Post-coding analysis

Thinking back on my first writings, I sympathise with my thesis super-visors. Shotter (2006) refers to ‘getting the picture’, which resembles

my first draft of ‘the empirical’: ‘The cat sat on the mat, the mat was red, the cat was black – get the picture?’ ‘Yes, so what?’ (p. 599). I tried to

‘picture’ the empirical as it had occurred (Me: Get the picture?), and managed to produce something which left the reader ‘cold’ (My thesis supervisors: Yes, so what?). I was advised to read more and to focus on subjectivity in order to proceed with the analysis. Well advised, I thought, but the reality struck too soon and too hard: I had no idea how to proceed and I became painfully aware that I also had serious troubles with my sense of self and the positions offered in the matrix of discourses. I tried to drive my work from ‘the personal to the political’

in order to illustrate these struggles, but I managed to do it in such a complicated way that the very idea of my thesis kind of blurred along the way.

Rewriting the fieldwork (Van Maanen, 2011) from the ‘political’

(the struggle between continuity and transgression) to the ‘personal’

(my subjectivity as a site of ethical struggles) was needed to clarify my thinking. This rewriting also made me realise that I had to rethink some of my theoretical and methodological choices in order to cope with the experience of dissonance. Rethinking was also needed to abstract affect from the events occurring within my organisation ‘between ourselves and the others and otherness around us’ (Shotter, 2006: 594). For this purpose I have used a post-coding analysis, which refers to a qualitative analysis which occurs after ‘coding’ (Lather and St. Pierre, 2013). I have employed this analysis to interrogate my textwork in part IV. I have asked from myself ‘What astonishes me?’ (Alvesson and Kärreman, 2011; Brinkmann, 2014) and ‘Why it astonishes me?’

These questions have helped me to shift my analytical focus on the interlinkage of affect and ethics at the level of subjectivity. These questions have also helped me to address awkward encounters as data.

These encounters have triggered my ‘judgement of the conditions of possibility and value’ (Hemmings, 2012: 157) as disturbing. However, at first, I did not understand the ‘difference between ontological and epistemological possibilities’ (p. 150). In other words, I did not under-stand that changes within ourselves are not only epistemological (to know differently); they are also ontological (to feel differently). As I

became aware of the differences between my sense of self and the so-cial expectations I occupied with respect to being a manager doing an academic research within the critical management stream, I was able to address my self-production through affective dissonance.

Accordingly, the missing link in my line of inquiry was affect and ethics, but not in the form of how organisations secure ethical legitima-cy, but in the form of how individuals’ conduct in organisations might be ethically informed through affective dissonance (Hemmings, 2012).

The sense ‘that something is amiss’ in how I am recognised, ‘an ill fit’

(p. 150) with the subject positions offered in the matrix of discourses, the sense of being policed (Diprose, 2002); all these sensations were needed for the affective shift to occur. I elaborate on the importance of awkward encounters in the following sub-section.

Awkward encounters as data

June 2015 (in academia, EGOS PhD Workshop, Athens, Greece): We are in a group session presenting our papers. I explain my position as a re-searcher. A question is addressed to me: “Do you try to change the practices in your organisation?” I reply: “Of course. I work there and it is part of my job to develop our processes.” I can see from the facial expression that it was not a good answer. The circle in which we are sitting is suddenly too intimate. I can sense being othered.

‘Only way to change, give yourself away.

Don’t be ashamed.

Next in line; close one eye.

Just walk by.’

Stripsearch, Faith No More In the excerpt above, I am addressed through the scientific discourse and thus subjected to the position of a detached researcher. Yet my reply draws on discourse, which leans on continuous improvement; I subjectivise myself to the position of a development specialist rather than to the position of a detached researcher. I sensed being othered,

because I did not subjectivise myself to the position (and identity) im-posed on me. This sense of being othered is still inscribed in me: I can return to this awkward encounter in a plain and hot classroom which made me annoyingly aware of how the ideals of scientific knowledge are employed in normalising researchers. I could not give myself away in this encounter; I resolved the experience of difference through seeking solace from reproducing myself as development specialist.

Affect theorists argue that researchers must pay attention to ‘expe-riences of bodily displacement, the movement between bodily states and the intensities that this evokes’ (Fotaki et al. 2017, p. 24). Yet for example Massumi (1995) points out that ‘nothing is prefigured in the event’ (p. 87). I focus on such encounters which have caused me ‘to stop and wonder’; in these encounters I have sensed something as strange, confusing or even annoying (Brinkmann, 2014). What brings together these awkward encounters that I have addressed here as data, is that they have made me to think of those practices that control us versus those that make us free (O’Sullivan, 2014).

Hence, although I am dealing with subjective affective sensations, I do not write about my body and its gestures in detail. The affective dissonance is embedded in the awkwardness of these encounters, which has translated into actions through the technologies of the self. The reflexive vignettes are thus discursive representations of the moments of affect, which have ignited the experience of dissonance. These en-counters are examples of what I have been ‘struck by’ in the unfolding process of my subjectivity (Shotter, 2006). Accordingly, this embodied way of ‘seeing and acting’ (p. 601)) exemplifies my struggles related to

‘welcoming of the alterity of the ethical relation’ (Diprose, 2002: 140) with the other.

However, capturing affective dissonance has required intensive work with the data. It was only in this phase that I was able to read and write with the data, and not against it (Kuntz and Presnall, 2012). Firstly, this phase revealed how difficult it is to unsettle the technologies of the self, which we employ in producing the subjectivity of an detached and value-free researcher (Sandberg and Alvesson, 2011) and to employ reflexivity in supporting ‘the interpretation of interpretation’ (p. 9).

Secondly, it also revealed my difficulty to reflect the experience of dis-sonance between my sense of self and the social possibilities afforded to me (Hemmings, 2012) in the matrix of discourses. As I was somehow stuck with myself, employing reflexivity became a necessity in address-ing the paradigms and perspectives, as well as research and political interest, which work through us (Alvesson and Sköldberg, 2009). I elaborate on how reflexivity has guided my headwork, fieldwork and textwork (Van Maanen, 2011) in the following chapter.