Paper short abstract:

Blood donation raises strong affects both for researcher and donnors. Sharing corporeal and affective experience of blood donation with actors allows a depper understanding of the topic and fielwork. Go along interviews and videos are an attempt to report the affective part of blood donation.

Paper long abstract:

The anthropologist who works on blood and the reasons for (not) donating it has an interest in combining her status of researcher with that of blood donor in order to gain legitimacy with actors in the field. In Belgium, where donation is voluntary and unpaid, donors and professionals « collaborate » in order to collect blood for therapeutic purposes. The technical collection process should be accompanied by a pleasant donation experience, in a context that exacerbates or provokes certain affects: fear, pain, shame, joy, boredom, disgust, ...

As a donor, sharing a similar bodily experience with actors I work with becomes a means of relating to, interpreting , comparing, ... My own emotions become a working tool and emotions in context of blood donation, an object of study. Indeed, the terror that giving blood inspired me at the first allows me to adapt to strong emotions that the donors sometimes have, to understand it and to accompany these affects.

The sensitive and affective experience of blood donation is difficult to share or reproduce. That is why I seek new ways to "report" for these sensitive materials, as the written text (usually preferred by anthropologist) unsatisfactorily renders it. The association of video with subjects’ comments on their experience (by go-along interview) or a posteriori by watching the video is an attempt to overcome this difficulty.

For this communication, I propose one commented video of a plasma donation after a short introduction to my thesis work about blood donation in Liège (Belgium).