Love as Onto-Epistemological Orientation: A Post-Oppositional De/colonial Imagination of Ethics in Educational Research Purpose

• In Event: Inspired by Love: Revolutionary Love-Based Ontoepistemic and Ethical Possibilities for Transformative Methodology

Abstract

Purpose
While scholars use Barad’s (2007) work to emphasize the entanglement of ontologies and epistemologies to inform one’s ethical orientation to one’s ways of being and knowing, such ideas have also been forwarded by indigenous, de/colonial, critical, and postcolonial scholars (Anzaldúa, 1987/1999; Grande, 2008; Keating, 2015; Minh-ha, 1989; Mohanty, 2004; Smith, 1999/2012). Grounded in such discourses of entanglement, in this paper, I forward a de/colonial post-oppositional approach of the (im)possibilities of love as an ontoepistemological orientation to educational research. What might we imagine our research ethics to be should we inform ourselves through a de/colonial post-oppositional lens that severs our connection with the binaried relationship between the oppressor and the oppressed? How could such imagination inform educational research, challenge the hidden and not-so-hidden curriculum?

Perspectives
This paper is informed by de/colonial and post-oppositional approaches to imagine the (im)possibilities in educational research. De/colonial approaches (Anzaldúa, 2009; Mohanty, 1991; Smith, 1999/2012) include discourses in Global North and South locations to highlight ontoepistemological orientations of once-colonized peoples and those who are still in land and other struggles with their settler-colonial oppressors. De/colonial approaches also situate our liberation and struggles in an always-already relationship with colonialism pervading various infrastructures, including education, educational research, and the hidden and not-so-hidden curriculum. Thus, in this paper, I call for a post-oppositional imagination informed by a love-based ontoepistemic orientation towards educational research. How would we imagine educational research where “research is not a dirty word,” (Smith, 1999, p.1) or researchers are not trained to be invasive cultural vultures unaware of their exploitative power relationships? Keating (2015) conceptualizes post-oppositionality where she gently prods us to move beyond the oppressor/oppressed binary to imagine alternate possibilities for agency and liberation. I respond to the call to imagine what might a love-based ontoepistemic orientation look like in conceptualizing ethics in educational research, specifically within qualitative inquiry.

Methods and Data Sources
In this theoretical paper, I will examine ongoing trends from existing studies in qualitative research to highlight western academic training of invasive posturing of researchers, uninterrogated positionalities, misalignment between theoretical and methodological orientations (Author, 2009; Author 2015), and appeasing to whiteness and colonial structures. I will then offer ways of imagining a love-based ontoepistemic post-oppositional de/colonial ethical orientation to educational research. The goal is not to be in opposition to existing works, but to engage in imagination of a futurity that is perhaps currently unthought.

Significance
Oppositional discursive orientation can be divisive or at least draining of one’s resources and capacities especially when engaged in social justice work. Such draining can cause battle fatigue amongst educational researchers because the oppressor is never incentivized to abandon his privileges and power. Therefore, for educational research to be liberatory, it is agentic to imagine freedom by severing the connection with energy-draining relationships and informing ontoepistemological orientation to conceptualizing ethical research relationships informed by love that moves beyond oppositional, binaried discourses. Such orientation increases one’s capacity to engage in social justice work and opens up new pathways of designing and executing social justice research agendas.

Author

• Kakali Bhattacharya, Kansas State University