Amplifying the uncomfortable: Learning through embodied experience and reflexive conversation

Abstract

The things that make us human are often excluded from our research accounts. Our emotions. Our bodies. The unexpected and sometimes uncomfortable events in the research process that can bring these elements to the fore. They do not fit with neat, rational procedures of learning and are often neglected to ensure validity and rigour in our final learning accounts. We argue, however, that these events are constitutive rather than detrimental to learning and signal the breakdown of categories and classifications that often limit how we learn. Consequently, they can open possibilities for new ways of knowing that traditional methods of enquiry might otherwise miss. We provide an account of an unintended fieldwork experience where interactions between such elements disrupted the intended learning process, leading to new connections and understanding between ‘researcher’ and ‘researched’. We show how this understanding can be amplified and elaborated through reflexive conversations with research participants and co-authors and the act of writing differently. In doing so, we demonstrate how the learning potential of these often-nebulous events can be foregrounded and developed rather than compartmentalised or dismissed as aberrations in the research process.

Keywords

Experiential learning embodiment knowledge creation participatory learning methods reflexivity writing

Introduction

The things that make us human are often written out of our learning accounts. Uncomfortable experiences. Emotions that do not fit with our work. Unpredictable bodies that react in unexpected ways. Convention suggests these ill-fitting elements need to be hammered down and kept separate from the research process to ensure rigour and validity (Juhlin and Holt, 2022; Valtonen et al., 2017). Their unruliness needs to be diffused and excused through explanations of how we can protect ourselves from emotional exposure (McMurray, 2022) and emotional ills (Gilmore and Kenny, 2015) so we can learn in an accepted, deliberate, reasoned and disembodied way. At best, they can be alluded to in passing, for example as a reflective caveat or footnote in a methods section intended to invite trust (Hardy et al., 2001) or authenticate one’s work (Tracy, 2013). Yet they can continue to bubble away beneath the surface of our studies, threatening to erupt into our carefully thought-out research plans.

We believe that these neglected elements of ourselves, and the disruptive events that manifest them in our research, are integral to how we learn as scholars and should be foregrounded rather than compartmentalised in our work. They signal the breakdown of false dichotomies that limit how we learn, such as subject and object, insider and outsider, researcher and researched as we connect with hidden elements of our lives and the lives of others involved in the research process. This connection, in turn, can open conditions of possibility for knowing or experiencing the phenomena we seek to understand, often in unexpected and insightful ways.

In the following sections, we demonstrate the importance of being open to these often-hidden aspects as a way of learning through our analysis of an unplanned, unintended event experienced by the first author that disrupted a planned, intended research project. This event changed his approach to learning from that of a solo act (Riach, 2009) carried out by the lone researcher, to one characterised by connection with his own body, non-human things, research participants and fellow researchers. In doing so, it connected him with his ‘data’ in a generative manner, allowing insight into a theme of interest shared by both researcher and researched, and subtle processes occurring in the research site that more traditional, detached learning approaches would have missed. We show how this singular event was transformed into an ongoing learning process through reflective conversations with a research ‘subject’ and co-author, and writing in a way that amplifies these hard to grasp elements and processes.

The remainder of our paper is structured as follows. We continue by exploring entangled elements often neglected in the learning process: our bodies, our emotions and the often-disruptive experiences that bring these hidden aspects to the fore. We discuss the generative potential of these elements for scholars in terms of creating engagement and insight into research phenomena. Following this, we present our intended research approach and the unintended experience that disrupted this project in the form of a vignette written by the first author. We then analyse how such fleeting and ephemeral events can be kept alive and amplified in the research process rather than shut down and excluded from our research accounts. We do so by first illustrating the importance of taking the time and space to sit with these events, thereby allowing new connections and avenues of enquiry to develop. Second, we propose developing these connections and avenues through iteratively reflecting with research participants in ways that do not necessarily align with more traditional approaches to ‘interviewing’. Third, we propose reflecting with co-authors to connect new insight with overarching research themes. Finally, we highlight the importance of writing differently (Gilmore et al., 2019) through more evocative styles to convey such relational and embodied learning in our research accounts.

Embodied knowing and learning

There is a growing critique of the mind-body dualism in management and organisation studies (MOS), with scholars problematising the silencing of the flesh in how we learn and know of the world. In a recent special issue of this journal, Beyes et al (2022) chart the backgrounding of sensory experience and the foregrounding of cognitive rationality in organisational analysis. Likewise, Holt and Cornelissen (2014) discuss the neglect of feeling in favour of disembodied reasoning in accounts of organisational life, while Zundel (2013) highlights the Cartesian split that pervades management learning, whereby sensation is excluded for the sake of reasoned deliberation and analysis. Such authors highlight the implications of this dualism for the research process, with accounts of the corporeal regarded as anathema to linear, logical and rigorous studies that lead to neat sets of findings and conclusions.

Sensing and feeling

Such neglected elements of ourselves can, however, offer us rich potential in the learning process. Our bodies, for example, are integral to how we learn, and there is a rich stream of research on embodiment and sensory knowing that investigates how those we research understand the world through their senses (e.g. Gärtner, 2013; Merchant, 2011; Prince, 2022; Strati, 2007). Parolin and Mattozzi (2013), for instance, examine how craftworkers in the Italian furniture industry use their sensory interactions with materials to guide them in producing a new chair model. They know at a pre-reflexive level if parts of the chair are too soft or too rigid by the pressure they apply and interpret through their sense of touch, which in turn informs how they proceed with their work (Gherardi, 2006). Similarly, goldsmiths ‘feel in the gut’ how a piece of jewellery should be as they physically engage with the constituent materials (Gherardi and Perrotta, 2013: 239). The senses, therefore, are actively involved in the learning process in terms of experiencing the world and producing new ways of knowing.

For scholars, addressing how we learn through our own senses when conducting research can be harder to articulate. In general, the sense experience of researchers has long been marginalised in MOS where the learning process is still primarily seen as a rational, cognitive endeavour, formulated and communicated through language (Harvey and Spee, 2023; McConn-Palfreyman et al., 2022; Simsek et al., 2018). The irrational and unpredictable body does not belong in such a process. At best, it distracts us from the ‘real’ academic work of recording and analysing neat, objective phenomena. At worst, it breaks down and derails our carefully planned and measured timelines through illness and other unwanted consequences of the flesh (Clarke and Knights, 2015; Taylor, 2013). This tension between academic convention and our unruly, visceral lives can make us wary of how we might address ourselves and the things that make us who we are; the ‘jagged and potentially threatening monster that lies out of sight’ (Vickers, 2015: 83).

Feminist and post-colonial critics problematise the silencing of the body in such work by foregrounding the implicit and sometimes explicit power relations that infuse knowledge production. They do so by revealing the masculine (e.g. Butler, 2011; Harding, 1991); imperialistic (e.g. Holvino, 2010; Stewart-Harawira, 2007), racial (e.g. Acker, 2012; Crenshaw, 1989) and class-based (e.g. hooks, 1991; Swan et al., 2009) sensibilities that underly notions of rigour, conclusiveness and purpose, which can in turn inform more standardised, linear approaches to learning. Such approaches are echoed in the primacy of the mind over the body, whereby cognitive reasoning is tightly linked with normative notions of factuality (Code, 2006), scientism (Willmott, 2013) and quality (Ashcraft, 2017) – the tenets of good, publishable research. In contrast, the body is coupled with anti-normative notions of danger (Ahmed, 2017), dirtiness (Pullen and Rhodes, 2008) and disruption (Fotaki et al., 2014) – the tenets of bad, perishable research.

Addressing our emotions as MOS scholars in the research process has been a similarly neglected area. Attention has been paid to the emotions of others and their influence on disciplinary phenomena such as organisational behaviour (Town et al., 2021), communication (Waldron, 2012) and leadership (Fairhurst, 2008). Accounts of researcher emotions are more limited, even within ethnographic studies where the author is more firmly centred (Brannan, 2015; Down et al., 2006). Emotions regarded as unruly (Lawley and Caven, 2019), difficult (Ahmed, 2014), threatening (Czarniawska, 2008), distressing (Hubbard et al., 2001) or intense (Brannan, 2011) are particularly absent from research accounts, or at best confined to a footnote or reflective caveat at the end of a methods section to help authenticate one’s work (Rynes et al., 2012; Van Maanen, 2010).

The same Cartesian split (Michels and Steyaert, 2013) that privileges the mind over the senses underlies this neglect of emotion. Feelings are associated with the flesh and seen as inferior to reason, particularly when those feelings are regarded as disruptive and uncomfortable. Addressing such feelings, let alone foregrounding them is anathema to a neutral and objective learning process (Bell and Willmott, 2019). The standard approach in MOS is to manage these emotions, just like the unruly bodies that show them to the world, so they do not interfere with our work. We need to beware of emotional exposure (McMurray, 2022) and care for our emotional well-being (Whiteman, 2010) by confining our feelings to a safe space where they can be diffused and made non-threatening to how we should learn, allowing us to get on with the real work of data collection and extrapolation (Mallon and Elliot, 2019). The net result is that the researcher’s own emotional journey in the learning process is often seen as embarrassing and to be avoided in the final text produced (Dickson-Swift et al., 2009; Pullen, 2006).

Scholars foregrounding the marginalisation of the senses in MOS also highlight the coupling of negative emotion with the bodies of gendered, racialised, sexualised and (dis)abled Others. These associations are then juxtaposed with positive emotion and the optimised, working bodies of dominant groups. For example, Jaggar (1996) and Butler (2006) show how emotions regarded as uncultivated or unruly are associated with women, who unlike men are represented as less able to transcend the body through thought, will and reason. In his studies of racialised emotions, Bonilla-Silva (1997, 2019) critiques the taken-for-granted association of emotional irrationality with racial subjectivities. For instance, emotional dysregulation and Blackness cannot exist without emotional regulation and Whiteness. In doing so, the author explains how such binary tropes are constructed phenomena that cannot operate in isolation from one another. Similarly, Mac an Ghaill (2000) shows how tropes of anger and incalcitrance associated with Irish immigrants were formed in contrast to the portrayed ‘purity, industriousness and civilisation’ of the communities they settled in (p. 138). Dale and Latham (2015) illustrate the emotional passivity and numbness associated with dis-abled embodiment, countered with the emotional purposiveness and engagement of the cap-able body.

Overall, there has been a sanitization of our capabilities as scholars, with our senses and emotions positioned as clashing with civilised notions of learning. They disrupt our routines (Beyes and Steyaert, 2021), challenge established orders (Agostinho and Thylstrup, 2019) and interfere with proper ways of how we can know and understand the world (Zundel, 2013). Likewise, our bodies that suppose our senses tend to be excluded from scholarly work. We silence our flesh (Dale and Latham, 2015), our vulnerabilities (Loughran and Mannay, 2018), our humanness (Pérezts, 2022) so that our writing can conform to the disembodied nature of how learning should be done: in a linear, rational manner unencumbered by matters of the body. This is particularly so for Other bodies that do not fit with normative notions of how the flesh should behave: as instruments of the mind that are fitter, happier, more productive (Radiohead, 1997).

The implication of these constructed dualities for scholars, particularly early career researchers, is that we should essentially pick a side. We can prioritise learning as a cognitive endeavour and seek to understand objective phenomena via linear procedures of enquiry, fitting in with more accepted and publishable ways of knowing and learning, and doing what we can to advance our careers in a competitive academic marketplace. We might seek to conduct ethnographically informed work as long as these studies align with the methodological understanding that the research field is separate to the researcher; something to be dipped into to gather data before exiting to analyse and evaluate. The often-used and arguably outdated emic/etic concept reflects this (Harris, 1976): the researcher can ‘go native’ – but not too native, as this would compromise objectivity – by getting as close as possible to the researched through specific methods like participant observation (Emerson et al., 2001) and thick description (Geertz, 1973). Data can then be analysed and elaborated later through procedures such as comparison (Herzfeld, 2001) and categorisation (Walby, 2013), with the researcher largely absent from the resulting findings and discussion sections of scholarly papers. We might document our emotions, but only insofar as they can be compartmentalised and dealt with to avoid disrupting the research process (Bashir, 2018).

Alternatively, we can pursue more subjective approaches by foregrounding our personal sensory faculties and how we might interpret the world through our own sensory palettes (e.g. de Rond et al., 2019; Ellis and Bochner, 2003; Inckle, 2010; Mazzetti, 2016; Ybema et al., 2009). While such accounts might bring us closer to the researched, they are often criticised for focussing too much on the subjective sensory experience of the researcher and essentially interfering with the recording of objective, knowable phenomena through analytical methods (Boje and Tyler, 2008; Doloriert and Sambrook, 2009). This is particularly evident in critiques of autoethnographic studies. For example, Delamont (2007) writes that autoethnography is ‘essentially lazy – literally lazy and also intellectually lazy’ (p. 2). Hammersley (2010) contends that authoethnographic accounts fail to ‘provide convincing answers to factual questions about the world’ (p. 6) while Roth (2008) warns that researchers utilising autoethnography risk being regarded as ‘unprincipled, egoistical and egotistical’ by their peers (p. 10). Such criticism, combined with the potential psychological, emotional and professional harm researchers face by focussing on their personal, visceral lives in their work can be discouraging, particularly for new academics (Vickers, 2007).

Learning affectively

Research-wise, the implication of these dualities is that they can limit our ability to learn through our work. Empirical studies can become abstracted into debates about ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ ways to engage with research phenomena, how rigorous our findings should be, how partial or impartial we have been in our actions. Some MOS scholars have, however, sought to move beyond these divides by drawing on the concept of affect.

Different scholars define affect in different ways, depending on the contexts of their studies (e.g. Anderson and Ash, 2015; Bissell, 2010; Vachhani, 2013). For the purposes of learning in embodied ways, it is useful to focus more on what affect does rather than what it is. According to Massumi (2002), affect manifests itself in the form of pre-reflexive intensities or ‘charges’ that emerge as people and things interact (p. 62). These intensities are felt viscerally and, while hard to articulate in language, essentially question our taken-for-granted assumptions, understandings and ways of being in the world. For example, Beyes and Steyaert (2013) discuss feelings of unease when something familiar becomes strangely unfamiliar, causing us to momentarily reassess our relation to the world and how it is organised. Ahmed (2020) foregrounds moments of disorientation that problematise our experience of the reality that we take for granted, while Löw (2010) writes of affectual happenings that disrupt accepted logics by momentarily disconnecting the way the body routinely makes sense of what it encounters.

Perhaps the most significant impact of affect on how we might learn is its relational nature, in that it can occur in the prosaic and sometimes off-script interactions we have with other bodies, things and elements around us. This focus on relationality decentres the bounded individual (e.g. the researcher) who acquires purely cognitive knowledge about something tangible (e.g. the researched) through linear and instrumental methodological procedures. Instead, the unbounded social interactions that connect the individual with tangible and intangible elements of the environment become foregrounded. The motivation and mechanism of learning therefore shifts from a ‘universe’ of direct causality to a ‘pluriverse’ of emergent possibilities (Law and Urry, 2004: 399).

We can see affect at work by revisiting and viewing the Parolin and Mattozzi (2013) and Gherardi and Perrotta (2013) examples through an affectual lens. For the former example, we observe how the craftworkers know when a piece of furniture feels ‘good’ or ‘bad’ due to their direct physical interaction with the object. This knowing is informed by previous interactions with similar objects as part of their past work and training which is, in turn, combined with the specific design guidelines of their clients. These guidelines indicate the desired future of the piece, which are combined with the craftworkers’ own interpretations of this future. For the latter example, the goldsmiths’ gut feeling of how a piece of jewellery should ‘be’ is spurred by their current, physical interactions with the relevant materials, their past interactions with similar materials, and their desired future for the same. As such, by shifting our focus from the all-knowing subject of the craftworker or goldsmith, or the unknowing object of the furniture or jewellery to the interactions taking place between the two, we can become aware of the different tangibles and intangibles, times and spaces that contribute to the becoming of the relevant piece.

For MOS, learning affectively helps to dissolve the subject-object duality that underscores more accepted approaches of how we can come to know of the world (Gherardi, 2019). We can detonate related oppositions of mind and body, knowing and unknowing, right and wrong ways of engaging with research phenomena by decentring ourselves and focussing on the interactions and affectual forces that exist between bodies and things. In doing so, we might open up the learning process to Other voices and elements that, while always present in the organisation of social life, are often silenced by more linear approaches that reduce learning to proving or falsifying hypotheses. This includes our own voices, bodies and emotions: elements that are normally diffused and compartmentalised for fear of interfering with scholarly work can become primed, generative and legitimate aspects of learning. What counts as ‘data’ is therefore expanded to encompass such elements and the often-unexpected moments that bring them to the fore.

A methodology for learning

In the following sections, we explore an unplanned affectual moment that disrupted a planned research project and foreground its generative potential to learning. In doing so, we show how this potential can be accessed and elaborated through deliberate methodological techniques. We begin by outlining details of a qualitative study, planned and undertaken by the first author. We follow with a vignette based on an unsettling and ultimately transformative fieldwork experience that occurred during the ‘data collection’ phase of this study. This vignette shows how aspects of the first author’s lived experience, initially hidden behind the artificial dualities that inform more mainstream approaches to learning in MOS, became foregrounded and intertwined with the lived experience of the researched. This intertwinement was experienced viscerally, disrupting the nature and trajectory of the intended research process and creating unintended insights and avenues of enquiry. We continue by elaborating on this moment using reflective conversations with a research participant and a paired interview technique between co-authors (Cutcher, 2020; Gilmore and Kenny, 2015). In doing so, we show how such nebulous, hard-to-grasp moments can be amplified beyond mere sidenotes in the traditional fieldwork stage of the research process and instead foregrounded as central to how we learn as researchers.

The intended story: a traditional approach

The first author engaged in a study of Science Gallery, an outreach initiative of Trinity College Dublin that showcases research projects and encourages interactions between scientists, artists, businesses and the local community around scientific, technical and social issues (Science Gallery Network, 2024). Its activities are expressed both materially and spatially through exhibitions, workshops and other events in a changing programme of interactive installations based on particular themes. Science Gallery has been described as a ‘living experiment’ (The Journal, 2018) and ‘the most creative, innovative and artistic venue in Ireland’ (The Irish Times, 2011). Many fruitful collaborations and initiatives are regarded to have arisen through Science Gallery programming, for example scientific partnerships, community initiatives and entrepreneurial ventures (Science Gallery Dublin, 2019). Essentially, Science Gallery is regarded as a space where creative and productive things happen.

At an early stage, the intended aim of the study was to understand how Science Gallery was organised to foster creativity. For example, how was it structured, who and what got to be included in or excluded from its initiatives, who decided on this inclusion or exclusion, and what were the specific outputs of Science Gallery programming? The first author was nearing the end of an initial three-week data collection phase that had three constituent parts. First, he conducted structured and semi-structured interviews with Science Gallery management and selected individuals that had taken part in Science Gallery programming initiatives such as researchers, entrepreneurs and artists. Second, he attended a variety of Science Gallery activities, some open to the public such as exhibitions and talks held by curators, and some open to Science Gallery staff such as training days and exhibition brainstorming sessions where future exhibition themes were formulated. His presence at these events was more ‘observation’ than ‘participation’; he would sit quietly at the periphery of any goings on, notebook and pen in hand, keeping his presence to himself. Third, he collected background data on Science Gallery, from publicly available annual reports and exhibition guides to internal impact reports and fundraising strategies. His intention on completing this data gathering phase was to return to his university department overseas, analyse the various information he had collected, reflect on possible theoretical threads this data could connect to, and plan for a longer follow-up visit to Science Gallery later in the year.

The unintended story: a non-traditional approach

A few days before wrapping up this initial research trip, the first author attended a 3-hour evening event entitled ‘House Party – Everyone Back to Ours’. This heavily publicised event was designed to showcase the Science Gallery ‘HOME\SICK’ exhibition which explored the meanings of ‘home’ in different contexts and how these meanings can change as a result of phenomena such as emigration, changing consumption practices, and the increased incorporation of technology in living spaces. It featured a variety of exhibits, from interactive pieces highlighting issues of homelessness in the context of economic and social cutbacks in Ireland, to a collaborative research project that gathered data from visitors on household water consumption and conservation practices. There were also a variety of performances and talks by exhibiting artists, live acts by musicians, local artisan food and beverage businesses, a workshop where participants could experiment with simple devices such as rudimentary clocks and apps, and an area where visitors could socialise and play games.

There was no specific research goal that motivated the first author to attend this evening event. As he explains:

‘I didn’t really have any intentions coming into the event. I was looking forward to seeing the various displays and activities and just winding down after an intensive few weeks of interviewing, attending more formal events and meetings, and trying to figure out what I could do with all of this data I was gathering. At most, I thought the event might be a way of meeting some new contacts who I could follow up with on a return trip. But really, it ended up changing everything’.

The vignette below captures a moment that changed his planned methodological approach in ways he did not anticipate.

Learning by undoing

The Science Gallery event has begun. The ground floor is filling up with people who disperse in different directions to interact with exhibits in ones, twos or small groups. A frisson of excitement ripples through the exhibition space, manifested in chatter, the noise of a DJ playing upstairs, people interacting in a makeshift workshop at the far end of the ground floor. The aroma of locally produced food and drink from participating eateries fills the air. Suspended on a wall in the centre of the gallery space is a timetable, detailing the events scheduled to take place over the course of the evening. I see that a reading by an exhibiting artist, Veronica Dyas is about to take place upstairs. I had interviewed Veronica in the days leading up to the evening event; I’d asked her some general questions about her involvement with Science Gallery and her overall impressions of the exhibition. I join the steady stream of people ascending the spiralling staircase, leading to the upper level of the gallery where Veronica’s installation is.

The layout is different up here. The natural light and sense of openness from downstairs morphs into a more enclosed space. Subtle lighting illuminates several different installations, creating a sense of intimacy. To my right is Veronica’s exhibit. Entitled Extracts of the HERE & NOW, it consists of several constituent pieces. Vacant is the chair of the artist’s deceased Grandmother, old and worn with hand and headrests smooth from the body of its occupier. The headrest is flatter and more worn on one side. A sign explains how the artist’s Grandmother, incapacitated after a stroke, would spend her days sitting there with her head leaning to the left, supported by the upholstery. Down the side of the cushioning is a crumpled copy of her Last Will and Testament. To the left of the chair is a fireplace, with a video recording of a burning fire playing in the grate. What’s Left consists of a blue nylon sleeping bag the artist slept in, shortly after becoming homeless. Sounds from the city environment emanate softly from a hidden speaker. Visitors are invited to sit and lie in these pieces, taking the embodied place of the artist and occupier as they were. A rucksack containing her remaining belongings from this time of her life, and a redacted diary of her experiences, lie close by.

To my left is Home. Heart. Hope, a collaborative piece produced by the artist Sinéad Cullen and the non-profit housing association ‘Habitat for Humanity’. Simple red house structures are suspended from the ceiling, rotating with the movements of passing people. The wall behind these structures shows the outline of a home, while to the left are a series of fifteen ‘hope’ stories from families who had participated in Habitat for Humanity programmes, formerly homeless and now telling how possessing a home has changed their lives. People move in and around both exhibits, some sitting in the old chair, some lying on the ground. Others stretch to touch the moving small houses. Some talk to each other, some laugh, some whisper, others stand silently reading the stories of home.

After a minute or so, Veronica makes her way to the front of her exhibit, a large hardback book in her hands. The small, gathered crowd quietens and she begins to read a passage, an extract written for a former theatre exhibit and adapted for this exhibition. Her words detail her experience of losing her home during the economic downturn, her struggles with addiction and how the loss of that home intensified her problems. It’s hard to hear all her words, with the hum and rhythm of other activities intermingling and drowning out some parts of the reading. More people gather, curious as to what is going on. She finishes after a few minutes and a brief ripple of applause rises from those gathered. Veronica disappears as quickly as she arrived. Some people move forward into the exhibit, touching the materials, reading the notes. Others move to the connecting rooms of the upper level.

About five minutes later, a band of musicians start playing in another room. Those remaining begin to move to this next event. As the space clears, I move towards Veronica’s exhibit. I walk around the sleeping bag and lower myself into the chair. My body sinks into the pre-existing mould of the cushions and backrest, made over time by the frail body of Veronica’s grandmother. Without thinking, I place my hands on the armrests of the chair, feeling the worn material made smooth by the hands of someone else. The texture is almost the same as the old-style upholstery that my own deceased Godmother used to have in her home. The mould of the chair pulls my body slightly to the left. It doesn’t feel right, this posture or sitting in this person’s chair, but it’s something I just fall into. It’s too intimate. It makes me feel vulnerable; it makes me think of the helplessness of the person who sat here for God knows how long, living out their last days, weeks, years. I instinctively rest my head against the same worn support she would have rested her own head against. I realise there’s a small speaker somewhere inside the headrest, playing an audio recording of the same words Veronica spoke a few minutes ago:

The time I lived there I steadied myself

Incremental change is what I had

and grateful I was to even have that from where I’d come from

But I can’t journey backwards

No, not anymore

Someone else lives in my home now

The scent of the chair is filling my brain. It smells like a home that’s been lived, something deep, something intimate, something comforting, something out-of-place here on this public and exposed gallery floor space. The smell, the touch, my posture, triggers memories of losing my own home a number of years before. The sense of insecurity, the helplessness that comes with losing the place you grew up in, the feeling of not belonging in your own city, in your own country. My stomach feels queasy. I can feel my heart beating faster; I can hear these beats in my head as my blood flows harder, the rhythm blending with Veronica’s words:

And these are my people

These are my ways

These are our rebels bold and true

This is our pain

Our suffering our shame

carried over and over and over

Generation savaged and we’re raging again

I wasn’t expecting this; to feel like this. I stand up quickly; I have to get out of the chair. I can feel the hairs on the back of my neck are raised, my skin is tingling. I suddenly become conscious of how I must look; is it obvious to others how I’m feeling? I turn away from the exhibit, walking towards the band playing in the next room. As I’m leaving, I notice a written sign, the title of the exhibition, displayed large on the wall in bold red capital letters: HOME\SICK: POST-DOMESTIC BLISS.

Learning by rebuilding: sitting with the uncomfortable

The first author’s initial reaction after leaving the Science Gallery exhibition was to compartmentalise this experience. It did not fit with his intended learning approach and jarred with the logico-analytical assumptions underlying his planned methodology. For him, the ‘data gathering’ phase was neatly tied up. The interviews and (non)participant observations were done. The mechanics of transcribing, of hammering text from formalised interviews into pre-existing substantive frames and domains of enquiry (Hesse-Bieber and Leavy, 2011) could be carried out later, in a sanitised space far removed from this messy research site. This exhibition visit was meant to be down time, a chance to forget and unwind, not to feel displaced and uncomfortable.

Ignoring this experience proved difficult, however. For the first author, neat, bounded categories of objectivity and subjectivity, of individual interiority and research field exteriority had ruptured (Cunliffe, 2018) through connecting with Veronica and her lived experience. The places and times he had once occupied, otherwise excluded from the analytical research procedures he had sought to undertake, bled into this rupture and intertwined with the places and times of the artist. This occurred through the act of physically engaging with the chair and understanding this engagement through his own sensory perceptions or sensorium (Merchant, 2011). Sitting in the chair, the scent of the material, the sound of Veronica’s words, the sinking sensation as his body was enveloped in the material, the feel of the old-style worn upholstery caused him to recall his contextual experience of losing his own home and suddenly being without the stability it afforded – feeling uneasy in his own city.

For the first author, the first step in making sense of this experience was to resist the urge to push it away or dismiss it as trivial, and instead take the time to sit with it in all its uncomfortableness. As Whiteman (2010) explains, often our initial reaction to more visceral, emotional interpretations of events or ‘heartbreak’ (p. 328) is to shut them down through a disjunctive, reductionist style of thinking that underlies more mainstream approaches to learning. By allowing himself the time and space to reflect on the experience, the first author instead opened the possibility for a more conjunctive approach to learning that recognises connections between diverse elements of human experience (Tsoukas, 2017). In effect, he gave himself the opportunity to begin teasing apart the variety of interactions between material and expressive elements that had formed the event.

Learning by rebuilding: reflecting with participants

The first author felt the urge to talk with the artist to further understand this formative concept of connection that underlay his experience in the gallery space and the seemingly nebulous elements involved. This urge did not fit with the more formalised ‘researcher’ and ‘researched’ dichotomy that characterised his previous interactions with her. While the tone of the initial interview had felt casual, it was still very much structured in advance with clear lines of inquiry intended to understand Veronica’s functional use of Science Gallery as a design space. His own presence was absent. Now, the script was flipped, and he had essentially become the research subject.

He shared with her how the act of physically engaging with her exhibit had undone him and how he had to get out of and away from the chair, find a pub and have a drink to settle himself. This response did not surprise Veronica, and indeed she explained that in her art she was purposively giving those who interacted with her work permission to have such a reaction:

‘One big part of it though is allowing people. . . like what you did, I think the really important thing is that you recognised that something was happening, you allowed it to happen, you were overwhelmed, you did something about it like you had the pint. Your response was what’s really relevant though. You recognised that there was something going on in your system and you just wanted to calm in down. So you responded to it, and then you were able to digest. You reflected on it, and that’s a huge part of it’.

A similar sense of purpose lay behind Veronica’s organisation of her exhibit and the deeply personal objects she chose to include. Her intent was not just to connect with those who chose to interact with the items in one place (the Science Gallery exhibition) at one point in time (the HOME\SICK evening event). Rather, she wanted to create a ‘deliberate disorientation’ (Beyes and Steyaert, 2011: 1454) and heighten awareness of homelessness in her city by folding her past experience of such into the present experience of visitors, via objects that had gathered their own experiences over time. For example, the chair became more than the basic materials of which it was composed. It was imprinted and formed by the experience of its past life – the places it occupied and the person who occupied it. As Veronica explained:

‘It was my Granny’s chair. The chair is really important; it was in loads of work I did. We’ve had a long journey. I got the chair off of my uncle when she died. He moved into her house when she was sick and he never really left. Him and his wife gave me the chair because me and my Granny were very close. So it lived in my house in Ballyfermot for a long time until I had to leave the house. I was like “what am I going to do with the chair?” I lost everything and got rid of everything I didn’t need, but there was no way I was getting rid of the chair. It has to be somewhere safe so I gave it to my sister. So the chair now lives in her apartment where I’m staying at the moment. It’s moved with me through everything. So even the journey of it, it means a lot’.

‘The house [the chair occupied] was a [Dublin] Council house. They came from tenements and they moved to Ballyfermot when it was built, and they literally worked all their lives to buy that house, and by the time they died nobody needed it. Nobody needed it. . . this house that became a shell. And the things that held their time there’.

These personal memories bled into Veronica’s experience of being without a home, which in turn bled into her intent for the exhibit:

‘I want HERE & NOW to investigate what it means to us, inside ourselves to be without a home, the feeling of what “home” means. . . I hope it would. . . if people aren’t aware to make them a little bit more aware? And the point of that [audio] text for me was to say I’m not different; none of us are any different. We all need safety, we all need security, we all need space. . . And I don’t know if people, unless they experience it themselves or know someone close to them, get that sense of what’s going on for people. In our own home; in our city’.

‘What I’d like people to feel is that hair’s breadth, between having a house and being comfortable and having absolutely nothing and no agency to change that’.

As the vignette illustrates, the meaning of the chair bled into the first author’s own lived experience through the act of physically engaging with it. He understood its history as it clashed with his own; his body imported its own emplaced past into its present experience in the Science Gallery exhibition space. This was the point where bodies, objects, spaces and times folded into one another. Their normative representations as bounded, discrete entities, which at best can only be understood through scientific procedures of separation and dissection or at worst simply ignored as irrelevant or threatening to the right way of doing research, ruptured and (re)connected in new ways. Moving beyond the dichotomy of ‘interviewer’ and ‘interviewed’ and sharing this experience with Veronica helped revisit this connectivity and tease apart the entanglement of methodological categories the event produced, such as researcher and researched, body and object, space and time. These dynamics could be unpacked together, leading to a generative form of analysis and reflective learning that more standardised qualitative methods might have missed.

Learning by rebuilding: reflecting with co-authors

This deliberate reflection and learning continued at a later stage, in an academic setting in another country far removed from the initial experience of the exhibit. Here, the first and second authors engaged in a paired interview (Cutcher, 2020; Gilmore and Kenny, 2015) where the second author interviewed the first about his experience and how this had changed his methodological approach. Here, the role of the second author was to intentionally amplify the first author’s original experience of the research encounter through a series of probing questions, which could then be unpacked further and related to overarching themes of learning and method. We share extracts from the interview below to show how this technique can provide another site for shared understanding and reflection in the learning process.

How did your experience with the exhibit change your position in the research?

It was all very unexpected and disruptive. Even though I thought I was getting close to ‘something’ in the research site, I was still largely outside of it; silent, watching and noting. My experience of interacting with the chair basically shot me into that site.

What do you mean ‘shot you into that site’?

Well, it broke down my ‘involved-but-not-really-involved’ position in what felt like a very raw way. I wasn’t an observer anymore, looking in at something from the outside. Like a satellite, orbiting something. I was a person, with experiences and things that make me who I am wrapped into what I had previously been sitting outside of.

Interesting, so sitting in the chair allowed you to see that you couldn’t be separate from the research.

It did, in that the divide between researcher and researched, between personal and academic was gone. But it was also more than that. It wasn’t like a bubble with just me and the chair, and the immediate experience of Veronica. All these other threads were connected, linking in my times and my spaces and her times and her spaces, her meanings and her ways of thinking about the world. There was a lot more involved than just the immediate stuff right there in the gallery.

How did this experience in the field change your thinking about how we can bring our sensory experiences into our research?

It made me realise that we need to pay attention to all our senses rather than privileging one or two, and that our senses are generative rather than just reactive. We need to think about how our senses connect with the senses of others, with our stories and the stories of others. I think if we keep our focus on the connecting, it can help us get past the ‘inside/outside’ dichotomy that can inform how we conduct ourselves as researchers.

What do you mean by ‘get us past this dichotomy’?

I mean it can free us up and let us ask questions about our sensory experiences without worrying about how we’ll fit the answers neatly into that dichotomy. Questions like, how does our sensory knowing fit with that of others involved in such moments? Is it similar, or different? How so? What are the experiences that we bring into these moments? We can start to understand the presence of others by unsettling and reflecting on our own presence in such moments. In this way, we’re proactively putting ourselves into these entanglements, rather than simply receiving sensory cues that we cognitively decipher at a later date.

In the conversation that followed, the first author reflected on how his physical experience of the event continued through subsequent data gathering phases:

I realised this in the days after, when I met with Veronica to talk about the experience with the chair. I could feel the same bodily sensations as we talked and reflected together on the experience; the hairs standing up on my arms and neck, my blood pumping a little faster. Not as intensely this time, but the sensations were there, bubbling away beneath the surface of my skin. It was the same in the writing of the vignette, in reading it back, and in talking about it now.

This led to the two authors reflecting on how such affectual experiences might be purposively translated into our research beyond our fieldwork:

There isn’t a lot of guidance on how to do this kind of reflection. What have you learned from this experience that you think might be useful for others who might want to do similar work?

I think it’s important not to compartmentalise these uncomfortable events. Doing so can push us to reducing them in our research accounts. We can keep them alive through discussing with our co-authors, and possibly our research participants, if this works. Our writing also needs to be approached as a way of enacting these moments; of bringing them to life. It can be hard to convey such phenomena in words.

Yes, and it’s also hard to publish that kind of writing.

I think communicating this way of learning in any academic format is hard. I’ve presented this subject matter at two conferences and honestly it was terrifying on both occasions. There’s no separation between me and the study and when I do talk about it, I feel like I’m sharing parts of me that really don’t belong in those situations.

It would be great to say that when I presented it was a really rewarding experience, that I felt it helped develop the study and that I felt energised and connected, etc. but it didn’t happen that way. Honestly, the first time I presented was the worst. It just wasn’t the right place for this. The room was deathly silent after I finished. No questions. No comments. I just sat back down and felt like I wanted the ground to swallow me up. It was awful.

I said I’d never present [the material] again after that. I didn’t want to write about it either, to be honest. But I had a colleague, someone I very much respect, who encouraged me to present at a different type of conference. If it wasn’t for her, I don’t think I would have participated. I remember the build up to it; all I could think about when sitting there in that conference hall was the previous time I’d presented and how that went. But it did go differently this time. Initially there was that same silence after I finished, and I thought ‘oh no.’.. But a few people picked up on it and started what felt like a productive and constructive conversation around it. And the convenor of that session was brilliant, he elaborated some of their points and developed that conversation even more.

We talk about amplifying the uncomfortable [in the research process] through embodiment and these related techniques but at that time and in that more traditional academic-style conference format, it felt like the people in that conversation were doing the amplifying. They had chosen to move into that conversational space, like Veronica talked about [when I interviewed her]. They picked up on that more personal experience on my part and transformed it themselves, carrying it on through that conversation in their own ways.

Discussion

Our humanness has long been neglected in the learning process: our bodies, our emotions and the times and places they are entwined with. Our senses have been ‘bracketed out’ (Beyes et al., 2022: 629) of method and analysis in favour of mind over body assumptions. Studies that attempt to account for such sensory capabilities, let alone utilise their generative capacities are often dismissed as irrational (Juhlin and Holt, 2022); the body can never be a tool that fits with standardised notions of methodological objectivity (Van Maanen, 2010) or rational neutrality (Lawley and Caven, 2019). Whether implicitly or explicitly, bodies are regarded as irrational rather than rational (Bell et al., 2019); reactive rather than active (Greedharry et al., 2019) and consequently sabotage the formation of a competent, professional self (Taylor, 2020).

Similarly, our emotions are at best regarded as irrelevant to how we should learn (Ward, 2019) and at worst as a danger to the integrity of our studies (Czarniawska, 2008) and to ourselves as legitimate, reputable academics (Vickers, 2015). On the rare occasions they are featured, it is in terms of managing uncultivated emotions (Ahmed, 2014), protecting ourselves from emotional exposure (McMurray, 2022), emotional ills (Gilmore and Kenny, 2015) and threatening emotional experiences (Emerald and Carpenter, 2015). It is no wonder then that such ill-fitting aspects of ourselves and the often-unplanned events that bring these elements to the fore tend to be conspicuously absent from the learning accounts we produce (Brannan, 2015; Hahn and Knight, 2021; Yanow, 2009).

We draw on existing scholarly work that contends this silencing of ourselves is symptomatic of artificial dichotomies that underly ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ approaches to learning in MOS (e.g. Fotaki et al., 2017; Gherardi, 2019; Steyaert, 2022). Polarities between object and subject, mind and body, validity and invalidity limit the scope and depth of our work. For MOS scholars, particularly those in the early stages of their careers looking for their own epistemic homes, decisions need to be made about which polarity they align with and the style of learning they might ‘fit’ into. The consequences of these decisions inform more than just the methodological techniques applied to empirical studies: pursuing work that does not conform to normative notions and practices of knowledge production is a potentially dangerous career strategy. It can rule out participation in academic rituals of legitimation and acceptance, such as publication in Financial Times 50 Journals (Bell et al., 2020) and opportunities for promotion (Weatherall and Ahuja, 2021). For the Business Schools that (re)produce such dichotomies through their own norms and practices, there is a very real risk of excluding that which does not reinforce neat, linear and reductionist notions of what knowledge should be, how knowledge becomes and the rich, varied ingredients that contribute to this becoming. This includes Other voices, lives and experiences that are affected by and possibly excluded from managerial decision-making and organising practices.

We have highlighted the generative potential of these often-neglected ingredients through our focus on embodiment, the often hard-to-grasp elements that make us who we are, and the unplanned events that can bring these aspects to the fore. We believe that we can move past limiting dualities by emphasising the interactions between these elements, and as such we advocate that they should not be separated and discussed in isolation nor compartmentalised and explained away as incidental or irrelevant to the learning process. Instead, they should be foregrounded as opportunities to learn, not as simple methodological tools used to record dry, objective data that can be removed from the immediacy and intimacy of the research site to be later dissected through clinical procedures of analysis (Hibbert et al., 2014; Locke et al., 2022). Rather, the visceral, the emotional and the unplanned are signs that learning is occurring. They show that new connections are being established between traditionally bounded categories of researcher and researched in different and unexpected ways, creating the shared potential for new avenues of understanding or experiencing. In other words, the foldings of bodies, emotions and the times and places they evoke can lead to the corresponding unfoldings for new possibilities or ways of comprehending a phenomenon.

Through our vignette, we have illustrated the importance of resisting the urge to shut down these learning experiences as methodological aberrations or outliers that do not fit with more standardised qualitative methods which scholars might feel pressured to adopt. We have instead shown that these moments can be recognised and amplified, first by giving ourselves the time and space to sit with them in all their initial uncomfortableness, second by developing them through reflection with research participants, and third by linking them to overarching research themes through paired interview techniques with co-authors. In doing so, we not only recognise the tensions that exist between the elements that make up such learning experiences but call for them to be foregrounded and pursued for their generative potential.

For scholars, a starting point for exploring these tensions is to first recognise that they exist within us. When we engage in empirical research, we not only bring our disciplinary and academic ‘intellectual bags’ (Cunliffe, 2010: 226) but the personal and non-academic experiences that have made us who we are. We cannot separate or compartmentalise these constitutive ingredients of ourselves; they implicitly inform how we approach, understand and engage with our research projects. Second, we need to acknowledge that the lived experiences we bring to the research encounter do not fit seamlessly with the lived experiences of our research participants. Rather, they clash and combine in unexpected and often uncomfortable ways that resist being hammered down through techniques of transcendence or separation (Avenier and Cajaiba, 2012; Putnam et al., 2016). Third, we need to be open to such tensions continuing throughout the entirety of the research process rather than compartmentalising them to empirical encounters in the research field. For the first author, this included the ‘presentation’ of his experience at academic conferences. His initial reaction to the felt uncomfortableness that signalled this tensionality was to shut it down; to withdraw from the relational encounters that were occurring as others reacted to the subject matter. However, some of those involved in these encounters helped amplify the learning experience through their engagement with it, combining it with their own knowledge and experience and sharing it in turn.

Finally, it is difficult to write of such tensional learning moments; to communicate the intangible, the personal and the non-linear, all tangled up in bodily sensation. As the historian Trevor-Roper puts it, ‘forcing embodiment to become text – written or spoken – is a bit like forcing a jellyfish to grit its teeth’ (de Rond et al., 2019: 1972). This difficulty is intensified by scientific norms of academic writing that encourage detachment, desensitisation and disembodiment (Pullen and Rhodes, 2015; Riach and Warren, 2015). We therefore need to find ways to explore and write the uncomfortable (Hansen and Trank, 2016), the unsettling (Truman, 2023) and the indeterminate (Meier and Wegener, 2017) experiences that resonate with us and through us; those moments when our presence no longer bubbles away beneath the surface of our texts but erupts, intertwining with the presences of others.

We believe that such writing should be foregrounded in our work, and we hope we have achieved this by ‘writing differently’ (Gilmore et al., 2019: 3) through our vignette – our version of a critically affective performative text (Linstead, 2018) or hot reading (Turner, 1999) designed to convey the hard to convey with those who read it. In using an expressive writing style, we seek to challenge the ‘taboos’ of embodied and emotionally complex writing (Kiriakos and Tienari, 2018: 264) and help address calls for such texts to be legitimated with relation to their respective research projects (Pérezts, 2022).

In our case, the focus of our work shifted from a bounded organisational space to learning in non-traditional ways, the entanglement of bodies, things and associated spaces and times that spur such learning, and the generative understanding between researcher and researched that can result. The first author’s own experience of learning therefore became an integral part of the research focus, which changed from trying to capture a sense of nearness to things and happenings, to engaging with the practical learning experience of being part of these happenings. As such, his senses and experiences became a way of producing informed material (Latham and McCormack, 2009). This material is in turn reflected in the more personal writing style, not as self-indulgence but as a way of apprehending and conveying his understanding to a wider audience. In this way, writing itself becomes a creative act central to the learning process (Hjorth and Reay, 2017). We therefore encourage scholars to adopt a ‘wilder sort of empiricism’ (Dewsbury, 2003: 1927) through evocative writing styles that show how learning can occur, while also addressing their own roles in these occurrences.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Cynthia Hardy for their contribution to earlier iterations of this work. The authors also thank the Associate Editor and annonymous reviewers who continued to amplify this learning experience through their generative and constructive feedback and guidance.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Ethical Approval

This study was approved by the ethics review committee of the University of Melbourne. Informed consent was obtained verbally before participation.

ORCID iD

Paul Finn

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