Affected
Description
This book's main message is to advocate for a collaborative, affective, visualised and future-oriented research agenda. The book finds its inspiration in "the chasm [that separates] philosophising about being shattered and thinking that is shattered" (Heidegger 1946, Letter on Humanism ). To explore this chasm, the book journeys through a range of psychological and posthuman perspectives on affect and becoming. The aim of this journey is to reconcile shattered thinking-feeling with Spinoza's ethics according to which 'our capacity to be affected determines our capacity to act'. The book elaborates this capacity to become in terms of our uniquely human propensity to experiment with counter-intuitive inversions: in this case, to call to account that which is affected, rather than that which affects. The book will appeal to students and academics working in the fields of alternative research methods, the social sciences, and organisation studies.
Reviews / Votes
"Reading this book takes the reader on a journey through a thoughtscape that starts on an individual level and takes us all the way 'up' to the entirety of contemporary life. In this journey, Rick Iedema shows with a profound analytical precision the existential strength of 'being moved', being affected. Departing from a life being shattered, the books exposes with the help of Spinoza, Sloterdijk, and others, the many layers and forms of 'becoming'. While written during the COVID-19 crisis and extreme bushfires literally next door the book is not only a plea for new 'structures of feeling', but also for a new way of doing social science research, as today's complexity and pace of change are too intense to be adequately captured and controlled by ponderous forms of analysis. Although Iedema refuses (rightly so) to offer an alternative research model of how to understand life and the world we live in, he does not leave us empty-handed. His discussion at the end of the book about potentiation and anthropotechnics shows us the way towards personal and intellectual courage: one that allows uncertainty and nurtures emergent kinds of sense and intelligence." (Jessica Mesman, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands)
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Person
Rick Iedema is Professor and Director of the Centre for Team-based Practice and Learning in Health Care at King's College London, UK. His main research interests include interprofessional collaboration and communication and service users' involvement in practice development. He has pioneered innovative organisational and healthcare communication research methodologies, including video-reflexive ethnography.
Content
Chapter 1. Transgressions. - Chapter 2. Affects. - Chapter 3. Undoings. - Chapter 4. Prosociality. - Chapter 5. Potentiation. - Chapter 6. Conclusion.