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Chapter 4 - Psychology

Discovery, Solidarity and Politics in Psychology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2025

Jonathan Jansen
Affiliation:
Stellenbosch University
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Summary

My account mimics my meandering academic career. I address questions that have animated me and continue to animate me. As a psychologist, I am interested in who knows or claims to know what about whom and to what ends. Influenced both by conventional scientific psychology and by psychoanalytic thinking, my work in disability studies with people excluded in many ways, like epistemically, has helped me to think deeply about different kinds of knowledge. This work is embedded in an activist orientation; I try to contribute to social change but am also aware of my knowledge limitations and identity in achieving change. Psychoanalytic thinking helps me think about difficult processes in community work and unpleasant possibilities of my work and that of my colleagues – our investments, for example, being in marginalized fields may, paradoxically, encourage us to resist these fields becoming less so, as we reproduce what we know. I am uncertain about much of what I think and know, but paradoxically again this uncertainty is what makes the work of discovery and the trial and error of social engagement fresh, interesting, and fun. This is a huge privilege.

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Chapter
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On Discovery
How Knowledge is Produced across the Disciplines
, pp. 47 - 57
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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