Learning together to be ourselves: a collaborative portrait of affect in relation

Abstract

Þjóðmyndir was a collaborative photography project carried out by individuals frequenting two social service organisations that work in close partnership in Ísafjörður, Iceland, under the guidance of the author. It offered participants an opportunity to express themselves creatively in the public sphere and aimed to engage them in participative processes of learning, creating and reflecting to this end. The project struggled with the participatory and collaborative research traditions that informed it, yet it defined its own, unique collaborative culture around the social learning that emerged from the participants’ entering into relation with and emotionally affecting one another. Consequently, it succeeded at creating a space for the processes of subject formation inherent to discussions of both collaborative research and social-relational affect. This paper examines instances of affect and collaboration particular to the project through the lens of disability studies in order to advance an understanding of the intersectional relevance of affect theory and collaborative methodologies to social care practice.