(Un)Stuck With "Methodological Subjects": Reconsidering the Role of "Subject" in Qualitative Inquiry

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session Fourteen
  In Roundtable Session: Figurations and Interrogations in Qualitative Methodology (Table 15)

Abstract

Times of crisis, global unrest, and political turmoil further expose racial, class, and knowledge inequities, challenging researchers to respond with more ethically responsible and equitable practices. In this paper, we approach the conceptual and practical challenge of imagining and creating speculative methodological subjects by asking, how might speculative research, specifically through the processes of radical imagination and scenario building, shape scholars’ relationships to the formation of methodological subjects and their politics. By reviewing recent scenario building examples and experimenting with speculative tasks, we explore methodological possibilities for ‘subjects’ and their entanglement with politics of repression. While collectively thinking with the methodological subject beyond oversimplistic and static forms, we encountered relational, non-stable subjects that crossed bodies, sounds, affects and time-spaces.

Authors

• Tim Wells, Arizona State University
  Presenting Author

• Mirka E. Koro, Arizona State University
  Presenting Author

• Anani M. Vasquez, Neurodiversity Education Research Center
  Presenting Author

• Mariia Vitrukh, Arizona State University
  Presenting Author

• Jorge Sandoval
  Presenting Author