Mobilizing Sense and Nonsense for Research Without Method

• In Event: 18.059 - Research Without Method in Post-Qualitative Inquiry

Abstract

Objectives
The paper maps some possible contours of research without method, informed by Deleuze’s (2004) concept of sense.

Theoretical framework
The problem with method is that it wants to contain difference within the iron “fetters’”of representation (Deleuze, 1994: 174). This desire is everywhere evident in conventional qualitative method: in its devices for reducing uncertainty and extracting meaning from events; in the priority given to language, and in the deep methodic aversion to materiality and the body. There an emergent consensus over what research in the “ontological turn” requires, viz: post-representational practices that honour the material-discursive entanglement of words and worlds; immersive engagement in the ramifications of events rather than interpretive dominion over them; new concepts/practices to replace analysis, interpretation, and critique, all of which sustain the prerogative of the human adjudicator. But this vision is difficult to realise, not least because it demands an overhaul of the entire onto-epistemological edifice, including such keystones as subjectivity, agency, language, knowledge, causality, consciousness, ethics, temporality, and ultimately the image of thought itself (Deleuze, 1994).

The paper considers some possible contours of researching without method, informed by Deleuze’s (2004) Logic of Sense. Sense forms a fragile surface where matter and meaning coincide; it is “the thin film at the limit of things and words.” But sense depends, paradoxically, on nonsensical elements that confound those very distinctions between things and words, by being both (and neither) at the same time. Nonsense is, then, the mobile element that runs through the two basic series of things and propositions, allowing them to relate and ramify into new possibilities.

Mode of inquiry
Methodological and conceptual development.

Methods and materials.
The paper will explore research practices that might mobilise sense/events: for instance, by orienting to phenomena such as paradox, neologism, ambiguity, and nonsense, that confound the separation of language and matter. Research might also attend to the murmurings of those deeper bodily monstrosities that occasionally rise to the surface of sense to threaten the linguistic economy of conventional language – e.g. moments where the body irrupts into research texts as humour, disgust, fascination, or intransigence, and the corporeal convulsions and emissions that accompany these irruptions but are poorly served by written representation –laughter, tears, sweating, heartbeats. Though primarily conceptual, the paper will discuss exemplars from ethnographic data.

Conclusions
A logic of sense offers resources for research in the ontological turn: it is radically nonrepresentational; operates precisely at the frontier of language and matter and therefore blocks the “bifurcations” of representation; offers no possibility of humanist dominion since “we” are all caught up in, and obliged to follow, the untimely, virtual movements of events that far exceed individual consciousness, agency. and interpretive mastery.

Significance
The paper offers an alternative to the strictures of method and fleshes out a different vision for post-qualitative research.

References
Deleuze, G. (1994) Difference and Repetition. London: Continuum.
Deleuze, G. (2004) The Logic of Sense. London: Continuum.

Author

• Maggie Maclure, Manchester Metropolitan University