Making sense of meaning, making meaning of sense: Re-centring care in research

Utilising narrative form and ethnographic method, this paper is a reflexive plea for an academic community which foregrounds care and relationality. Contributing to literature on the politics of knowledge and continuing the pre-existing metaphor of knowledge-as-vision, I argue for a more unified, binocular gaze which draws just as much on meaning as it does on sense. The evidence for this argument stems from phenomenological reflection on my experiences and positionality within research settings, in the field, and as both a mental health patient and practitioner. This paper is a methodological account which aims to embrace the messy complexities of research and draws on a wide range of literature, principally, feminist care ethics, relational ontologies, philosophies of science and knowledge production, and democratic therapeutic communities. Ultimately, I outline how a neoliberal and production-orientated academy encourages a dangerous level of emotional repression and disavowal of meaning, harming a multiplicity of actors. •Care and relationality are vital for research practice. •Knowledge production must focus on meaning just as much as sense. •A neoliberal academy hinders this, fostering disconnection and repressing emotion. •Positionality allows for interrogation of porous personal/professional boundaries. •Reflecting on mental health experiences prompts a critique of extractivism.