(Im)possible End of Data?

• In Event: Various Un/thinkable Possibilities of “Data”

Abstract

Objectives
In this paper I rethink data, its role and functions in qualitative research through Baudrillard (e.g. 1979; 2009). I experiment with data.

Theoretical framework
Baudrillard provides interesting openings to reflect on data differently. Data as a term, object, or representation of real is inaccurate in its plentitude and overproduction. Too much real leads to too much data, which begins a process of data deleting itself. Data is a proxy or antisubstance for real, a real that never really is because it is always a reproduction of something that escapes itself as being constructed. Rather than asking what Real data is, what does Real data mean, or what researchers want from Real data, I ask how have we come to know certain objects as data, what data may want, how data might take initiative and create itself in connection with other data, what happens when data no longer ends, and how data could discover, invent, and displace the subject (i.e., researcher and participants).

More specifically, through Baudrillard I consider how the signs of reality create a duplication, a virtuality, the hyper-real, making it impossible to separate true and false, real and imaginary data. Baudrillard’s antidialectical project reverses the subject’s dominance over the object and revisions the direction of knowledge. Objects and data can have their escapes, strategies, and resistance.

Data, methods
Examples and images came from my research on graduate students’ experiences with data and data analysis. When creating the images and illusions, I folded together effects, information, enactments and materials produced by students and me. In this reproduction of data, the originality of Real —data—got lost and disappeared. Ironically, unlike my students, who worried about ruining the original copy, I produced numerous copies of the original, proxies of representations that all were inaccurate yet in some ways necessary reproductions of meaning and nonmeaning. For example, one student (Jack) consumed his interview transcripts and created a video to share his embodied experiences of data. I was curious what might happen to Jack and other students, me, the course, paper, text, and bodies by the virtue of us and data being produced, consumed, possessed, lived, and personalized in private and shared spaces. I envisioned Jack eating his data (which he actually did), enjoying juices and little bites of delicious fruits of various kinds—data-strawberries, data-oranges, and data-pineapples. And I drew images of Jack eating his data.

Argument
Drawings and me-Jack-eating-paper data became accessible only through its making and its making of me. Maybe data took initiative, prompting or creating unlimited differentiations and variations of itself. Each variation, reproduction, image, object, piece, or reflection of data created an accumulating sequence that canceled other data until no information, new information, or ‘original’ data was left. (Data)Experiment continues.

Significance
The paper shows how alternative imaginaries and new possibilities of data might change current practices and thinking in educational research.

References:
Baudrillard, J. (1979). Seduction (B. Singer, Trans.). New York: St. Martin’s.
Baudrillard, J. (2009). Why hasn’t everything already disappeared? London: Seagull.

Author

• Mirka E. Koro-Ljungberg, Arizona State University