Feltness: On How to Practice Intimacy

Abstract

At the invitation of Professor Carlson, this paper responds to his questions regarding the meaning, value, and the future of (post)qualitative research, and takes up some of the issues and provocations I raised with his graduate students: reciprocity, relationality, stewardship, and an ethics of care. These conditions, or what I call feltness, are deeply embedded and entwined in my doings of research, or more specifically the practice of research-creation. This feltness shifts research to become a practice of intimacy. The paper commences with a brief introduction to research-creation which is potentially a parallel methodological intervention to (post)qualitative research, as it challenges what counts as disciplinary and academic knowledge, and inherited forms of value in the institution.

(K)not Mattering: Ethical (Re)considerations of Material, Methodological, and Pedagogical Responsibilities

“…On this (usually) celebratory day and week, we also think about lives lost in the pursuit of justice and equity (and due to COVID-19) and wonder how our work on this paper (k)not matters. 9 This wondering leads us back to how Springgay (2019Springgay ( , 2020 talks about more-than-human intimacies as felt (ness) committed to an ethics of care that both is "uncomfortable and perplexing" (Alaimo, 2010; as cited in Springgay, 2020;p. 4).…”

“…On this (usually) celebratory day and week, we also think about lives lost in the pursuit of justice and equity (and due to COVID-19) and wonder how our work on this paper (k)not matters. 9 This wondering leads us back to how Springgay (2019, 2020) talks about more-than-human intimacies as felt (ness) committed to an ethics of care that both is “uncomfortable and perplexing” (Alaimo, 2010; as cited in Springgay, 2020; p. 4). With an uncomfortable and perplexing ethic of care in mind, we are reminded that our responsibilities as writers, scholars, artists, teachers, and learners are deeply entangled with life, death, oppression, service, celebration and… and… and… Like this entanglement, we acknowledge that material, methodological, and pedagogical responsibilities “can(k)not” (Hofsess & Rhoades, forthcoming, this issue) be unknotted, yet we attempt to pull them apart to stir, settle, and rebuild (Haraway, 2016) (k)not mattering together with each other and with you.…”

“…I am now having some difficulty concentrating on this paper when I sense some learning/teaching tension (perhaps a knot) in the email and in my throat. Springgay (2020) reminds us that “transdisciplinary work is hard, complicated, and requires an ethical commitment and accountability to many different disciplines, practices, and ways of being in the world. It requires a degree of intimacy in multiple fields and multiple registers” (p. 3).…”

“Trajectories Matter”: Affect, Neuroqueerness, and Music Research-Creation in an Early Childhood Classroom

“…I understand research-creation as a way of researching socio-material processes as art practices. It’s enacted as feminist, queer crip, and anti-colonial praxis (Loveless, 2019; Shannon, 2020; Springgay, 2020; Truman et al, 2019). Natalie Loveless (2019) describes research-creation as transdisciplinary: The disciplines that I operate across when doing research-creation are those of the artist, the researcher, and the teacher.…”

Learning to unlearn - Tracing Failures Within Arts-Based Participatory Research

“…Vasques, 2020). I head for research-creation 11(Springgay, 2021), but end up with arts-based participatory methods bouncing in between a qualitative paradigm and a performative paradigm (e.g.Østern et. al, 2021).…”