Seduction as Uneasiness: The Transindividual Researcher and the Fashioning of the Self

• In Event: Forces of Seduction in (Post)Qualitative Inquiry

Abstract

Purpose
This paper explores how seduction functions as a “desire in uneasiness” in qualitative inquiry. The phrase, “desire in uneasiness” derives from Foucault’s description of friendship as not a coalescing of individual selves designed to offer idealized forms of happiness or security, but meant to function as a collection of essays, or tests of oneself with another. Friendships in this light serve to be testing sites for how to “live life as a work of art”, as an ongoing becoming. This paper tries to think about qualitative methods as a series of tests of the self; or to say another way, how does research, the search itself seduce researchers into the unknowable events as a series of tests. This paper theoretically excavates the vulnerability and anxiety to explore the onto-epistomological residue of seduction in the research endeavor.

Theoretical Framework
To investigate the “desire in uneasiness” as seduction in qualitative inquiry, this paper relies on the works of Michel Foucault (1998) and Gilbert Simondon (Combes, 2013; De Boever, et al, 2013; Scott, 2014). From Foucault, the paper utilizes primarily his work on ethics, care of the self, and ethical self-fashioning. I use these ideas to discuss the ways and means of fashioning a self as a work of art. To be more precise, I show how seduction as a test, as uneasiness, helps to fashion an ongoing onto-epistemological self as a work of art. Simondon, on the other hand, helps me pinpoint seduction as a post-humanists phenomenon yet still within the affective domain. The concepts of transduction, individual, individuation, and affectivity helps me to show conceptually how seduction operates within/through/beyond the researcher. The tests themselves exceed the individual and persist within/through/beyond the individuation and pre-individual. The catalysts for momentum towards researching appear as a seduction.

Data Sources, Methods, and Modes of Inquiry
In this paper, I reconsider my own research articles in light of the notion of seduction as a desire in uneasiness. Using Foucault and Simondon, I theorize my own qualitative work as seduction. This paper unpacks and aligns the theoretical framework and then utilizes the theory to explore the notions of seduction as a desire in uneasiness. It will conclude with a few comments about how qualitative inquiry as an essay, as a test works to produce a life as a work of art.

Results and Conclusions
This paper offers some theoretical points and positions that can help qualitative researchers think more deeply about seduction in the research process. It also will show how putting theory to work helps to illuminate the tensions and knots in qualitative research.

Scholarly Significance
The significance of this work is that it provides researchers with a productive way to theorize and operationalize concepts of seduction in qualitative inquiry as the paper explores more creative and experimental forms of methodology and analysis that move beyond the techno-rational approaches to qualitative inquiry (Koro-Ljungberg, 2016). Additionally, it seeks to introduce the work of Gilbert Simondon’s work into the field.

Author

• David L. Carlson, Arizona State University