To Sketch a Queer Portraiture: Questioning the Subject in Qualitative Inquiry

• In Event: 32.083 - Roundtable Session 12
  In Roundtable Session: 32.083-21 - Subjectivity and Reflexivity in Qualitative Research

Abstract

Through a method that we term "sketching,"we complicate the notion of the human subject in qualitative research. Drawing from an existing method, portraiture, we argue that it is impossible to present a complete and true verbal picture, or portrait, of research participant experiences. Instead, we offer the idea of a verbal sketch, which suggests that researchers can paint only a partial and temporally contingent truth of a person. Like an artist’s sketch, this presentation is blurry, suggestive, and unfinished. A sketch foregrounds instances of uncertainty, indeterminacy, and contradiction in participant interviews. Using verbal sketches developed from interviews with gay men living in Arizona, we show how the idea of representing a whole subject as a portrait is, itself, sketchy.

Authors

• Joshua M Cruz, Arizona State University - Tempe

• David L. Carlson, Arizona State University

• Joseph D Sweet, Arizona State University