Abstract

This article discusses the research process of villages for negative leprosy patients, which cannot be reduced to either community or long-term welfare institutions, mainly through archives from the 1950s and 1960s. I propose a “researcher with a blush” who feels and embodies shame, an affect that focuses on residual emotions, relationships, and the world. I show how the process of exploring the residual spatiality of villages for negative leprosy patients by the researcher with a blush, along with the archives of noises, has the potential to deconstructively expand the study of institutionalization in Korea. Specifically, I first analyze the ongoing discussion of shame in the social sciences and social movements, not only as a temporal, personal emotion but also as an affective commons that is a bodily response and an expression of interest in constantly touching and engaging with the world. Second, I examine the methodological shift from data-centric to noise-centric archival practices. I suggest the archive as an ephemeral state resulting from a constant slippage between the signifier and the signified under catachresis rather than as a stasis fixed in an absolute representation. Third, I delve into the moments of shame that generate a new way of encountering the villages for negative leprosy patients by detailing my archival collection process.