“When we use that kind of language… someone is going to jail”: relationality and aesthetic interpretation in initial research encounters

Abstract

The aim of this article is to investigate ethical and aesthetic dimensions of negotiating linguistic differences between researchers and participants in the initial research consent process, based on data from a collaborative research project in adult basic education for immigrants, in which a large number of students initially refused to participate. First, we interpret negotiations of consent as relational acts, where teachers and multilingual staff facilitated moral proximity through their affinity or shared biography with students, allowing us to move from anticipated difference to events of subjectivity. Second, we analyze research ethics protocols, notably the standardized consent letter, as aesthetic signs that evoked an affective response, which variously recalled unfavourable subject positions within neoliberal or authoritarian governmentality, including memories of trauma. The dynamic connection between aesthetics and relational ethics highlights the shortcomings of current institutional ethics requirements, since aesthetic interpretation cannot be fully anticipated and instead requires meaning-making in concrete relational encounters.