Introduction: Affective Methodologies

Abstract

The motivation for this anthology is a challenge raised in the growing volume of academic work on affective processes — or what is often termed ‘the affective turn’ in contemporary cultural analysis (Clough, 2007; Thrift, 2008; Gregg and Seigworth, 2010; Brennan, 2004; Massumi, 2002; Blackman, 2012; Wethereil, 2012; Leys, 2011; Ahmed, 2004). The challenge under discussion is how to develop and account for methodologies that enable cultural researchers to investigate affective processes in relation to a certain empirical study. The collection’s main methodological focus is thus how to perform empirically grounded affect research. We define an affective method as an innovative strategy for (1) asking research questions and formulating research agendas relating to affective processes, for (2) collecting or producing embodied data and for (3) making sense of this data in order to produce academic knowledge. The aim of this edited collection is therefore not to challenge or deconstruct established methodological categories (e.g., research questions, data production and data analysis), but rather to begin experimenting with how these categories can be used and reinterpreted in inventive ways in order to engage with the immaterial and affective processes of social life. The chapters in the collection deal with the various elements of this definition in different ways: some focus more on starting points and asking questions, others more on the production or sense-making of data through the use of new analytical and conceptual approaches.