Despite the complex and provocative nature of their formulation, arguments against critique, with their advocacy for affect-oriented alternatives, have inspired a collection of method proposals. Cultural geographer Nigel Thrift's ‘non-representational theory’ (2007) and sociologist John Law's ‘mess as method’ (2004) are two very influential examples. Parallel to this, related arguments have endorsed various manifestations of ‘creative methods’ as alternatives to critical essays (Muecke 2002 and 2010; Stewart 2007; Taussig 2010). In the way they are framed, some of these method directives, as I will detail here, work with the notion that genres are essentially enabling or disabling. Genres that might be associated with emotional truth, such as creative writing or performance, are pursued and promoted as better avenues for social research because they are seen to be of the dynamic substance of the world. Critique, alternatively, is cast as a method of observation that imposes from outside, inevitably reducing the mutable complexity of social phenomena. Reiterating the ‘two cultures’ divide, this shift from critical to artistic methods is framed as an ethical imperative: firstly, as a responsibility to knowledge – to keep our methods relevant; and secondly, as a social responsibility – to access what really matters to people.

Taking these same responsibilities into account, this chapter carefully considers the terms of this proposed shift, as well as how we might determine what is distinctly affective about certain genres and not others. Several important questions arise. For instance, might the distribution of suspicion or truth-value among different forms of representation be more complex than either a critical or creative approach alone can accommodate? Are the genres we read as ‘creative’ really more expressive and emotional or less definitive and didactic than critique? And do fictive forms truly provide an antidote or reprieve from the political quandaries of the culture wars or the suspicious taint of the Cold War era? In sum, are the determinants of this turn in method – both the intellectual history from which it claims to depart and the raw, everyday desires it claims to access – really as different in tenor and drive as these method proposals assume?