Affective reverberations: the methodological excesses of a research assemblage

Abstract

This chapter decenters the methodological unfolding of a qualitative research study on mainstream teachers of English learners, shifting from a sociocultural emphasis on individuality and agency towards affect as a productive post-structural concept. The researcher, participants, and findings are positioned as mutually constituted elements in an enmeshed entanglement of discursive processes, material contexts, animate bodies, and social norms and practices. The work employs concepts introduced by Deleuze and Guattari (1987): the rhizome, assemblage, and affect. The chapter discusses how the activity that constituted the research study was informed and influenced by affect that reverberated beyond the scope of the immediately observable. The multiple positionalities, past history, and values of the researcher and participant contributed to the methodological decision-making during data collection and analysis in conscious and unconscious ways. Affective distributions permeated throughout the study, contributing to the functioning of activity among and between the elements of the study. Ultimately, elements of the study contributed in ways that extended beyond the normative constructions of research, researcher, and participant. Elements affected and were affected, contributing to methodological excess, insights beyond the scope of normative systemic inquiry. This chapter demonstrates the productiveness of rhizomatic concepts to decenter the elements of a research study and affect as a productive construct to understand systematic inquiry. This move intentionally disrupts traditional conceptions of research and researcher objectivity, explicitly attending to the affective interplay among elements of the research assemblage and how this interplay functions as a primary means of scholarly engagement.

Citation

Martin, A.D. (2018), "Affective reverberations: the methodological excesses of a research assemblage", Decentering the Researcher in Intimate Scholarship (Advances in Research on Teaching, Vol. 31), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 9-23. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-368720180000031003