Qualitative Interviewing as an Embodied Emotional Performance

Abstract

The article argues that the emotional framing of interviews plays a major role in shaping the content of interviews. Drawing on the psychoanalytic theory of Jessica Benjamin and Luce Irigaray, the article describes how interviews can be experienced as either conquest or communion. Qualitative researchers typically focus on the cognitively articulated aspects of the interview and elide the significance of their own and the interviewee’s, emotions. A reanalysis of two previous qualitative interview studies is used to illustrate the difference between interviews experienced as conquest or communion. The article argues that all interviews are emotional and embodied performances and that good interviewing is facilitated by a reflexive awareness of, and engagement with, the emotional, embodied, and performed dimensions of the interview.