Activating Limit as Method: An Affective Experiment in Ethnographic Criminology

Abstract

All research aims to find, challenge, investigate, or push limits within a given field of knowledge. But what happens if, rather than viewing limits as inherent premises or side-effects of a research process, one activates them as tools? This chapter exemplifies a conceptual experiment with the methodological affordances of limits, through the classical Spinozian approach to affect. After introducing some relationships between limits and affects, it explores how one may actively use these types of affective occurrences within the specifics of an ethnography of Danish gangs. In particular it proposes three different modes of relation as focal points: outside-out, outside-in, and inside-out. In this context these modes correspond with an act of criminalisation, a process of censorship, and an intervention in social mobility, respectively. It concludes that the method of tracing one’s encounters with limits allows for the construction of an archive of one’s ways of relating to the field of study, as well as one’s own processes of knowledge formation. This method facilitates the tracing of where and how one affects and is affected, making it easier to keep track of moments of discovery and more difficult to forget one’s positionality. Thereby, it affords the potential for more ethical research practices.