This chapter argues that the turn to materiality has powerful, but also powerfully dangerous, implications for qualitative research – and that these implications are not always fully recognized by those of us who have embraced, and been embraced by, the new materialisms. It aims to explore further the question of how new materialist thought challenges qualitative inquiry, by considering two particular areas: firstly, the status of data in qualitative research; and secondly, the status of language. The demotion of language and discourse has been hugely productive in bringing about modes of critique that dissolve and remake the boundaries between matter and culture, science and the social. In Logic of Sense, G. Deleuze identifies a “mad element” in language: something that exceeds propositional meaning – a Dionysian spirit in language.
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