Finding Words for Feeling Bodies: Exploring Drawing Techniques in Dutch Care Practices

Feeling is difficult to put into words. Anthropologists have been seeking ways to articulate feeling or other bodily experiences, looking beyond words and borrowing from artistic methods. Drawings, for instance, have been used to make visible what words cannot describe and attributed with qualities associated with feeling or the body. Instead of placing drawing in opposition to words, and words in opposition to bodies, this article presents different ways of using drawing as an ethnographic technique to tentatively find practice-specific words to articulate practices of feeling the body. Rather than evaluating drawings based on their ability to capture feeling bodies, the author reflects on the drawing process as a way to learn about her research subjects in unexpected ways. Thereby, the author learns from artistic practices, not about making drawings, but about making methods. Acknowledging that methodologies are always generative, the author dives into the making of her methodologies to learn about her research subjects. .