Journal Article

Research as Reparation. Studying to Soothe

Bouilloud, Jean-Philippe

2022

Overview

In my experience of supervising doctoral theses in recent years, I, like many of my colleagues, have observed cases in which writing a doctoral thesis appears to serve as a form of'reparation', in the psychoanalytical sense of the term (Klein, 1975): this may involve an attempt to correct social wrongs, or a response to questions encountered in life. In the field of academic research, the underlying force at work appears to be not so much a form of guilt but rather a sense of shame or injustice: the painful memory of past failures, traumatic experiences and shame derived from past actions. [...]the source of this injustice is not to be found in the actions of those who seek to atone for it, as Klein's analysis of children suggests: on the contrary, those who seek to make reparation often perceive themselves as the victims, in a sense not far removed from the legal definition of that term Figures of reparation In the literary and artistic sphere, the link between traumatic experience and artistic creation is a common theme Schauder analyses the different reactions of Paul and Camille Claudel to the respective romantic dramas they experienced in 1905, when Paul split with Rosalie Vetch and Camille with Rodin. Similar connections between initial suffering and reparation through research can be found in numerous autobiographical works by researchers, invoking various forms of suffering: childhood hardships, the suffering of women in a male-dominated world and the suffering of survivors (Bouilloud, 2009).There are thus different degrees of reparation, connected to the diverse forms and varying intensity of the problems inspired by initial experiences.

• Publisher: Association Internationale de Management Stratégique
• Subject: Candidates / Dissertations & theses / Graduate studies / Historians / Injustice / Psychoanalysis / Reparations / Research methodology / Social sciences