Rage as a Method: Beyond Hope in the Field

ABSTRACT To speak of methods is to speak of the tools through which knowledge is gathered and produced. Yet, method can also be understood as a mode of engagement that shapes what becomes perceptible and how we reproduce political worlds. Fieldwork, then, is at once the application of techniques to make sense of a research problem, but also, ultimately, an encounter that rearranges our intellectual expectations and affective dispositions alike. This note develops a discussion around one such rearrangement: from hope to rage, both as a lament that developed in the field and as a proposition that could help us think about how knowledge is produced under conditions of closure, repetition, and the exhaustion of hope.