What Can Poetic Inquiry Do? Affect and Form in (Post)Qualitative Research

• In Event: 58.083 - Roundtable Session 26
  In Roundtable Session: 58.083-5 - Poetics of Arts-Based Educational Research

Abstract

Departing from the humanist conventions dominating much of poetic inquiry today, this paper combines Laurel Richardson’s (1997) notion of refraction and Karen Barad’s (2007) theory of diffraction to explore what a posthuman version of poetic inquiry might be able to do to and for (post)qualitative research practices. I consider how poetic inquiry can be a mode of making (a) difference in both research and classroom contexts by putting into action what is not yet known or attached to meaning. Conceiving of poetry as an energy that does and is made, I engage this mode of arts-based inquiry in relation to poststructuralist, affect, and posthuman theories that challenge notions of a true voice, an authentic representation, and a stable “self.”

Author

• Maya R. Pindyck, Teachers College, Columbia University