Tracing the Theoretical High: Cruel Optimism and the Promise of Relational Inquiry

• In Event: AER Roundtable Session Friday 1:45 pm - Gold 4
  In Roundtable Session: Methodological Attunements: Listening, Mapping, and Reflexive Inquiry

Abstract

We draw on Berlant’s (2011) affective structures of cruel optimism to trace what we call the theoretical high: a moment when theory electrifies us with possibility. Through that tracing, we are forced to engage in a deeper reckoning with the structures that make it both intoxicating and unattainable. In doing so, we foreground how theory can sustain affective energy and intellectual curiosity in an era of polycrisis, institutional precarity, and competing neoliberal demands and how theoretically-informed collaborative writing, as a relational inquiry practice, can create alternative academic spaces that prioritize connection and creativity over deliverables and competition. In re-encountering and reframing our theoretical attachments, we highlight how qualitative researchers might draw from the intellectual past to imagine more sustainable futures.

Authors

• Jessica Van Cleave, Gardner-Webb University

• Hilary E. Hughes, University of Georgia