Method interrupted

Inspired by Sedgwick’s (1997) reparative critique, in this commentary I draw on the metaphor of interruption to advocate for a derailment of the smooth expectations of what is pre-supposed to occur in the logics of methodology when researching marginalised lives. Rather than experience marginal spaces as unfamiliar, we might interrupt the habitual processes of theorisation, methods and the language that surround their enactment. Providing an antidote to the paranoid hermeneutical suspicion, the participatory rhetoric, and to the oversimplification through scientification of Others’ lives, a reparative critique of method for marginality, asks us to engage in a compassionate reflection with the unknown. When it comes to our methods, these possibilities do not ultimately lie in their successful completion but rather in their interruption