{"id":3280,"date":"2025-02-19T13:36:53","date_gmt":"2025-02-19T18:36:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bhide.net\/wordpress_files\/?p=3280"},"modified":"2025-02-19T14:16:40","modified_gmt":"2025-02-19T19:16:40","slug":"thinking-in-cases","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bhide.net\/wordpress_files\/index.php\/thinking-in-cases\/","title":{"rendered":"Thinking in Cases"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>A couple of years ago I chanced upon John Forrester&#8217;s <em>Thinking in Cases<\/em>. I found the title intriguing &#8212; I wrote my first HBS case study 1978 and have taught by the case method since 1988.<br \/>Unfortunately, Forrester is fuzzy about what the distinguishing features of <em>Thinking in Cases<\/em> might be. Worse he practices the scholarship of interminable sentences. Nonetheless his book had engaging stories, especially about the history of case research and teaching at Harvard.<br \/>A few months ago I discovered a special issue of the <em>History of the Human Sciences<\/em> devoted to Forrester&#8217;s book. I hoped it might help me better understand what Forrester was trying to say.<br \/>In fact Forrester&#8217;s own writing is a model of clarity compared to the impenetrable rubbish in the special issue:<br \/>Here&#8217;s a representative para from the Introduction to the special issue.<br \/>&#8220;Julie Walsh\u2019s article, \u2018Confusing Cases: Forrester, Stoller, Agnes, Woman\u2019 , argues that there is a \u2018structural affinity\u2019 or \u2018formal alliance\u2019 between issues of gendered identity and the methodological questions raised by the psychoanalytic case study. Walsh show us how the psychoanalytic case is based around ideas of development and becoming: of negotiation, performance, interruption, and subversion. Using Forrester\u2019s analysis of Robert Stoller\u2019s case of Agnes (whose gender identity is complicated and revealing), Walsh draws out a fundamental characteristic of case-thinking: \u2018To think in cases is to practise those lines of movement \u2013 the transitions, transferences, and interruptions \u2013 that characterize the non-linear temporalities of becoming\u2019 (ibid.: 29). This flexibility, the fluidity that a psychoanalytic case demands, is expanded through close engagement with a group of feminists influenced by psychoanalysis (including Simone de Beauvoir, Juliet Mitchell, Judith Butler, and Denise Riley), who focus on how woman is a category marked by negotiation, performance, interruption. Psychoanalytic case logic shows how womanhood is mutable, provisional, and achieved in context \u2013 rather than relying on any essence or ideal. The article revivifies Forrester\u2019s insistence, across his oeuvre, that the psychoanalytic case study raises a \u2018fundamental ambiguity regarding who or what is being framed as the case\u2019 (ibid.: 20; emphasis in original): such an argument, Walsh makes clear, has much to contribute to contemporary debates around the nature of sex and gender identity.&#8221;<br \/>Right on Editors ! Bravo Julia Walsh! And shame on those who stopped with first part of the first sentence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A couple of years ago I chanced upon John Forrester&#8217;s Thinking in Cases. I found the title intriguing &#8212; I<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[19],"class_list":["post-3280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ruminations","tag-moral-hazard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bhide.net\/wordpress_files\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bhide.net\/wordpress_files\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bhide.net\/wordpress_files\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bhide.net\/wordpress_files\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bhide.net\/wordpress_files\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3280"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/bhide.net\/wordpress_files\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3283,"href":"https:\/\/bhide.net\/wordpress_files\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3280\/revisions\/3283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bhide.net\/wordpress_files\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bhide.net\/wordpress_files\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bhide.net\/wordpress_files\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}