Undermining the Sanitized Account. Violence and Emotionality in the Field in Northern Ireland

Abstract

The experience of researching violence is underpinned by experiences of emotionality. Yet such emotionality is considered at best peripheral to the substance of our research or even our ‘confessional tales’. This paper is interested in the ways emotionality has been so easily ignored in most criminological work and the ways it was impossible to ignore during a study of women, policing and resistance in Northern Ireland. Examining the impact of emotionality on the experience of researching violence offers a way to challenge traditional distinctions between reason and emotion and suggests that there are serious theoretical and epistemological consequences in ignoring the many roles of emotion in our research. In this paper I identify the ways emotionality is central to understanding the experience of researching violence. In particular I am interested in revealing the ways emotionality, as an important component of subjectivity, informed my investigation of women, resistance and policing in Northern Ireland. My emotionality came from a number of sources: myself, the women I interviewed and my relations with them, and the political situation in Northern Ireland. This required me to understand the ways that emotion has been systematically excluded in most academic work on Northern Ireland and what this suggests about taking subjectivity into account and challenging traditional distinctions between reason and emotion.