Against the (Academic) Machine: A Punk Rock Ethnodrama (Poster 4)

• In Event: Artful Inquiry in Qualitative Research: Philosophies and Enactments

Abstract

J [AUTHOR 1]: I’d just presented a paper about delinquent inquiry, riffing off Foucault, and I started singing “Veterans of a Fucked up World,” the old Dead Milkmen (1985) song,

C [CHARACTER]: Yeah-

J: and I was like, that’s it! Punk’s it. Foucault and punks were contemporaries. D & P was ‘75, but he’s workin’ it out in the College de France lecture series, after, you know, May 1968. That’s what I’m writing about, Foucault’s delinquent, what delinquency can do for qual. I’m making this connection, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that punk rock and Fou–

C: Were you drunk?

J: Well, I mean, not drunk, but, you know? But I’m workin’ this out. And I was like, punk, right? [smiling] and Foucault, right? Like, what the fuuuuuck. Foucault’s doing this genealogy of power and punks are comin’ up from the gutter, fightin’ against the power. They’re doing their own, whatever you wanna call it, F-U to authority. And I’m like, what can punk do for methods?
Johnny Rotten Methodologies: “Madness as Methodology” (Gale, 2018)
J: What about traditional qual and high school sports? Punks and sportos don’t play nice. Sportos are in the system, they are conformity.

S [AUTHOR 2]: They are governed by rules.

J: Exactly. One hundred percent conforming to what’s accepted by the larger system. Think about your high school pep rally.

S: I’d rather not, thanks.

J: Sportos are falling in line, disciplined into line and praised for it.

S: That is indeed very Foucauldian. The way the system shapes and perpetuates itself, the capillary nature of disciplinary power.

J: You know, I don’t know if the disciplinary power and resistance is why, but I don’t think of myself much as a sporto or a punk anymore.

S: I don’t think anyone ever quits being a punk. There’s no such thing as ex-punk. Punk sensibility doesn’t go away. It doesn’t just disappear because we get older.

J: I’m just– How these O.G.s were doing delinquency, being delinq–

S: So, don’t take this the wrong way, but can’t punk stand on its own? Like, without Foucault? Punk’s its own thing, its own methodology. You don’t need Foucault.

J: But Foucault’s my guy.

S: Joe Strummer’s mine.

J [Laughing]: Johnny Rotten methodologies.

S: Yes.

NARRATOR: This poster will present scenes from an ethnodrama (excerpted above) layered with a punk soundscape. We will showcase punk-inspired visual and performance art to encourage attendees to live the political and rebellious elements of artful inquiry while representing affective and aesthetic forms of anarchy, urbanization, and potential alienation in the Academy. During a time in which we have witnessed competing notions of truth and continuing deployment of repressive apparatus, we theorize punk perspectives as productive for doing research that centers artful inquiry and pushes against power, academic machines (Benozzo et al, 2019; Fairchild et al, 2022), and questions a priori and assumed truths. A punk orientation invites productive destruction to discover what’s left in the wake of methodological rebellion.

Authors

• Joseph D. Sweet, University of North Carolina - Pembroke

• Saralyn McKinnon-Crowley, Baylor University

• Mirka E. Koro, Arizona State University