“When we use that kind of language… someone is going to jail”: Relationality and aesthetic interpretation in initial research encounters
Peer reviewed, Journal article
Published version
Permanent lenke
https://hdl.handle.net/11250/3124950Utgivelsesdato
2024Metadata
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Originalversjon
10.1515/applirev-2024-0085Sammendrag
The aim of this article is to investigate ethical and aesthetic dimensions of
negotiating linguistic differences between researchers and participants in the initial
research consent process, based on data from a collaborative research project in
adult basic education for immigrants, in which a large number of students initially
refused to participate. First, we interpret negotiations of consent as relational acts,
where teachers and multilingual staff facilitated moral proximity through their
affinity or shared biography with students, allowing us to move from anticipated
difference to events of subjectivity. Second, we analyze research ethics protocols,
notably the standardized consent letter, as aesthetic signs that evoked an affective
response, which variously recalled unfavourable subject positions within neoliberal
or authoritarian governmentality, including memories of trauma. The dynamic
connection between aesthetics and relational ethics highlights the shortcomings of
current institutional ethics requirements, since aesthetic interpretation cannot be
fully anticipated and instead requires meaning-making in concrete relational
encounters.