Wondering, Seducing . . . Thematic Nonsense (Poster 5)

• In Event: Themes Without Coding: Expanding Approaches to Thematic Analysis

Abstract

Thematic analysis is often described as a rational and systematic process (e.g., Fereday & Muir-Cochrane, 2006). Qualitative research, including (thematic) analysis cannot be purely rational (e.g., St. Pierre, 2019). No matter how systematically qualitative research is designed and maybe unfolds, there is always an affective dimension at work and play (Hughes, Bridges-Rhodes, & Van Cleave, 2018). Flashes of insight into meanings and possibilities of data happen unpredictably – in the shower, in dreams, while going about mundane daily tasks. These are exciting “Ah ha!” moments, spurned by curiosity, uncertainty, desire, what MacLure (2013) describes as “wonder – an untapped potential in qualitative research” (p. 228). Wonder, of course, is not always wonderful. It is also nagging and worrisome, a troubling uncertainty. Koro-Ljungberg (2010) might speak of wonder as Derridean aporia – an uncomfortable contradiction or impasse that gives qualitative researchers pause. Wonder might also be seductive – a game and simultaneous terror and passionate allure of the unknown (Baudrillard, 1991).

Our objective is to expand possibilities for thematic analysis by foregrounding the irrational and unsystematic, affective dimensions of engaging qualitative data toward themes. Our hope is that by theorizing, exemplifying, and describing the vital and productive role of wonder, we lend credibility to this approach for thematic analysts who wish to embrace it.

We theorize (also our mode of inquiry) an affective approach to thematic analysis through MacLure’s work on wondering (2013) and data glowing (2010), kin terms she uses to elucidate the researcher’s entangled or intra-active (Barad, 2007) relationship with data. Inexplicably, as we qualitative researchers read and engage data, it glows at us… and we glow back. This sense of wonder focuses our attention; it drives our desire for interpretation, meaning, understanding, or possibility. MacLure theorizes wonder through Barad (2007), Deleuze and Guattari (1994), and others, all theorists well-associated with post-structural and new materialist thought and a qualitative methodology that has come to be labeled ‘post-qualitative’ (e.g., St. Pierre, 2014). We do not think the methodological insights available through new materialism are relevant only to post-projects conducted under post-philosophies. Indeed, the productive role of wonder in philosophy and science is not a new idea. Arendt (1990) and Wittgenstein (1980), for example, both advanced wonder as a vital, yet mysterious and terrifying, aspect of human experience, knowing, and philosophizing (within and against science).
Our scholarly contribution includes describing our wonder-ous data engagements, which we have written about as glowing data (Authors, 2021) and seduction (Authors, 2022), that enabled us to thematic insights in focus group, experiential, and conversation data. We also share examples of how other scholars have adopted ‘wondering’ as their analytic approach, even if not in the service of an explicit thematic analysis (e.g., Visse, Hansen, & Leget, 2020). We conclude by offering practices (e.g., Hansen, 2015) that might attune and sensitize qualitative researchers to wonder and suggestions for composing unsystematic, affective accounts of wondering to themes.

Authors

• Travis Marn, Southern Connecticut State University

• Daria Smirnova, University of South Florida