Living history,undoing linearity: memory‐work as a research method in the social sciences

If we accept that social research is not simply a matter of representation, but involves actively intervening in and constructing our current social and political conditions, we are then presented with a set of problems about representation and intervention. The methodology, memory‐work, is introduced here as one specifically developed for the purposes of undertaking politically engaged social research. In this paper, I describe the rationale and method of memory‐work, emphasizing the ways in which it involves undoing the subject of linear, causal, biographical narratives and a notion of the subject as collectively constituted. I elucidate the method by drawing on an example from research about HIV subjectification in which the notion of individual responsibility arose as a problem for memory‐workers—it simultaneously enables and constrains actively working on oneself and one's world. Discussing this research leads to a consideration of the ways in which the methodology needs to be adapted to reflect the specific concerns of one's time and place. I conclude with a discussion of the important but limited notion of history entailed in the original conception of memory‐work.