Getting Intimate: The Promise and Problems of Bringing Love Into Qualitative Research

• In Event: Critical Inquiry for the Social Good: Methodological Work as a Means for Truth-Telling in Education

Abstract

Objectives & Scholarly Importance
Academics have a hard time talking about the place of “love” in social research, and the lack of a working definition for its meaning only partly explains our difficulty. The more substantial barrier is our tendency to think about “research” not as a careful exploration of specific social, intellectual, or methodological problems that bear on the everyday circumstances of real people, but as the product of observable and replicable processes, of science. Love, many would argue, has nothing to do with this. I beg to differ. I offer a radical counter narrative of the possibilities that a broadened view might enable. Using my own research experiences and efforts to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline, I have sketched the beginnings of an “intimate” approach to qualitative inquiry that is grounded in feminist theory, governed by an “ethic of love,” and expressed as “love acts” for the individuals whose lives our work aims to shape. Here, within the special issue’s philosophical framing of truth-telling and practical wisdom, I reconsider, push, and refine these ideas by addressing the following questions: (1) What is intimate inquiry? (2) What are its assumptions and methods? (3) In what ways does intimate inquiry nudge a more “critical” stance toward intellectual life? (4) What are the implications—good, bad, and ugly—of invoking love in qualitative educational research?

Theoretical Framework, Mode of Inquiry, and Conclusions
This conceptual paper further develops earlier thinking (Laura, 2010; 2011; 2012; 2014) about intimate inquiry, a qualitative methodological approach that is organized around three activities: witnessing, engaging, and laboring with and for the individuals whose lives our educational work aims to shape.
Beth Brant (1994) reminds us that, “Who we are is written on our bodies, our hearts, our souls,” and that in each of us there is a desire to be known and felt (74). To be acknowledged and validated, and to have our histories confirmed—to be witnessed for “what has been and what is to be” (74). Witnessing involves the deliberate attendance to people, seeing and taking notice of that which they believe is meaningful. Fears and desires are situated in a sense of past and future, and experiences become the fabric of time and space. To witness is to validate the existence of stories, and to protect their places in the world. Engaging points us to the posing of problems and the highlighting of contradictions that are inherent to all experiences of the peopled world. To engage is to put people in deliberate dialogue around the mundane, the taken-for-granted, the whispered, and the hushed. When we engage, we publicly name what we have witnessed and draw upon multiple vantage points—including the lenses of the inquirer herself—for a fuller and more complicated understanding of people’s issues. Through engaging, we aim to establish the conditions for personal empowerment. Laboring encompasses the mental work of writing, but also the physical labor—the work of the hands and the bodies—of sharing available resources.

Author

• Crystal T. Laura, Chicago State University