Theory! Where From and Where to?

ABSTRACT In this article, I consider the role ‘theory’ has played in my professional life against the background of social science, particularly social anthropology, and of systemic psychotherapy. I offer three events in which I had to respond to the use of theory directly, showing how this use was contingent on particular contexts, questions and what I wanted to achieve. I look back to acknowledge that in these events I stayed within a modernist fold according to which ideas should be tested in terms of pre‐established criteria. At the same time, I point out that in much research this is not actually what is done. Rather, ‘theory’ is often seen as upholding a status quo , while differences are uncovered in experimentation. Such tensions between similarities and differences have comfortably stayed within what we have called ‘the human’ or ‘humanity’. The paper moves on to interrogate the assumption of ‘the human’ inspired by post‐qualitative and decolonising research approaches. In this, it takes cues from Haraway's notion of ‘god trick’, from Wynter's critique of Man, from Barad's work on quantum physics and Lugones' idea of the ‘streetwalker’, arguing that theory and orientations have localised origins. This local ground is where theory and practice are entangled, where the subject is not unified, and where we as systemic psychotherapists are ‘in the middle’. I provide an example from my own therapy practice suggesting that theory is ethics. In order to pursue ethical knowledge/practice, we may therefore do well to turn to ‘the local’ and to situated knowledges. Here, there is no dichotomy: Theory is practice and practice is theory.