Toward a Methodology of Encounters

Abstract

I consider how poststructural orientations to thinking about epistemology and ontology have been enriched by feminist materialist readings of quantum physics. In light of these developments, I suggest that greater complexity might involve opening up qualitative research to a methodology of encounters, an array of interruptive, aleatory practices, attending to encounters that are both accidental and on purpose. I show how this approach has informed my work, intervening in habitual analytics involving scholarly critique and inspiring new ways of dealing with and expanding what might be thought of as data in qualitative research. Refusing the repositivation of qualitative research, I believe that what is at stake is more than just the knowledge we make, it’s the worlds we would like to make, the kinds of people we want to be, the kind of work we want to do in the world.

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