Bodymind Legibility and Radical Possibilities for Qualitative Research

• In Event: Storytelling and Possibilities, Fractures and Legibility

Abstract

In this paper, we think with Butler’s (1993) writings around of il/legible bodies in an effort to examine the ways in which ableist, normative practices in qualitative research function to privilege and center that which is legible. To do so, we engage with Butler’s (1993) question: “How, then, might one alter the very terms that constitute the "necessary" domain of bodies through rendering unthinkable and unlivable another domain of bodies, those that do not matter in the same way” (p. xi). We become limited, we argue, by the logic of who we imagine as present in the qualitative research community, what is possible in qualitative inquiry, and restricts considerations of what “counts” as method.

Authors

• Emily A. Nusbaum, Mills College

• Jessica Nina Lester, Indiana University