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

• Published in: Qualitative inquiry Vol. 17; no. 1; pp. 45 - 55
• Main Author: Saville Young, Lisa
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01-01-2011; SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
• Subjects: Apartheid; Colonialism; Ethnicity; Lacan, Jacques Marie Emile; Middle Class; Post-apartheid society; Postcolonialism; Psychoanalysis; Psychological Theories; Psychosocial reading; Qualitative research; Race; Reflexivity; Social classes; Social psychology; Social research; South Africa; Whites; Working Class; psychosocial; reflexivity; race; psychoanalysis; Lacan
• ISSN: 1077-8004; 1552-7565
• DOI: 10.1177/1077800410389443

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.