Paper short abstract:

This paper will advance scholarship and will propose new methodological and practical approaches to the anthropology of interiority by facilitating an expression of the interior dialogues of migrants through participant-driven and collaborative methods based in performance theory and psychoanalysis.

Paper long abstract:

As the principle point of departure and methodological engagement, this paper seeks to realize an anthropology of interiority in order to examine and describe the lifeworlds of Polish Canadian migrants across generations by tapping their inner dialogues. By lifeworlds I mean "a rich, multifaceted, imaginative inner life" being comprised of inner dialogues or (semi-)effable "inner speech" and also ineffable "random urges, unfinished thoughts, unarticulated moods, and much else besides" (Irving 2007). This internal process is central to a person's social life and yet it is rarely a focus of anthropological research because an ethnography of interiority is often considered incompatible with current epistemologies that tend to be framed as if there is no objective access to other people's consciousness, particularly those aspects that cannot be externalized or easily articulated (Hogan and Pink 2010; Irving 2007). This paper proposes 'disengagement' as a theoretical framework for understanding this limitation that can perhaps offer a space from which to work towards engaging the disengaged aspects of the human condition; disengagement theory was originally developed in the 1960's as a psychotherapy methodology for understanding the changes in human behaviour as we age but has yet to be applied in an anthropological and ethnographic context (Cumming & Henry 1961; Morgan & Kunkel 2007). This paper will advance this scholarship and will propose new methodological and practical approaches to the anthropology of interiority by facilitating an expression of the interior dialogues of Polish Canadian migrants through participant-driven and collaborative methods.