Analysis to Identify Contradictions

Abstract

In Chap. 5, we explore the idea that multiplicity may not always be a comfortable experience. We pay particular attention here to the identification of moments of discursively produced contradictions, conflicts and resultant tensions.

Troubling Invitation 5: Comfort and Discomfort

In the last invitation we talked about how discussing narratives with other people might enable a person to move into a different way of knowing a story . Here we want to trouble our use of the word ‘different’ and instead introduce notions of ‘additional’. Talking with others about stories will mean that we come into contact with additional ways of knowing a story .

We can know realities via the deployment of multiple stories —the territory that we are knowing may therefore be thought of as multiple and some of these ways of knowing may contradict each other. On account of this multiplicity we may experience tensions .

We would argue that when a story corresponds with a normative position that we hold that the affective response produced might be one of comfort and vice versa, we seek to highlight here that it is possible to engage with a story and for that story to produce contradictory affective responses in the person engaging with it.

Michael: Yes, this makes sense to me. There are, for instance, people or situations that I have encountered that produce a variety of responses and I usually become aware of this when the overriding response provoked is uncomfortable … What I’m thinking is that just as discomfort is worth reflecting on that, so too is comfort … I certainly wouldn’t be the first person to say that … Freire comes to mind straight away.

Mic: Yes, what I’m thinking about is how we can be drawn to others through that feeling of shared comfort and repelled from others with the discomfort … and maybe that’s a way that we try to resolve our own tensions … when you feel like there is no escape, this can create a whole other layer of discomforts.

Michael: Yes … I’m thinking there are people and stories that I am unsure how I should react and respond to … and there are places that do the same … I’ve had the experience of working in a place that often I felt at odds with … but that I also wanted to remain in for various reasons … the feelings were quite intense … I persisted but I know if this had been another space that I would have been out of there very quickly … strangely I feel I have actually learnt a thing or two by staying … this space has also left its mark … this experience has been multiple and generative …. Whether it’s been generative in a positive way I’m not so sure … and whether the time invested could have been better spent elsewhere … mmmmmmmm.

Readers might now talk about a time when they experienced an affective contradiction and whether or not, on reflection, they feel this experience was generative or not.

Queer thing on a table under the Microscope Rotation 6 (Crowhurst & Emslie, 2017)