set of research interviews were all accompanied by laughter. The interviews in question inquired into organizational practice as sites for individual and collective ‘becoming’, conceived as a set of ongoing authoring acts situated in everyday work. The research interview should be considered amongst those events where such authoring takes place. Interviews constitute events of understanding within the hermeneutics of becoming. Based on two exemplifying strips of dialogues from my interviews, I identify and discuss three kinds of laughter. ‘Positioning laughter’ has the function of affirming authoring acts, welcoming elaboration and creating a general atmosphere of trust. ‘Resonating laughter’ addresses a form of pattern recognition that I suggest amounts to the tuning‐in to an unutterable ‘we’. The function of resonating laughter is that it marks and celebrates this emerging understanding and plants the seeds of a prolonged interpretive effort. ‘Liberating laughter’ addresses and potentially releases from constraints in the event of understanding: whether that be in patterns of the interview as a social event, in prior understanding or in investments into self‐conceptions. The overall function of laughter is that it may enhance implicit interpretation and maintain an open dialectic in understanding; both qualities of particular relevance in becoming interviews.

Keywords:

• Becoming
• Identity
• Laughter
• Narrative
• Research interviews

Acknowledgements

This paper has been written as part of the Kunne Doctoral Program supported by the Norwegian Research Council. I am grateful for comments to earlier versions by Kjersti Bjørkeng, Knut H. Sørensen, Executive Editor Freema Elbaz‐Luwisch and two anonymous reviewers.

Notes

* SINTEF Industrial Management/Department of Interdisciplinary Culture Studies, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Postboks 124, Blindem, 0314 Oslo, Norway. Email: [email protected]

Sigrun was my main advisor for the first three years of my Ph.D. She was also the one who called me to adventure. In her, I found not only someone guiding me to go well outside the realms of organizational theory to understand organizational phenomena, but a persistent challenge to develop my own voice. She urged me to read original works for the sake of making them mine, listen to empirical material in order to find my own way, and attend to the craft of writing in search of a personal style. Sigrun made her teaching be about becoming. I remain deeply grateful.

Asterix is a comic series portraying the inhabitants of a small Gallic village in their recurrent fights against the Roman Empire. The villagers are painted as obstinate, audacious, warmhearted and somewhat disorganized, and a magic potion that gives them superhuman strengths enables their repeated humiliations of the Romans.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Arne Carlsen *

* SINTEF Industrial Management/Department of Interdisciplinary Culture Studies, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Postboks 124, Blindem, 0314 Oslo, Norway. Email: [email protected]