Writing With Intensities

• In Event: Writing Intensions in Post-Qualitative Educational Research

Abstract

Objectives: Recently, there has been a proliferation of writing in the posts- (ex. Author, 2015; Authors, 2013, 2016; Guttorm et al., 2016; Holmes & Jones, 2013; Honan & Bright, 2016; McKnight, 2016; Otterstad, & Waterhouse, 2016; Reinertsen et al., 2015; and many, many more), which has created a surge of interest in what post-writing might be/become and how it might be done. As scholars who write within the posts- (and editorially support the work of others), we often field inquiries from graduate students, early career researchers, and curious thinkers. They wonder: what is writing in the posts-? How might it be done? We share these questions, too. For it is in spite of the uncertainty—and at times because of the uncertainty—that we write each inquiry anew, unsure, like Alcoff (1991), “where the [work] goes and what it does there” (p. 26). In part, this is because we write with many things. We write with words, concepts, theories, each other, notes, images, particular places, bird song, and hope. Among others, these are the intensities with which we write and which propel us into the unknown. Our aim is to explore them there as we wonder: what generative practices do we take up in writing, and—by way of intensities—where might they take us next?

Perspective: Through post-structural theories, Laurel Richardson continuously pushed the boundaries of writing; for her, writing became not only a method of inquiry (1994), but also a field of play (1997). Subsequent moves from multilayered texts (Lather & Smithies, 1997) toward post-qualitative inquiries (Lather & St. Pierre, 2013; St. Pierre, 2011, 2013) have created further possibilities. In writing with intensities, we follow Massumi (2002, 2015), who offers a notion of intensities as productive of difference. Through writing, we take up his thinking on how problems offer a “jumping-off point for others to continue in their own way, along their exploratory paths, for intensities of experiences to come” (2015, p. 204). Put briefly, even as writing poses problems, it also offers points from which to launch elsewhere.

Modes of inquiry: To explore that launching and the landing sites that writing provides (Manning, 2016), we return to writing as a method of inquiry (Richardson, 1994; Richardson & St. Pierre, 2005) in the contexts of post-qualitative and posthumanistic inquiries.

Data materials: Intensities from ongoing writing projects form the data materials. They include the texts, notes, images that are taking us each—together and separately—in different directions.

Results and significance: Writing is intense. Although it is tempting to ask if we are doing it ‘right,’ this is not what post-qualitative inquiries are about—indeed, quite the opposite. We are not sure if we are doing the ‘right’ sorts of writing, or that we even care if such things exist. Rather, we are concerned about whether we are writing well—writing thoughtfully, creatively, and generatively. And writing toward hope in dark times that aim to foreclose upon the differences that writings with intensities sustain.

Authors

• Jasmine Ulmer, Wayne State University

• Jessica Van Cleave, Mars Hill University

• Sarah Bridges-Rhoads, Georgia State University