A methodology of damage

This paper explores the methodological implications of working with damage: damaged relationality, injured belonging, impaired narratives, and vulnerable identities. The conceptualization of damage as a methodology was the outcome of a narrative investigation into queer relationships’ dissolution. The study explored the way in which lesbians narrate romantic failures and relational dramas in an era marked by gay possibilities and compulsory happiness , where one may belong by embracing heteronormative convictions of family bliss such as respectability and stability on the one hand, and heteronormative convictions of storytelling such as progress and redemption on the other hand. This paper will take the act of composition and the rhetorical symptoms of the exasperation of being at odds with culture’s guidelines as the vantage point for theorizing a methodology of damage. Examining two methodological moments: the invitation to narrate and the interpretation it generates, I discuss the effect of damage on research design. Drawing on affect theory, I explore what feelings ‘do’ in the research process and address the possibilities embedded in failure and damage as methodological tools.