LAUSR

Abstract This article is a reflective endeavor on the affective dimensions of my fieldwork, which explores Asian migrant women’s desires for educational success in the United States and South Korea. My encounter with affective and material forces pervasive in the field triggers affective reflexivity that supports my own struggle against the (human) tendency to separate between my epistemology and ontology as well as other dualisms I confronted during the fieldwork. Unlike posthumanists’ suspicion around authentic ways of knowing using the method of reflexivity in traditional qualitative inquiry, I contend that affective reflexivity is an inevitable process that allows me to discern affective, active, or vibrant data and helps with understanding reflexivity as a “material” labor to augment ethical accountability and methodological rigor.