Review: Jonathan Wyatt (2018). Therapy, Stand-Up, and the Gesture of Writing: Towards Creative-Relational Inquiry

Abstract

The book under review gains a rare scholarly vitality by persisting through the challenging tasks of juxtaposing two seemingly polarized fields of activities—stand-up performance and therapeutic encounters. The unfolding of the narrative coherently centers on WYATT's vision and hope to create new ways of thinking about and doing qualitative research in the humanities and social sciences through, what he comes to formulate and term, "creative-relational inquiry." The book transports its reader into the richly-textured, aesthetically-conjured moments of materialities in which the author gropes feels, breathes, thinks, and perceives amongst relational others. It disorientates our inclination towards the familiar and the graspable, towards tapping into the awareness of how affective subtlety is the current of life, of relational sensitivity, of creative forces with which we, as qualitative researchers, cannot do without.