Research Entanglements,Race,and Recognizability: A Psychosocial Reading of Interview Encounters in (Post-) Colonial,(Post-) Apartheid South Africa

Abstract

Psychoanalysis has become increasingly concerned with issues of race and class and the ways in which they play themselves out in the therapy room. Alongside other psychosocial scholars concerned with the interleaving of the self and other, the psychological and the social, I argue that psychoanalysis is a valuable resource, particularly, as demonstrated in this article, for thinking through how we might theorize and “read” race and class in interview contexts when conducting qualitative research. Interview moments between myself, the researcher—a White, middle-class, educated, South African woman—and the researched—Black, working-class, lesser educated, South African men—are subjected to a psychosocial reading drawing specifically on Lacanian psychoanalysis which emphasizes a critical, tentative approach that aims to disrupt understanding.