Killing the Mother? From Butler to Barad in Feminist (Post)Qualitative Research

• In Event: The “Placetimematter” of Generation in Feminist Qualitative Research

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to tell a generational story about the displacement of Judith Butler (1993) by Karen Barad (2007) in feminist theory and the implications of this for (post)qualitative methodology. The theoretical perspective moves from Harold Bloom’s (1973) development of the Freudian concept of “killing the father” to assuage the “anxiety of influence” to feminist critiques against this violent take on “moving on” in generational shifts of thought (McCoy, 1997). The mode of inquiry is philosophical comparison in asking what sort of “anti-Oedipal” or “an-Oedipal” dynamics are at work in the becoming of feminist theory and methodology (Braidotti, 2009, p. 5; van der Tuin, 2009, p. 21). What are the implications of such dynamics for the “passing on” of this body of thought and practice from one generation to the next? What sort of libidinal mappings are at work?

The data source is my intellectual autobiography of “moving on” in theory and methodology with a generational feminist focus. Who were my feminist icons? What necessary dis-identifications were involved in my own becoming as an “undutiful daughter”? What kind of bi-directional flows have I been part of across generations of feminist scholars? The hoped for result is a “libidinal mapping” of linkages and entanglements across generations of feminist qualitative researchers in education that materializes the “placetimematter” of these moves. Hence the scholarly significance of this study is to articulate recent turns in qualitative methodologies from conventional to more "post" formations that entail multiple possible genealogies and strands of significant development in order to enact the intra-relational nature of the generation of new knowledge.

In the untidy, zigzaggy (as opposed to linear) space within and between generations, how do we engage with one another’s ideas across our differences and timelines? What kind of inter-generational relationality is possible across “undutiful and dutiful daughters” and “phallic mothers” (van der Tuin, 2009) beyond “killing the mother”? How are we situated, embedded and embodied in these efforts? What kind of communities across generations are possible in these post-post times? What sort of dis-identifications are necessary if generationality is to be generative?

This paper will address such questions through a series of stories over thirty years of engaging with senior and junior feminist methodologists in a variety of times and places. It will be, hence, a memoir of both a critical daughter dealing with her inheritances, fusions and provocations and a teacher of those who inhabit “the afterward” of a non-linear feminist present and future where the move from Butler to Barad is but one example of the always moving nature of theorizing our practices of research and policy.

Author

• Patti A. Lather, The Ohio State University