Within literature on research methods, studies concerning the unconscious have notably been the domain of ‘psychosocial research’ traditions. Clarke and Hogget (2009: 4) suggest how the ‘unconscious plays a role in construction of our reality and the way in which we perceive others’. Such research has privileged how the unconscious plays a ‘significant part in both generation of research data and construction of research environment’ (Clarke and Hogget 2009: 4). A wide variety of psychosocial approaches have been employed in the literature. For instance, Hollway (2000) has employed psychoanalytic perspectives that strongly draw from Melanie Klein (e.g. analyzing cases using terms and assumptions such as ‘defended subject’ and privileging analysis based on
transference/countertransference) in interview-‐oriented research.58 Furthermore,
58 Hollway’s (2011) approach seeks a psychosocial method that replaces the ‘cold distance’ of fieldnotes and simple transcripts, while honouring and better allowing a space for voices to speak. Hollway (2012) continues to experiment with psychosocial methods by exploring ‘creativity’ with
more recent work by Hollway (2011, 2012) innovated psychosocial methods of writing data, drawing from Bion (1962) and Winnicott (1971/2005) to integrate reflexive poetry and prose written by the researcher that integrates fragments from the interview and also inspired by Lawrence’s (2000) ‘social dreaming’ method.59 As discussed in Chapter 1, Walkerdine and Jimenez’s (2012) important work on intergenerational transmission of trauma in the context of Steeltown has also drawn from psychosocial approaches and situates their methodology within different trans-‐subjective understandings of the unconscious influenced by Kleinian psychoanalysis. Crociani-‐Windland (2009), however, has suggested a unique psychosocial method that also draws from visual ethnography and employs Bergson's ‘intuition as a method’ approach to interrogating the unconscious.60 Within this approach, ‘intuition’ or an ‘awakening’ makes 'known' what was previously 'unknown'. This recalls Bennett’s (2005: 185) discussion of 'seeing one’s not seeing', which describes a particular consciousness and reflexivity to ‘see’ oneself ‘feeling’ or ‘not-‐feeling’.
While this account of psychosocial methods is important to keep in mind, my own methodological approach extends this work by developing an approach that ‘sees’ and ‘analyzes’ processes concerned with the unconscious in the context of the intergenerational transmission of trauma. In the upcoming sections, I
explore diasporic vision through my research design as a way of seeing the data of each chapter that offers a vision of mediated memory. I frame my methodological choices and research design approaches to each chapter ‘chronologically’.
Specifically, my thesis is performed as my own search through diasporic visions of mediated trauma. This search for visions of the past involved many of my own thoughts, reflections, pauses, and questions along the way—all of which have
social scientific data.
59 The social dreaming method can occur from small groups (6 people) to large numbers of people (100 people). The idea is that, through the ‘Matrix’ or the group-‐space through which the dreaming grows, each person’s dream becomes complicit with another’s dream. Together, the dreams can transform into a voice that is shared by the collective group. Social links form, and the collective method is distinctly trans-‐subjective. Free association (though avoiding Freudian concepts) is used to prompt individuals and the group.
60 Henri Bergson’s ‘intuition’ as method was based on his primary philosophical assumptions that reality can be understood more significantly through experience and intuition as opposed to sciences and rationality. Crociani-‐Windland (2009) argues that the ‘awakening’ that arrives via intuiting is an uncovering of the unconscious and brings ‘attention to our perceptions and
sensibilities’ (Chapter 3, para. 10-‐-‐This refers to the Kindle edition, which sadly does not have page numbers).
informed my research design and choice of methodological approaches in how I compose a diasporic montage of affective hauntings.
In particular, I explore how a method of diasporic vision might provide a way of seeing distributions of immaterial bodies of affective trauma and haunted histories as mediated through material forms, whether film, written memoirs, documents, photographs, or verbal oral stories across space and time. Specifically, since diasporic vision is an assemblage of distributed, mediated perceptions of memory through the diasporic unconscious, my research design explores my data by re-‐figuring how such mediated forms of memory are traditionally analyzed and ‘seen’. Searching for hauntings through a diasporic vision through the fragments of media that I analyze in each chapter, therefore, extends ways of researching affect, the unconscious, history, memory, diaspora and media.
2.5 Starting Points: Subject Peers and Conversational Interviews
2.5.1 Home, Population, Rationale
One key methodological starting point and aspect of diasporic vision in this thesis involves interviewing my ‘friends’ or ‘subject-‐peers’ who reflect the particular Chinese-‐Canadian community in Vancouver, Canada (my ‘hometown’) that I affiliate with.61 Within the interviews and research design, my diasporic vision of affective hauntings begins by exploring the (dis)connections, links and ruptures in the remembrances of my conversational interviews with my subject-‐peers.
There are a number of limitations with the method of ‘interviews’, which is an issue I will address in later sections. Epistemologically, the entanglement of my own autoethnographic experiences with my subject-‐peers is, thus, a key part of my own story. Thus, my own life context is complicit with those whom I call my
‘friends’ and who also form the diasporic community I affiliate with. The relevance of this critical autoethnographic epistemology reflexively situates the
entanglement of my own autobiographical narratives (or search for histories) along with those of my peers as a starting point.62 My choice to research ‘peers’
61 By ‘subject-‐peers’, I am referring to both the dilemma of ‘insider/outsider’ as a researcher while also explicitly describing how I am privileging ‘peers’ as an important part of my (un)locatable ‘I’ in my autoethnographic approach.