Having, and Being Had By, “Experience”

Following the discursive or poststructuralist turn, accounts of “experience” can no longer be read by those social scientists who have taken that turn, as straightforward descriptions of “an individual's being or consciousness.” Nor can readings of accounts of experience produce any final analysis of the meaning of the “real person” who made the account or of “real worlds” that might be acted on as a result of that meaning making. To recuperate “experience” within a poststructuralist framework, the authors analyze multiple accounts of one particular experience produced at different points of time and in different contexts.