Emotions as situated, embodied, and fissured: Methodological implications of thinking with theories

Abstract

How one theoretically defines emotion influences methodological actions. Defining emotions as verb or as collisions of contact between people presents opportunities to invent new ways of researching emotions. This chapter explores how theory(ies) matters in relation to research methodologies and methods of analyzing data. Kuby demonstrates an analytical tool created to study emotions as situated, embodied, and fissured: critical performative analysis of emotions (CPAE). This tool bricolages theories, perhaps viewed as incommensurable: critical sociocultural, narrative (permformative), and poststructural (rhizomatic). I illustrate a CPAE with an interaction between a boy and his second grade teacher when he forgot to return books. The chapter concludes with discussions about disrupting traditional ways of studying emotions, expanding theoretical and philosophical assumptions about emotions and how that shapes methodological actions, and creating different approaches of thinking-with-theories rather than reductionist codes for analysis.