Dwelling With the Letters: Methodological and Epistemological Dilemmas in a Qualitative Analysis of the Correspondence of Jewish Internees From the Drancy Camp

Jeanne Mathé; Jordan Sibeoni; Emilie Manolios; Laurence Verneuil; Adam Veiller; Dimitra Laimou; Anne Révah-Lévy

doi:10.1177/16094069261426143

journal article Open Access Jan 19, 2026

Dwelling With the Letters: Methodological and Epistemological Dilemmas in a Qualitative Analysis of the Correspondence of Jewish Internees From the Drancy Camp

Jeanne Mathé

Jordan Sibeoni

Emilie Manolios Laurence Verneuil Adam Veiller Dimitra Laimou Anne Révah-Lévy

International Journal of Qualitative Methods Vol. 25 · SAGE Publications

View at Publisher Save 10.1177/16094069261426143

Abstract

Analyzing documents produced under extreme historical violence poses methodological, epistemological and ethical challenges that remain insufficiently theorized in qualitative inquiry. This article examines these challenges through an IPSE-inspired qualitative document analysis of 300 letters written by Jewish internees in the Drancy camp (France, 1941–1944), conducted as part of the
LettresCamps
project. Originally designed for long, co-constructed interviews, the IPSE approach was combined with Ethnographic Document Analysis to dwell with short, censored, pre-existing texts shaped by surveillance, coercion and the looming threat of deportation. The study produced three intertwined sets of results. First, an IPSE-inspired structure of experience was constructed, organized around three axes: telling the daily story of internment, expressing horror and suffering, reassuring and staying connected. Second, the analytic process itself became a result, as we encountered a series of methodological impossibilities: the unbearable nature of literal description, the tension between phenomenological and historical truth, the need to move toward a hybrid model combining descriptive, testimonial and dialogical/reception-oriented readings. Third, an unintended collective autoethnography emerged, documenting the fragmentation of the analytic
we,
the ethical asymmetry between the dead and the living and the mirrored fractures of subjectivity between the internees’
I
and the researchers’
I.
The study offers a phenomenology of what censored Shoah letters do to qualitative methods. We argue that working with archival correspondence produced under genocidal terror requires a situated, abductive, ethically grounded epistemology that acknowledges the limits of subjectivity, the impossibility of bracketing history and the necessity of reading such letters as dialogical gestures under terror. We conclude by proposing methodological principles arising from this specific corpus and by conceptualizing these tensions as a form of productive impossibility. This article does not propose a general theory of qualitative trauma research but offers a situated methodological reflection grounded in a singular corpus.

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Published: Jan 19, 2026
Vol/Issue: 25
License: View

Authors

J

Jeanne Mathé

Inserm, Université Paris Cité; Centre Jean Perrin

J

Jordan Sibeoni

Inserm, Université Paris Cité; Hôpital Argenteuil Centre

E

Emilie Manolios

Inserm, Université Paris Cité; hôpital européen Georges Pompidou

L

Laurence Verneuil

Inserm, Université Paris Cité; GHU Paris psychiatrie et neurosciences Site Sainte-Anne

A

Adam Veiller

Université Paris Cité, Laboratoire de Psychologie Clinique, Psychopathologie, Psychanalyse

D

Dimitra Laimou

Université Paris Cité, Laboratoire de Psychologie Clinique, Psychopathologie, Psychanalyse; Université de Picardie Jules Verne, CHSSC EA 4289

A

Anne Révah-Lévy

Inserm, Université Paris Cité; Hôpital Argenteuil Centre

Funding

Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Conseil Régional Hauts-de-France

Maison Européenne des Sciences de l'Homme et de la Société

Université de Picardie Jules Verne

Institut de Psychologie, Université de Paris

Cite This Article

Jeanne Mathé, Jordan Sibeoni, Emilie Manolios, et al. (2026). Dwelling With the Letters: Methodological and Epistemological Dilemmas in a Qualitative Analysis of the Correspondence of Jewish Internees From the Drancy Camp. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 25. https://doi.org/10.1177/16094069261426143

Dwelling With the Letters: Methodological and Epistemological Dilemmas in a Qualitative Analysis of the Correspondence of Jewish Internees From the Drancy Camp

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