Postmodern emergence

Abstract

This paper is a work‐in‐progress in which the author will begin to articulate the elements of a new methodology that she is calling, for the moment, a methodology of postmodern emergence. She explores this approach through examples from her own research journals that follow her research‐in‐process and from observing student work‐in‐progress. She argues that emergence is an important and under‐acknowledged quality in all research that proposes to generate new knowledge. A methodology of postmodern emergence is located at the end of a spectrum of emergence. She distinguishes this methodology from the fundamental deconstructive thrust of postmodern/poststructural research paradigms (Lather, 1991 Lather, P. 1991. Feminist research in education: within/against, Geelong: Deakin University. [Google Scholar]), because it focuses on the creative potential of postmodern emergence to generate new knowledges. She proposes an ontology for postmodern emergence of becoming rather than being (Grosz, 1999 Grosz, E. 1999. “Becoming … an introduction”. In Becomings: explorations in time, memory, and futures, Edited by: Grosz, E. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. [Google Scholar]) that emphasizes the irrational, messy, embodied and unfolding of the becoming self in this research. She explores an epistemology of alternative practices of representation that extends the concept of writing‐as‐a‐method‐of‐enquiry (Richardson, 1994 Richardson, L. 1994. “Writing: A Method of Inquiry”. In Handbook of qualitative research, Edited by: Denzin, N. and Lincoln, Y. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications. [Google Scholar]) into a new theory of representation. She does this in order to articulate the common elements of these alternative approaches to research so that each individual and each research project is not an isolated effort to break through the unsayable to new knowledge. The point is to articulate the common underpinning elements of these alternative approaches in order then to be able to more clearly articulate methods and pedagogies of postmodern emergence. She has deliberately allowed the exploratory writing style to move and open up as the ideas in the paper emerge.

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