Posted on by Anna

Coming to Postqual

I consider myself fortunate: unlike numerous other researchers, I had the privilege of taking a “formal” Postqualitative Inquiry course. Those who dabble in postqual came to it on their own.

I am also fortunate because I am a mother of three, a wife, an immigrant, and also a graduate student. Research questions are around me. I never lack ideas for research. Those that make to the surface and are fortunate enough to stand out, make to the next level where they compete with one another, evolve, and ideally, find their way to the pages of my research journal. More often then not, they fizzle out by the time the long pickup line at my son’s school is over. I noticed many of my ideas do not get completely forgotten. They echo and come back to the surface of consciousness in no particular order or pattern and remind me of multiplicities.

At some point, I decided to assemble a few short thought experiments and musings into a book. I envisioned the assemblage as a primer for students new to Postqual.  Of course the idea of a primer reinforces the  method,  a method of instruction in this case, and method, of course, is at odds with the very idea of postqualitative inquiry.  Nevertheless, I did it because I recalled my own struggles with breaking away from the logic behind the more conventional research methods.

I first engaged with postqual in Qualitative Inquiry II class, a year before postqualitative. The word “postqualitative” was never uttered; yet, the course was built around Jackson and Mazzei’s “Thinking With Theory in Qualitative Research.” We went through the chapters sequentially, one by one–Derrida, Spivak, Foucault, Butler, Deleuze, Barad… I thoroughly enjoyed the readings and my professor Dr. Richards, who let me experiment with the format of our weekly class assignment. I dusted off my husband’s huge, long-forgotten set of Prizmacolor pencils and sketched; I put together collages that documented my thought. I had no trouble with the concept of “plugging in” and the theory. In the same class, I experimented with autoethnography and wrote several short excerpts about mother my autistic daughter. I wrestled with painful issues–who I am as a mother and what does it mean to be a good one. I thought about normality and how my daughter and we as a family perceive it. I have made amazing discoveries and deconstructed personal ideas about research and researchers. Somewhere toward the end, I talked to Jenni who pointed out in passing that poststructuralist thought seeks to decenter the human. This struck me like lightning in the clear sky–the entire semester I labored under the thought that qualitative research is all about humanity. How then, do poststructuralist theories fit in my conclusions? I obviously did it all wrong, but somehow, it did not feel like a disaster. That summer, I wrote a lot in my researcher/journal blog and read half of Foucault’s “Madness and Civilization.” In the fall, I took Arts Based Research class and struggled with the very concept of research, particularly, with its purpose. I wondered what counts as data and how can art possibly pass for research. Then I started reading Manning’s The Minor Gesture and came across

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