NB: This course accrues 4 training points.
 

Psychosocial Studies is a relatively new, open disciplinary field that attempts to refuse categories such as ‘individual’ and ‘social’ as distinct objects of study, in order to explore some of the more intransigent, disruptive, every-day and (un)predictable aspects of our existence and being. To do this it draws on a wide range of conceptual and methodological approaches, frequently including some kind of theorisation of language, discourse, affect, desire and the unconscious. These can be theorised, perhaps, as materialities that are simultaneously constitutive of legible or legitimate human subjects and of the multiple and complex contexts that define our legibility or legitimacy as such.

In this two-day course we will be focussing on the relation between concepts and method, in the field of psychosocial studies, with a particular focus on the notions of free association, repetition, assemblage and archive. We will be asking:

 

• What is free association and how might this be constituted as a method for psychosocial research?
• What is a repetition and how might this be understood in the context of free associative research interviews?
• What is an assemblage methodology and how might this idea inform our engagement with the contrasting materialities of the research process?
• What is an archive and how might we use this idea in our research to constitute or reveal the workings of power and exclusion?

 

Contrasting conceptions of language, discourse, affect, desire and the unconscious will affect our responses to each of these questions, and we hope to be able to engage in an exploratory conversation about these methods and concepts, to open up new possibilities for our research.

On each of the two days there will be one open session for you to discuss the implications of the ideas we are discussing for your own work and projects.