Troubling categories and conflicting affective relations: A narrative case analytic study of mixedness

Abstract

We take readers directly to a research interview extract in which Liyanna introduces the topic of her ‘mixed’ new baby, where we trace the affect in the interchange. Our purpose is to conceptualise an event of production of subjectivity, specifically Liyanna’s talking about her daughter’s appearance, through the triune relations among discourses (about and constituting or marking differences), the bodily schema to which ‘mixed’ refers and psychic change as a key feature of subjective becoming. After situating our research data, methodology and theoretical resources, we focus on two interview extracts in order to show how Liyanna’s use of a mixedness discourse draws on her imaginative resources, and on her own and the interviewer’s containment, in the thinking space afforded by the interview encounter; space for making sense and finding comfort. In this way, Liyanna’s subjectivity-in-process vitalises a process of parental ethnic mixing and contributes to cultural hybridity.