Rendering Thought: Rhythmic Problems After Methodology

• In Event: 21st Century Inquiry After Methodology

Abstract

Objectives or purposes: This paper is an exploration of rhythmic problems in a philosophy of inquiry for the 21st century. I do so by noticing what problem has glimmered in my previous work, but has not always been made visible. I do not reflect on this insistent problem but analyze its duration as rhythmic repetition. I explain how my previous work has engendered my thinking to stay with a problem – to be in a problem without an end purpose or resolution. My purpose is to propose a different approach to problems, after methodology, as informed by the immanence of post qualitative inquiry (St. Pierre).

Perspectives or theoretical frameworks: The theoretical framework is Deleuze’s (1968/1994) ontology of thought, repetition, and difference in his text, Difference and Repetition.

Mode of inquiry: Methodological/theoretical.

Data sources, evidence, warrants: This paper assembles my previous work (3 journal articles) in which a problem persisted. I use these articles, along with Deleuze’s theory of repetition and difference, to propose how post qualitative inquiry enables new, philosophical approaches to problems without method.

Results and significance:
My paper will assemble a trilogy of thought that has emerged in my work over the last 10 years to reveal a persistent problem. Rather than describing these three papers as chronologically sequenced, I explain that relation that connects them is one of repetition. Repetition is an ontological concept that is vital to 21st century inquiry after methodology, especially as it can be reconfigured within a social science that prizes repetition as replication in order to build knowledge as measurable, thus validating its sameness as rigorous research. Repetition, in an ontology of recognition, is stuck on a plane of resemblance.
However, repetition as I will explore it – relationally among my three articles – is Deleuze’s (1968/1994) concept of repetition, which isn’t reduced to progress or teleology, but is a rhythm that produces difference. Problems in conventional social science inquiry are pre-determined, identifiable, and are mobilized and directed (i.e., studied) by using a striated path of method. However, what could inquiry become if problems are situated as rhythmic, as forces, as encounters that cannot be methodologically defined and studied – but as that which can only be rendered from the outside? How do rhythmic problems keep thought on the move – like a relay event? Under what conditions do rhythmic problems refuse solutions and instead persist, becoming contagious? The significance of this paper lies in its engagement with these questions.

References
Deleuze, G. (1968/1994). Difference and Repetition. New York: Columbia University Press.

Author

• Alecia Youngblood Jackson, Appalachian State University