772634

research-article2018
QIXXXX10.1177/1077800418772634Qualitative InquirySt. Pierre

Article
Qualitative Inquiry

Post Qualitative Inquiry in an Ontology

1­–14
© The Author(s) 2018

of Immanence1
Reprints and permissions:
sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1077800418772634
https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800418772634
journals.sagepub.com/home/qix

Elizabeth A. St. Pierre1

Abstract
Because post qualitative inquiry uses an ontology of immanence from poststructuralism as well as transcendental empiricism,
it cannot be a social science research methodology with preexisting research methods and research practices a researcher
can apply. In fact, it is methodology-free and so refuses the demands of “application.” Recommendations for those interested
in post qualitative inquiry include putting methodology aside and, instead, reading widely across philosophy, social theories,
and the history of science and social science to find concepts that reorient thinking. Post qualitative inquiry encourages
concrete, practical experimentation and the creation of the not yet instead of the repetition of what is.

Keywords
ontology, immanence, transcendental empiricism, aeon, concept, poststructuralism, post qualitative inquiry, Deleuze,
Guattari, thinking in thought

I “invented” post qualitative inquiry2 in 2010 as I wrote a methodological structure invented to respond to the para-
chapter for the fourth edition of the SAGE Handbook of digm wars of its time, which I knew intimately and which
Qualitative Inquiry (St. Pierre, 2011), though I had been had been awfully good to me. Although still radical in some
writing toward that idea for many years, beginning in 1994 fields, I believed the life span of that methodology—like
in my doctoral dissertation (St. Pierre, 1995). Lyotard’s any other—had reached its limits as it failed to do justice to
(1983/1988) concept, differend, is useful in considering the the complexity of the world, especially after the ontologi-
“long preparation” (Deleuze & Parnet, 2007b, p. 7) required cal, posthuman, affective, new material, and new empirical
to write the phrase, post qualitative inquiry: “the differend turns that picked up speed during the late 20th and early
is the unstable state and instant of language wherein some- 21st centuries when a particular description of human
thing which must be able to be put into phrases cannot yet being—Descartes’s cogito—and being more generally, both
be” (p. 13). In this kind of writing, the not-yet glimmers of which poststructuralism had critiqued for decades,
seductively and then escapes in fits and starts. Eventually, became increasingly problematic. A new focus on ontology
however, post qualitative inquiry became for me, as demanded the attention of those who wanted to make those
Foucault (1984/1985) wrote, what “can and must be turns, though I suspect there were other empirical research-
thought” (p. 7), and so the phrase, post qualitative inquiry, ers like me who were not ready, given that ontology seems
wrote itself in 2010. Lingering on the edge of the not-yet is the province of philosophy and seldom a topic in empirical
not uncommon for those who acknowledge that writing is research methodology texts and university research courses,
thinking, that writing is, after all, another method of inquiry which, after all, describe an epistemological project.
(Richardson, 1994; Richardson & St. Pierre, 2005; St. Nonetheless, encouraged by studying the immanentist
Pierre, in press). In writing, one can be “summoned by lan- philosophy of, in particular, Deleuze and Deleuze with
guage” when “something ‘asks’ to be put into phrases” Guattari which grounds much of the “new” work, the
(Lyotard, 1983/1988, p. 13). Indeed, words may appear on phrase post qualitative inquiry finally appeared in my
the computer screen unbidden so that we ask in astonish- text—arrived—and marked a turn away from conven-
ment, “How did that happen?” and then, imagining possi- tional humanist qualitative methodology, signaling the
bilities, “How might it work?”
Finally seeing in print the words, post qualitative inquiry, 1
University of Georgia, Athens, USA
helped me understand that, in a sense, I had been “post qual-
Corresponding Author:
itative” for years but not quite ready to leave behind the Elizabeth A. St. Pierre, University of Georgia, 604E Aderhold Hall,
comfort of what I’ve called conventional humanist qualita- 110 Carlton Street, Athens, GA 30602, USA.
tive methodology, an established, institutionally approved Email: [email protected]
2 Qualitative Inquiry 00(0)

“not yet” (Britzman, 1995, p. 237; Butler, 1995, p. 143; Of course, Foucault’s historical ontological project is
Deleuze, 1969/1990, p. 112; Derrida, 1995/1996, p. 9; only one example of projects poststructural philosophers
Foucault, 1971/1972, p. 119; Lyotard, 1983/1988, p. 13; accomplished to problematize a taken-for-granted classi-
Manning, 2013, p. 29) that is everywhere but indetermi- cal ontology. In an early lecture on deconstruction, Derrida
nate, not yet created, not yet individuated and organized (1966/1978) also took issue with the ontology of the
into the definite—immanent. It marked, at the same time, human sciences (p. 278), focusing on anthropology and
a collapse and an opening, the possibility of something noting that “a certain mode of being” is at stake in its
different, what Derrida (1995/1996) described as the claims of presence, in its interpretation of “Being as pres-
“future to come” (p. 68) and even “people to come” ence” (p. 279). In that text, he questioned the naïve and
(Deleuze & Guattari, 1991/1994, p. 176). Writing can do “more or less empirical” (p. 279) human science approaches
this: “writing has nothing to do with signifying. It has to grounded on the stasis of presence and then carefully
do with surveying, mapping, even realms that are yet to worked through his argument that deconstructs, decenters,
come” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980/1987, pp. 4-5). It is the defers, and puts Being under erasure. Again, we find a call
not yet, the yet to come—the immanent—that marks post for immanence throughout his lecture and especially in its
qualitative inquiry. last sentence when he acknowledged the fear associated
with the immanent—fear of the unpredictable not yet—
An Ontology of Immanence and with what he called différance, the “as yet unnamable
which is proclaiming itself” (p. 293).
Transcendental Empiricism Immanence, based on a one-world ontology, is opposed
The image of thought that guides post qualitative inquiry to the transcendent, which is based on a two-world ontology
relies on at least the following: an ontology of immanence, like that of Plato in which instances of beauty in the world
transcendental empiricism, and a particular concept of (the copy, the appearance) refer to and are conditioned by
concept. As noted above, an ontology of immanence can be the transcendent, abstract Form of Beauty (the Real, the
found in the work of Deleuze, Deleuze and Guattari, Ideal), which exists in an originary, transcendent world of
Derrida, Foucault, and Lyotard, among others, all of whom first entities and pure essences uncontaminated by human
problematized classical ontology and have been called phi- desire, frailty, contingency, and finitude. Here, transcen-
losophers of immanence. One might argue that immanence dence designates what is exterior to or beyond the world. In
is a characteristic of poststructuralism (i.e., post–World War the two-world ontology of the transcendent, the essence of
II continental philosophy), hence, the “post” in post qualita- things not only exists in a second world (e.g., Plato’s World
tive inquiry (see St. Pierre, 2011, 2013). For example, in his of Forms) that transcends the world of human conscious-
stunning historical study, The Order of Things: An ness but also conditions copies of the Form, appearances,
Archaeology of the Human Sciences, Foucault (1966/1970) that humans recognize in the world. Although the copy can
tracked the ordering of being, of what could exist, in the never be perfect, as is its essence, instances of beauty, for
history of the human sciences from 16th-century European example, cannot fall too far outside the Ideal of Beauty. For
culture to the modern age as things became differentiated that reason, what counts as beautiful is always limited, con-
and distinct, as language was unleashed from things and ditioned by, and inferior to transcendent Beauty, which is
became transparent to represent, and as the human sciences pure, abstract, not of this world.
created a general science of order that produced a particular Philosophers of immanence argue that transcendence is an
kind of human being that “enters into objectivity” (p. 387)— illusion, and Deleuze and Guattari (1980/1987) called it “a
the “figure of man” (p. 386). specifically European disease” (p. 18). Derrida (1993/1994)
Foucault argued that the emergence of the human sci- called this disease an “ontology of presence” (p. 170) in
ences depended on this man to center their projects—to be which the focus is on a primitive and objective “what is” and
both the subject and object of knowledge—and so invented “I am” rather than on the “continuous variation” (Deleuze &
him. That invention—which may well have reached its lim- Guattari, 1980/1987, p. 98; Smith, 2010a) of the always dif-
its in the posthuman—is an example of how discourses are ferentiating which is not yet but to come. For that reason,
“practices that form the object of which they speak” Deleuze and Guattari (1980/1987) refused the verb, to be,
(Foucault, 1971/1972, p. 49), objects like “man” that which establishes identity, stability, and closure (this is that)
become normalized and taken-for-granted. Foucault’s his- and preferred the conjunction, and, which indicates ongoing
torical ontology via his understanding of discourse as both relation, becoming (this and this and this and . . .). Foucault
linguistic and material and also as productive identified a (1971/1972), too, questioned the stability of what exists and
“limited system of presences” (p. 119)—what could exist, asked, “what special status should be given to that verb to
could be thought and done. Foucault was concerned be?” (p. 85). In an ontology of immanence, one becomes less
throughout his work, however, with what could not yet be interested in what is and more interested in what might be
thought and done—what was immanent. and what is coming into being.
St. Pierre 3

In a one-world ontology, like that described by Deleuze ultimate contingency” (p. 58). In that way, the possible is
and Guattari (1991/1994) and taken up in much work in the generalized from experience. In this “dogmatic image of
recent ontological turn, immanence, which means remain- thought” (Deleuze, 1968/1994, p. 148), the possible begins
ing within, cannot be immanent to something exterior to it with and is representative of the actual and so reflects a two-
because immanence is always already within it. In other world ontology. For example, social science researchers are
words, if immanence could be exterior to itself, it would be often interested in identifying the conditions of possibility
transcendent, not immanent. Immanence, then, is all there that enabled this or that to happen, assuming that something
is. In his last essay, Deleuze (1995/2001) wrote that “abso- which exists could be replicated if the conditions that pro-
lute immanence is in itself: it is not in something, to some- duced it could be reproduced. To that end, social scientists
thing; it does not depend on an object or belong to a subject” have developed research methods to identify those condi-
(p. 26). For Deleuze and Guattari (1991/1994), “it is only tions. In that model, however, possible experience is always
when immanence is no longer immanent to something other limited by what is so that, in effect, everything is already
than itself that we can speak of a plane of immanence” (p. 48). given, even the possible. An analysis of the conditions of
I have described the plane of immanence elsewhere and possible experience always “begins with states of affairs
will not repeat that description here (St. Pierre, 2017; see within the world” (Somers-Hall, 2012, p. 39), with the is
also Hein, 2016). But, simply put, the plane of immanence rather than the not-yet, the virtual, and so cannot be truly
is an “impersonal and pre-individual transcendental field, different.
which does not resemble the corresponding empirical fields, For that reason, Deleuze argued for the virtual because
and which nevertheless is not confused with an undifferen- the possible, which seems abstract because it is general is
tiated depth” (Deleuze, 1969/1990, p. 102). It is a flat sur- “not abstract enough” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980/1987, p.
face of virtuals or potentials or forces or singularities 141) tethered as it is to what is. Deleuze (1968/1994) wrote
moving at different speeds that produce but do not condi- that his empiricism is concerned with “the condition of real
tion the actual. The virtual and the actual do not exist in a experience, not of possible experience” (p. 154) and with
hierarchy, as in a two-world ontology, because they exist on the event of actuality. Smith (2010b) noted that “the condi-
the same plane, the plane of immanence. Both the virtual tions of real experience are the conditions of the new” (p.
and the actual are real. 60), which cannot be represented not only because it is pro-
“The plane of immanence includes both the virtual and duced by presubjective and prepersonal forces and intensi-
its actualization simultaneously without there being any ties on the plane of immanence but also because it does not
assignable limit between the two” (Deleuze & Parnet, repeat some abstraction elsewhere (e.g., an essence, a con-
2007a, p. 149)—no two-world ontology here. “The plane of cept, a Form like Beauty). In other words, Deleuze was
immanence is always single, being itself pure variation” interested in the “generation of specific phenomena, rather
(Deleuze & Guattari, 1991/1994, p. 39). It is an unlimited than the formal conditions for the possibility of phenomena
field of formless matter not yet individuated into subject or in general” (Somers-Hall, 2012, p. 39). The virtual condi-
object, thought or practice. The plane of immanence encom- tions of the actual are no broader than the actual they condi-
passes everything because nothing can be outside it and so tion. For this reason, we have “the unity of the concept and
immanent to it. In this ontology, being is difference—every- its object, such that the object is no longer contingent, and
thing is different, the plane of immanence is always differ- the concept no longer general” (Deleuze, 2002/2004, p. 36).
entiating, always becoming, never static. To repeat, the The object, the actual, can exist only because of singular
actual is not conditioned by the virtual, does not resemble, virtual conditions that cannot be reproduced.
reflect, or represent it. When the actual emerges, it is always It is understood, then, that in Deleuze’s transcendental
a genuine creation, new and different. Yet, the actual does empiricism, the virtual is prior to the actual, to the real
not lose its link to the virtual. Deleuze and Guattari experience of subjects and objects. The virtual cannot be
(1991/1994) wrote, “the most closed system still has a sensed, lived, conceptualized, or represented by the con-
thread that rises toward the virtual, and down which the spi- sciousness of a human subject; it is prepersonal, preindi-
der descends” (p. 122). vidual. The actual, real experience, however, is the “mode
A shift from the possible to the virtual is important in of existence of actual things” (Haynes, 2012, p. 59), and the
Deleuze’s ontology of immanence and his transcendental actual is always different, with some variation (noted ear-
empiricism. Again, the virtual is “real without being actual, lier), however small, that refuses categorization and can be
not mere potentials or possibilities, but existing vectors of put into play, into becoming. Transcendental empiricism
force” (Bogue, 1997, p. 108). According to Haynes (2012), points to a “practical ontology of what can be, of the genera-
Deleuze took up Bergson’s critique of the possible and its tive and transformative forces of difference as such” (Hayden,
limits because the possible “is read off from experience and 1998, p. 17). The new, then, is difference, “everywhere,
then erroneously presented as the fixed, logically necessary always primary and always immanent” (Deleuze & Guattari,
pre-requisites of experience in a way that disguises their 1980/1987, p. 70), even in what has been normalized. This
4 Qualitative Inquiry 00(0)

description of experience is quite different from experience In transcendental empiricism, then, one would not “ana-
in phenomenology, which relies on human perception, is lyze empirical data” (e.g., interview transcripts and field-
available to human consciousness—to the phenomenologi- notes) looking for “themes and patterns” that repeat across
cal gaze, to what is “at first sight” (Derrida, 1993/1994, the data because things are not alike, they don’t resemble
p. 150)—and is “lived” and so produced by humans. each other, everything is different. Nor would one “code”
To put this important idea a bit differently, the actualiza- data, looking for all instances of, say, the concept “gender”
tion or differentiation of the virtual is a process of genuine in interview transcripts. Those analytic practices would be
creation, and the actual is always new and different, not neither doable nor thinkable in an ontology of immanence
one instance among others of the same concept (a two- because they rely on the specific/general binary that
world ontology) where specific instances resemble each assumes a two-world ontology of specific instances in inter-
other, share characteristics, and so exist in an internal rela- nal relations organized under and represented by broader,
tion with each other subsumed under the broader represen- general concepts.
tative concept because they are alike. “Because the actuality There is much empirical work to be done in this image of
of an instance is not included within the concept, the rela- thought that uses an ontology of immanence and transcen-
tion between actualities is not internal and conceptual, or dental empiricism in which continuous variation and differ-
dialectical, but external [emphasis added] and contingent” ence are primary, but this work does not look like
(Baugh, 1992, p. 136); thus, Deleuze’s use of the conjunc- conventional empirical social science fieldwork as illus-
tion and which reaches for relations outside the identity of trated in the example above and discussed in more detail
the concept. For that reason, actualities cannot resemble later in this article, because it is at once empirical and spec-
each other, because the actual is always “absolutely differ- ulative—metaphysical. As Smith (2010b) explained,
ent” (Deleuze, 1968/1994, p. 94) and “comes into exis- “Deleuze considered himself to be a pure metaphysician,
tence, not by virtue of its essence” but by the chance and but his fundamental metaphysical position is that Being is a
variable convergence of forces “in a precise given relation” problem” (p. 136), hence, his questions not only about
on the plane of immanence that then “ceases to exist” empiricism but also about ontology. Deleuze (1990/1995)
(Deleuze, 1968/1992, pp. 209-210). Because the variation, himself wrote,
the condition, “the event” on the plane of immanence that
enabled the unforeseeable emergence of an actuality disap- I’ve never worried about going beyond metaphysics or any
pears immediately, it cannot produce a similar actuality. death of philosophy, and I never made a big thing about giving
up Totality, Unity, the Subject. I’ve never renounced a kind of
Once again, the actual is always different, new. Deleuze
empiricism, which sets out to present concepts directly. I
called this ontological difference, difference-in-itself, haven’t approached things through structure, or linguistics or
“pure difference” (Deleuze, 1968/1994, p. xx) without ref- psychoanalysis, through science or even through history,
erence to a transcendent essence or concept or to human because I think philosophy has its own raw material that allows
consciousness. it to enter into more fundamental external relations with these
In the transcendental empiricism of an ontology of other disciplines. (p. 89)
immanence, the prepersonal, preindividual, preconceptual,
truly abstract “transcendental field is the genetic milieu Unfortunately, conventional empirical social science typi-
constitutive of all that is or could be” (Haynes, 2012, p. 59), cally separates metaphysics (anything speculative) from
constitutive of all experience. And the empiricist does not science in an epistemological binary because it is heavily
look for conditions of possibility for possible experience influenced by Vienna Circle logical empiricism (also called
based on what is but for real conditions of real experience scientific empiricism and logical positivism) invented at the
before it is personalized, psychologized, and conceptual- beginning of the 20th century (see St. Pierre, 2012, 2016a).
ized—before it becomes someone’s experience and is I conclude this section with a reminder of the pervasive
named the lived experience of humans. In this way, tran- and seemingly intractable influence of logical empiricism
scendental empiricism restores the empirical that has been on what empirical social science has become as well as with
hidden by personal, human, conceptual, representational a reminder that empiricism is classified as an epistemologi-
thought and is truly a “radical empiricism” (James, cal matter and so typically separated from ontology. In epis-
1912/1996; Deleuze & Guattari, 1991/1994, p. 48), a “supe- temology, rationalism (knowledge based on reason) is set in
rior empiricism” (Deleuze, 1968/1994, p. 57), or a “‘wilder’ opposition to empiricism (knowledge based on the senses).
sort of empiricism” (Rajchman, 2001, p. 9) as well an invi- Descartes, a rationalist, privileged the rational mind over
tation to a different kind of empirical work based on an the transient, contingent sense experiences of the body.
empiricism “not of things made but of things in the making” Classical empiricism, however, privileges knowledge based
(James, as cited in Rajchman, 2000, p. 17) and on their vir- on sense experience—on what really is and not what we
tual emergence. speculate it might be—and necessarily begins with the
St. Pierre 5

claim that a particular kind of empirical world of sensations the doxa of the dogmatic image of thought in which the only
exists. Yet, as Bryant (2008) pointed out, “the minute one experience that counts is that which can be recognized,
makes claims about being one is engaged in metaphysics. judged, and qualified—closed off into concept—experience
These sensations are treated as theoretically primitive ele- that conforms to what already is. Here, identity, not differ-
ments without themselves having to be explained” (p. 24). ence, is privileged in spite of appeals to diversity in, for
The Vienna Circle logical empiricists, however, believed example, emancipatory discourse and inquiry.
they could, indeed, rid empirical science of the speculative For philosophy to break with the doxa, Deleuze and
or metaphysical, and their claims of an objective, value- Guattari (1991/1994) placed the philosophical concept in a
free, theory-free social science continue to greatly influence different, nonrepresentational ontological order where it
social science research methodologies in spite of various does not correspond to the empirical, has no reference to it,
turns away from those claims during the 20th century that and cannot be attached to it. They wrote that philosophy, as
included the invention of qualitative methodology as a opposed to art and science, is “the discipline that involves
mostly interpretive social science project. creating concepts” (p. 5), and “to create concepts is, at the
Deleuze’s remarkable feat is that he invented transcen- very least to make something” (p. 7), something new that is
dental empiricism even as he called himself, as noted, a not like anything that exists. “Philosophical theory is itself
pure metaphysician. How can social science researchers a practice of concepts” (Deleuze, 1985/1989, p. 280) called
who have been well-trained in methods and methodologies forth by problems in the world.
using the two-world ontology of logical empiricism, as Deleuze and Guattari’s (1991/1994) “concept of con-
well as phenomenology—and who often use both in the cept” (p. 19) is not that of an abstraction that points to and
same study—unlearn that training and inquire using an conditions existing objects but an act of thought in response
ontology of immanence and transcendental empiricism? to a real problem—the force of real experience—that reori-
Rethinking the “concept of concept” (Deleuze & Guattari, ents our thinking. A philosophical concept is not intended
1991/1994, p. 19) seems a place to begin.3 for application to the “empirical content of the doxa”
(Deleuze, 1968/1994, p. 134): a “concept is no more a func-
tion of the lived than it is a scientific or logical function”
Concepts, Thinking in Thought, and (Deleuze & Guattari, 1991/1994, p. 151). It is an intensity
Aeon that has no relation to the time or the everyday states of
Concepts in the ontology of immanence and transcendental affairs of humans. A philosophical concept is a creative
empiricism which inform post qualitative inquiry are not the force, an “act of thought, it is thought operating at infinite .
same as in conventional humanist social science inquiry in . . speed” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1991/1994, p. 2). It is a mul-
which the methodologist applies concepts like cognition tiplicity, a becoming with a history. For example, Smith
from psychology, deviance from sociology, or scarcity from (2010b) traced how Deleuze reimagined and renewed his
economics to data “collected” in the empirical world of lived concept intensity in response to different problems over the
experience (see St. Pierre, 2017). As noted earlier, that two- course his scholarship.
world ontology relies on the postulates of recognition and Concepts link up with and support each other on planes
representation in which the human, Descartes’s “I think— of thought (Deleuze & Guattari, 1991/1994, p. 18) and can
the most general principal of representation”—recognizes make or lay out a new plane of thought that might intersect
things in the world that are similar and uses concepts, pre- with other planes in becoming. This is experimentation and
sumed to have a representational property, to organize them creation. Furthermore, a concept itself can be an encounter
in internal relations under the concept, producing “percep- that forces “thinking in thought” (Deleuze, 1968/1994, p.
tual continuity” (Deleuze, 1968/1994, p. 138). 139). For example, I described how the concept haecceity
I’ve already explained that data analysis in conventional forced me to rethink another concept subjectivity and then
humanist qualitative methodology uses this approach, pri- deconstruct conventional humanist qualitative methodol-
marily looking for resemblance and similarities in data; for ogy (St. Pierre, 2017). The point here is that philosophical
example, this is like that, so it fits within this general theme concepts like Deleuze and Guattari’s rhizome or agence-
or pattern, and/or we can use this code or concept to label ment cannot be “applied” to the actual, to real experience, to
similar things in actual states of affairs. Identity rather than organize and represent it.
difference is the focus of that approach; consequently, For Deleuze and Guattari, thought is not recognition and
thought is “filled with no more than an image of itself, one then representation but creation. Thought is involuntary and
in which it recognizes itself the more it recognizes things” does not originate with human consciousness, with the sub-
(Deleuze, 1968/1994, p. 138). Deleuze called this a prob- jective and personal “I think.” Smith (2012) credited this
lem of “common sense and good sense” (p. 133)—what idea found in Deleuze’s work to Spinoza and also pointed
everyone knows, what is taken for granted—two halves of out that Leibniz’s response at the time (the 17th century) to
6 Qualitative Inquiry 00(0)

Descartes’s statement, cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore (2002a) called this kind of encounter a “shock to thought.”
I am), was that Thinking in thought is not natural or “rational” and cannot
be taught or learned. It’s an “extraordinary event in thought
it is illegitimate to say “I think therefore I am” not because “I itself, for thought itself. Thinking is the n-th power of
am” does not follow from “I think,” but rather because, from
thought” (Deleuze, 1962/1983, p. 108). This involuntary
the activity of thought, I can never derive an “I.” At best,
encounter with the real and the event of thinking in thought
Descartes can claim “there is thinking,” “thought has taken
place.” (p. 183) “depends on forces that take hold of thought” (p. 108),
forces that cannot be written into a research proposal and
We are not the authors of our thoughts then; rather, our included as a step in the research process. “Violence must
thoughts come from what Deleuze (as cited in Smith, 2012) be exerted on thought for us to become capable of thinking”
called the “universal thought flow,” which is “anonymous, (Deleuze & Guattari, 1991/1994, p. 55) and escape the dog-
impersonal, and indeterminate” (p. 183), not originating matic image of thought and its implicit assumptions about
with the human subject. Surely, it is difficult to imagine that what thinking is, what the world is.
thought does not imply an “I,” yet that idea is prevalent in One of the presuppositions of the doxa is that “thought
poststructural thought when, for example, Foucault, needs a method, an artifice which enables the thinking to
Deleuze, and Derrida refused the intentional author, proper ward off error” (Deleuze, 1968/1994, p. 131), but the
names, and personal pronouns whose referent is an inten- Deleuzian image of thought calls for experimentation and
tional, agential individual who precedes and exists indepen- creation instead of method. For Deleuze (1962/1983),
dently of a work, including the “strange persona of “method in general is a means by which we avoid going
Investigator advanced by the empiricists” (Deleuze & to a particular place, or by which we maintain the option
Guattari, 1991/1994, p. 72). In poststructural thought and of escaping from it” (p. 110). It seems to me that the com-
an ontology of immanence, “I” is a habit of repetition, a mon sense dogmatic image of thought that grounds
convention invented by the dogmatic image of thought. “I” empirical social science research methodology does not
is an old concept that weighs us down, one that, from the encourage the kind of experimentation and shock to
beginning, was an inadequate response to a problem the thought Deleuze and Guattari called for. What is too
world posed; and it becomes imperceptible in becoming, strange to fit into a category of methodology is most
disappearing when no longer needed. likely ignored, avoided.
As already explained, for Deleuze, everything, Being, is The creation of new concepts and the renewal of old
absolutely new and different—“the inexhaustible creation concepts in response to problems the world poses, how-
of difference, the constant production of the new, the inces- ever, does not mean the willy-nilly invention of concepts
sant genesis of the singular” (Smith, 2012, p. 185) until, that in a new model of inquiry in which the quantity of flimsy
is, the singular becomes normalized, closed off into con- new concepts is an indicator of the importance or validity
cept, territorialized. Our task is to put in motion the vari- of a study. The post qualitative inquirer interested in
able, difference, that has been closed off in internal relations Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophical concepts like the
within a concept so it can enter into external relations with rhizome, agencement, body-without-organs, and abstract
nonconceptual difference through “contingent empirical machine must engage in the long preparation of reading
events, that is through a unique and changing interplay of and thinking required to understand the difference between
forces” (Baugh, 1992, p. 136). Deleuze’s understanding of the dogmatic image of thought and the very different
force is Nietzschean, and he interpreted it to mean not image of thought that poses an ontology of immanence,
power or pressure but the intuited, sensed force of the pre- transcendental empiricism, thinking in thought, and a dif-
conceptual becoming of whatever has the “capacity to pro- ferent concept of concept. Obviously, this work will be
duce a change in becoming” (Stagoll, 2010, p. 111). very different from, for example, the quick, one-off inter-
Remember that the genesis of the actual is the singular and view studies common now in conventional humanist qual-
contingent interaction of the forces of the virtual on the itative research, and I argue that using conventional
plane of immanence. humanist social science research methodologies can only
How does this intuitive force work in transcendental hinder the experimentation and creation required for post
empiricism? Deleuze and Guattari (1980/1987) explained qualitative inquiry.
that it happens through “an experimentation in contact with Post qualitative inquiry cannot begin with or be accom-
the real” (p. 12), with real experience, with the actual, and plished within the ontology, empiricism, concepts, pro-
through thinking in thought. Deleuze (1968/1994) wrote cesses, methods, and practices of conventional social
that thought is “the genesis of the act of thinking in thought science research methodologies. For example, if one does a
itself. Something in the world forces us to think. This some- “pilot study,” one is not doing post qualitative inquiry
thing is an object not of recognition but of a fundamental because immanence cannot be piloted. But a post qualita-
encounter . . . it can only be sensed” (p. 139). Massumi tive inquirer might find a philosophical concept useful, as I
St. Pierre 7

did, in reorienting thought toward the continuous variation The work of post qualitative inquiry is not to find,
in living that might engender thinking in thought, experi- describe, interpret, and represent what is but “to bring into
mentation, and creation. being that which does not yet exist” (Deleuze, 1968/1994,
Given the “not yet” and the “yet to come” of an ontology p. 147), the new. For that reason, it must be treated “every
of immanence, it should not be surprising that post qualita- time as something which has not always existed, but begins,
tive inquiry exists in a different time, perhaps in Nietzsche’s forced and under constraint” (p. 136)—forced because it
(1983) untimely, a time of becoming. Stable, fixed, recog- cannot refer to or repeat an existing structure, essence, truth,
nizable identities with an essence are no longer thinkable or judgment. Post qualitative inquiry does not exist prior to
when everything, everyone, even philosophical concepts its arrival; it must be created, invented anew each time.
are becoming, differentiating, refusing Derrida’s problem, For that reason, there can be no post qualitative “research
presence. In becoming, the common sense doxa of a linear design” or “research process.” One must not to revert “to
past, present, and future—the idea of time as a moving for- the old procedures” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980/1987, p. 23)
ward—is no longer thinkable. Deleuze and Guattari and “face the threat of being stifled from the outset” (p. 27)
(1980/1987) described this different time as follows: by prescribed method. Because it may not be recognized as
what “everyone knows” (Deleuze, 1968/1994, p. 129) is
Aeon: the indefinite time of the event, the floating time that research, post qualitative inquiry may well point to the lim-
knows only speeds and continually divides that which its of intelligibility within a discipline. Those limits beg
transpires into an already-there that is at the same time not-yet questions about what can be thought and said in a field;
here, a simultaneous too-late and too-early, something that is questions about how it is possible for disciplines to have
both going to happen and has just happened. (p. 262)
missed turn after turn (e.g., interpretive, linguistic, post-
modern, posthuman, new empirical), be “paradigms behind”
Deleuze and Guattari contrasted Aeon to “Chronos: the
(Patton, 2008, p. 269), and therefore “stuck in the positiv-
time of measure that situates things and persons, develops a
ism of this or that discipline of learning” (Lyotard,
form, and determines a subject” (p. 262). Chronos is the
1979/1984, p. 41); questions about how power and politics
processual time of the teleological, historical empiricity of
maintain the status quo by labeling the new and different as
conventional humanist qualitative methodology—it is
“too way out there,” not scientific, not valid; questions
ordered, linear, personal, and present (self-presence; see
about whose interests are served by disciplining a discipline
Hein, 2013, for a discussion of Aeon and Chronos). Chronos
to be afraid of and refuse the “new”; questions about why
is structured—“a body of material which is preconstituted,
researchers are trained to embrace the normal (the same)
stopped, closed, and in a certain sense, dead” (Rabinow &
and be wary of the new (difference).
Sullivan, 1979, p. 11). Aeon, on the contrary, better describes
However, all research studies—even “normal,” conven-
the not-yet of post qualitative inquiry—it is impersonal,
tional studies—are grounded in and possible only within a
nonindividual, nonsubjective, nonlinear, never present.
particular onto-epistemological arrangement that enables a
Aeon never is.
particular methodology, or no methodology at all. Too often
social science researchers don’t study onto-epistemology
Post Qualitative Inquiry—Always New (philosophy) because methodology (science) has been fore-
grounded to try to make the social scientific. But this is an
and Different example of social science’s logical positivism/logical
Post qualitative inquiry never is. It has no substance, no empiricism at work, which tries to mimic the exact sciences
essence, no existence, no presence, no stability, no struc- and claims to produce objective, scientific knowledge that
ture. Its time is the time of Aeon—the not-yet, the yet-to- is theory-free and value-free. That claim is based on the
come. It presumes an ontology of immanence and is always theory/practice, think/do, context of discovery/context of
becoming. Its empiricism is transcendental empiricism justification binary which organizes logical empiricism and
whose task, unlike the empiricisms of logical empiricism produces the two components of the typical empirical social
and phenomenology (see St. Pierre, 2016a), is not to recog- science research process: (a) the pre-empirical, before-
nize its epistemic object—what is already known—but to fieldwork component of a study (theory, think) and (b) a
look for the conditions of emergence for what comes to be, separate “empirical” component of a study which involves
the actual that is unlike anything else. Transcendental going to “the field” and collecting “empirical” data (prac-
empiricism “is distinct from, and cannot be assimilated to, tice, do). But those binaries are thinkable and doable only if
sense-data empiricism” (Bryant, 2009, p. 28). It does not one accepts the premise that there can be a subjective, theo-
assume that humans have access to the world, to the thing- retical part of a study that comes first (context of discovery)
in-itself, but rather that the world exists for-itself, and that which can and must be put aside and separated from the
its difference, its diversity, is much more complex than the objective, theory-free, purely “scientific” part of the study
human mind can comprehend. (context of justification; see Reichenbach, 1938).
8 Qualitative Inquiry 00(0)

Post qualitative inquiry, which uses transcendental To accomplish such work, the post qualitative inquirer,
empiricism (not the empiricism of the empirical/rational the inventor, the creator, assumes an affirmative attitude of
binary of classical epistemology) and an ontology of imma- trust in the world and experiments. Rajchman (2000)
nence, recognizes no such distinction and is philosophical explained as follows:
(metaphysical, speculative) and empirical at once—from the
beginning. Refusing the logic of those binaries means refus- It is not so much a matter of being optimistic or pessimistic as
ing the conventional social science research process itself, of being realistic about the new forces not already contained in
especially the presumed linearity and systematicity of its our projects and programs and the ways of thinking that
empirical work, because one is always empirical, always “in accompany them. In other words, to make connections one
needs not knowledge, certainty, or even ontology, but rather a
the field,” and because the virtual cannot be systematized. In
trust that something may come out, though one is not yet
post qualitative inquiry, one doesn’t have to be in some place completely sure what. (p. 7)
in particular (an island, a classroom)—a research site—“to
do empirical fieldwork in the field.” The transcendental field
Because it is always already immanent and experimental,
is everywhere, limitless, immanent, not yet actualized into
post qualitative inquiry cannot be a new social science
real experience, always becoming, always new and differ-
research methodology which can be taught and learned.
ent, not yet captured by the doxa. It also means refusing typi-
Again, post qualitative inquiry is different each time it
cal social science representations of research that follow that
appears, produced by different contingent and unpredictable
process; for example, in post qualitative inquiry there would
forces in experimentation with the real; that is, the condi-
be no separate “Methodology” section of a research report
tions of its emergence cannot be repeated because they dis-
that presumes a separate empirical component of a study.
appear immediately, and what one post qualitative inquirer
This radical, experimental empiricism embraces the barely
“does” cannot serve as a model for others. For that reason—
intelligible variation in living, the virtual in actuality, in real
and I want to be perfectly clear here—there can be no post
experience—“present in everything that occurs” (Lecercle,
qualitative research methodology or research methods, no
2002, p. 115)—which points to the presubjective, precon-
post qualitative research designs, no post qualitative
ceptual virtual forces of immanence that enable, every time,
research practices, no post qualitative data or methods of
the creation of the new and different.
data collection or methods of data analysis, no representa-
It goes without saying that the ontology of immanence
tions of a stable, sensory “lived” world, no post qualitative
and transcendental empiricism that guide post qualitative
findings, no post qualitative research report format because,
inquiry cannot be introduced at the end of a study that did again, post qualitative inquiry never is, it never stabilizes.
not begin with them: a study cannot be made post qualita- The concepts and categories that order conventional empiri-
tive after the fact. To repeat, one begins post qualitative cal social science research methodologies, conceived chiefly
inquiry without a methodology. And because each instance in positivist social science that are taken up even in interpre-
of post qualitative inquiry is different from others, looking tive qualitative methodology, are not thinkable in post quali-
for similarities among studies labeled post qualitative tative inquiry. Instead, it adopts the affirmative ideas of both
makes no sense. One post qualitative study cannot not be Spinoza and Deleuze, as Haynes (2012) noted below:
“like” another; so studies cannot be linked in internal rela-
tions by similarities under the concept, post qualitative We do not know what a body can do [Spinoza]. Nor do we know
inquiry, thereby producing a “body of research” called “post what a thinker can think. Deleuze’s practical project strives to
qualitative inquiry.” be faithful to these two important claims. Consequently, a
In inquiry that is always new and different, the typical Deleuzian politics [or inquiry] cannot be programmatic, but
markers of goodness, adequacy, validity, objectivity, and must rather be experimental. (p. 68)
replicability used to judge conventional social science
research are not appropriate because those judgments I believe it is more difficult to be experimental than to fol-
impede the experimentation and creativity required for the low the self-evident, common sense doxa of a clear, well-
new. Instead, we look for and affirm novelty and difference defined, preexisting plan, a methodology designed to
and use categories like “Interesting, Remarkable, or Impor­ control and contain inquiry in the service of valid science. If
tant” (Deleuze and Guattari (1991/1994, p. 82). “There are post qualitative inquiry does not exist, that means it cannot
never any criteria other than the tenor of existence, the inten- be applied; there is nothing to apply.
sification of life” that enable “possibilities of movements
and intensities, so as once again to give birth to new modes Refusing “Application” in Post
of existence” (p. 74) as well as to “people that do not yet
exist” (p. 109). This charge may seem grand, but it is accom-
Qualitative Inquiry
plished in the “concrete situations” (Bogue, 1997, p. 103) of I repeat, if post qualitative inquiry doesn’t exist but is
actual real experience, in the “concrete richness of the sen- immanent, there is nothing “to apply.” And, if post qua­
sible” (Deleuze & Parnet, 2007c, p. 54). litative inquiry has no preexisting research methods or
St. Pierre 9

practices, there is nothing in particular “to do.” Foucault Post qualitative inquiry refuses the hegemony of any
(as cited in Halperin, 1995) provided the following ratio- methodology, including qualitative methodology, which, of
nale for this position: the big three empirical social science research methodolo-
gies in the United States—qualitative, quantitative, and
If I don’t ever say what must be done, it isn’t because I believe mixed methods—seems to be the default methodology for
that there’s nothing to be done . . . on the contrary, it is because those who want to do something new and different in the
I think that there are a thousand things to do, to invent. (p. 53) ontological, posthuman, affective, new material, and new
empirical turns. But in post qualitative inquiry, any method-
Doctoral students and other new researchers interested in ology is a trap. Manning (2016) appropriately called meth-
post qualitative inquiry, however, might be anxious and odology an “apparatus of capture” (p. 32) and, once captured
confused at this point about a lack of instruction, about not by its methods and practices, it is very difficult not to revert
knowing what to do. Faced with the same concern, Foucault to something like systematically observing children in class-
(as cited in Miller, 1993), responded, “but my project is rooms to find affect (Hinchliffe, Kearnes, Degen, &
precisely to bring it about that they ‘no longer know what Whatmore, 2005, p. 649) or designing a humanist qualitative
to do,’ so that the acts, gestures, discourses that up until interview study with speaking subjects and, after data col-
then had seemed to go without saying become problematic, lection, trying to make the study posthuman. Methodologies
difficult, dangerous” (p. 235). In regard to Deleuze’s are models that limit what can be thought and done. At some
response to the “what to do” question, Massumi (2015) point, the possibilities of the model are exhausted and its
wrote, “Any a priori assumptions can only short-circuit the explanatory power greatly diminished. Kuhn (1970) intro-
process. The thinking of the thing must be open to the duced the concept, paradigm shift, to describe how scientists
unplayed-out in advance: it must be speculative” (para. leave behind a particular scientific model when it is unable
12). Derrida (1966/1978) also refused the stranglehold of to respond to a new set of problems such as those an ontol-
what is, of presence, of what might be, encouraging instead ogy of immanence and transcendental empiricism pose to
the inexhaustible play of a structure: “Play is the disruption conventional humanist qualitative methodology.
of presence . . . Being must be conceived as presence or It seems to me the larger problems to overcome in the
absence on the basis of the possibility of play and not the new work are, first, methodolatry, which the feminist, Mary
other way around” (p. 292). Foucault’s (1994/1997) ques- Daly, in 1973, called the worship of method, the belief in
tion that follows is the initiating question of post qualita- the necessity of method, the uncritical application of a
tive inquiry: methodology regardless of its misalignment with the onto-
epistemology of the study. The second problem is scientism,
We must make the intelligible appear against a backdrop of
emptiness and deny its necessity. We must think that what which Habermas (1968/1971) described as “science’s belief
exists is far from filling all possible spaces. To make a truly in itself; that is, the conviction that we can no longer under-
unavoidable challenge of the question: What can be played? stand science as one form of possible knowledge, but rather
(pp. 139-140) must identify knowledge with science” (p. 4). Scientism
requires that inquiry look “scientific” so it can be consid-
Indeed, what can be played in post qualitative inquiry? ered valid and rigorous, regardless of the onto-epistemol-
The “post” in post qualitative inquiry is there for a rea- ogy used. For that reason, social science researchers feel
son, as I explained earlier, because it takes up the poststruc- they must use some methodology, any methodology, even if
tural critique of whatever has come to be. Following it’s absurd. Post qualitative inquiry, however, as I make
Foucault, post qualitative inquiry refuses necessity, espe- clear throughout this article, is “methodology-free” (St.
cially the necessity of method; following Deleuze, it refuses Pierre, 2016b, p. 10).
the simple intelligibility of what exists, the given, what That is why post method, “after method” (Law, 2004),
everyone knows; following Derrida, it refuses methodolo- “against method” (Manning, 2015) in post qualitative
gy’s centering, structuring desires; following Lyotard inquiry, there is nothing in particular “to do”—no typical
(1989), it refuses to provide “maintenance crews for the big research practices like conducting a pilot study, choosing a
explanatory machines” (p. 182), empirical social science’s research design, forming a research problem, writing a
research methodologies. It refuses a knee-jerk reliance on “subjectivity statement,” systematically interviewing and
method and, instead, encourages experimentation and cre- observing people to “collect” data, analyzing data by cod-
ation. As Smith (2012) explained, “no method can deter- ing it or looking for themes and patterns across the data,
mine in advance what compels us to think, it is rather the carefully representing participants by describing them in
fortuitousness of the encounter that guarantees the necessity detail using the identity categories (male, wealthy, well-
of what it forces us to think” (p. 181). Post qualitative educated, white, heterosexual, and so on), writing rich,
inquiry, then, begins with an encounter with the real, not thick descriptions of culture (the passive, static background
with method, as discussed in the next section. against which the agentive human appears illuminated in
10 Qualitative Inquiry 00(0)

the foreground), identifying findings, and writing up the Again, much of the “new” work shifts its focus from epis-
study using the conventional research format that follows temology to ontology, from knowing to being, from the
logical empiricism’s context of discovery/context of justifi- discursive to the nondiscursive, from theory to practice;
cation binary. “Practice” is typically thought within that but that is not enough, as Derrida noted. We must over-
binary as what follows, is separate from and uncontami- turn the entire conceptual order in which those conceptual
nated by thought, and it is assumed that the procedural, binaries can be thought, and that work may begin by
instrumental, and codified systematicity of practice can not catching at each concept (e.g., practice) that exists in a
only guarantee a study’s scientific validity but can also be binary opposition (e.g., theory/practice) and not using it.
transposed from one study to another. It is difficult to avoid words like “practice” that, I believe,
“Practice” involves doing the right thing at the right time no longer work, but post qualitative inquiry encourages
in the right place as if proper, procedure can guarantee truth. us to invent new concepts that reorient our thinking and
My concern is that I believe the concept, practice, inevitably break apart the chain of concepts that structure a worn out
draws out it opposite, theory, and the binary in which they conceptual order.
exist, theory/practice, a binary initiated by Descartes’s mind/ To sum up and repeat, there is no preexisting research
body binary. Descartes’s epistemology was, of course, ratio- methodology or research methods “to apply” in post quali-
nalism which privileges the mind, while empiricism privi- tative inquiry and no research practices that tell one what
leges the body. The entire structure of empirical social “to do.” Post qualitative inquiry requires the creation of
science research methodology is problematic because it new concepts that help lay out a plane for new inquiry that
exists in that binary which sets the rational (mind, theory) is different every time.
against the empirical (body, practice). This epistemological
problem is so serious that it compelled Butler (1992) to write
Recommendations
that the “epistemological point of departure in philosophy is
inadequate” (p. 8). Indeed, scholars shifting from a focus on The next obvious question, I think, is how does one “begin”
epistemology to ontology in the “new” work, have invented post qualitative inquiry if not with an approved methodol-
concepts like “onto-epistemology” and “ethico-onto-episte- ogy and its research methods and practices? Derrida
mology” (Barad, 2007, p. 185), blurring that distinction. (1967/1974) advised that we begin “wherever we are; in a
Is it possible not to revert to that binary—not to separate text where we already believe ourselves to be” (p. 162).
the mind and the body, theory and practice, not to identify Deleuze (1970/1988) wrote that “one never commences;
“research practices” or any other kind of practices as if they one never has a tabula rasa; one slips in, enters in the mid-
are somehow separate from an image of thought? This is a dle; one takes up or lays down rhythms” (p. 123). Foucault
problem post qualitative inquiry can address, this separa- (1982/1988) explained that “each of my works is a part of
tion of the human into mind and matter and the privileging my own biography” (p. 11). Indeed, students I’ve worked
of the human as one who can think and do as opposed to with interested in the “new” work who have not been over-
everything else that exists. trained in methodology seem not to worry about “how to
To begin with, post qualitative inquiry, following begin” and “what to do.” They come to education from
Derrida, encourages the breakdown of all binaries, espe- diverse fields like literary studies, chemistry, linguistics,
cially the epistemological binary that separates mind and mathematics, philosophy, music, economics, art, law, the
body, theory and practice. However, a simple reversal of the classics, history, education, and journalism and pick up
binary, privileging the body and practice instead of the mind rhythms they are already in the middle of in their lives.
and theory—which seems to be the case in much of the They may believe they must put aside prior interests for
“new” work—is not sufficient. The entire structure, the new ones that are more “academic” and “scientific,” but,
conceptual order, in which those binaries are thinkable must typically, they are already experts with questions they want
be overturned. As Derrida (1971/1982) explained, to pursue.
In other words, they’ve already begun their “research,”
Deconstruction cannot limit itself or proceed immediately to a and I encourage them to refuse methodolatry and scienti-
neutralization: it must, by means of a double gesture, a double cism and, instead, attend to the strange ontological haunt-
science, a double writing, practice an overturning of the ings of their lives—perhaps an old encounter that won’t let
classical opposition and a general displacement of the system. go or a new one that’s become intelligible—moments of
It is only on this condition that deconstruction will provide
shock and disorientation almost unrecognized which escape
itself the means with which to intervene in the field of
oppositions that it criticizes, which is also a field of
good sense and common sense. Siffrin (2017) aptly called
nondiscursive forces . . . Each concept, moreover, belongs to a this kind of encounter an “ontological breach.” One begins
systematic chain . . . Deconstruction does not consist in passing post qualitative inquiry with a concrete encounter with the
from one concept to another but in overturning and displacing real, not with a research question. Perhaps the best a teacher
a conceptual order, as well as the nonconceptual order with can do is get out of students’ way and help them refuse this
which the conceptual order is articulated. (p. 329) or that necessity. They will “do” and “think” something,
St. Pierre 11

and if that doesn’t work, they will “do” and “think” some- methodologies but can refuse them and do something dif-
thing else. That’s the nature of post qualitative inquiry. ferent from the beginning.
However, those who have been well-trained in research All that reading can reorient thought and help one exper-
methodology may well have to try to forget it, to put it iment with how the forces of the virtual that have not yet
aside, lest it overwhelm creativity and experimentation. If been actualized might come together to create something
one finds herself unwilling to give up some methodological new. What might such experimentation create? Deleuze
concept like data or a practice like interviewing, I think it’s (2001) suggested it might create “nothing less than the
important, as Foucault advised, to question its necessity. unfolding of a space in which it is finally once again possi-
How is it possible to think “data” in inquiry guided by an ble to think” (p. 92). Reading is key, but no one can read for
ontology of immanence and transcendental empiricism or you, and people who read a lot can always tell when others
to interview humans face-to-face in posthuman inquiry? don’t. My advice to students is that if the text seems too
What’s going on there? As Derrida explained, using a con- hard to read, read harder and learn to be comfortable in the
cept or practice created in one image of thought brings with discomfort of not knowing because “to work at the edge of
it the chain of related concepts and practices in which it incompetence” (Eisner, 1996, p. 412) is the steady state of
exists and, thereby, that image of thought itself. Avoiding the best scholarship. I’ve learned that those who don’t know
the traps of common sense concepts and practices can be “what to do” have likely not read enough. Reading brings
immobilizing initially until one acquires concepts that have confidence.
been available all along, perhaps for centuries, or invents From reading, one also acquires those concepts that reori-
new concepts. ent thought. The concepts of poststructural scholarship can
A second recommendation follows from the need for be especially useful for working in an ontology of imma-
new concepts and ways of thinking. Instead of studying nence and transcendental empiricism, and it’s difficult not to
methodology, I recommend those interested in post qualita- put to work, for example, Lyotard’s differend, Foucault’s
tive inquiry study philosophy, ontology, epistemology, disciplinary power, Derrida’s deconstruction, and a blast of
empiricism, social theories, and the history and philosophy concepts from Deleuze and Guattari including assemblage,
of science and social science. Feminist philosophy is key, rhizome, multiplicity, diagram, refrain, territory, body-with-
because feminists have typically provided powerful cri- out-organs, and so on. And, of course, there are old concepts
tiques of dominant thought, as have other “Others” on the like Whitehead’s process, Spinoza’s affect, Nietzsche’s eter-
outside of necessity. I recommend avoiding methodology nal return, Lucretius’s atomism, Tarde’s monadology,
for as long as possible. If needed, reading an introductory Bergson’s duration, and Hume’s external relations. And
text or two should suffice, but going too deep risks capture new concepts like vibrant matter, agential realism, actant,
by methodology’s trap. diffraction, and plasticity. These concepts cannot be
If one wants to do the “new” work, one has to understand “applied” as Massumi (2002b) explained, “The first rule of
the “old” work. For example, I recommend studying British thumb if you want to invent or reinvent concepts is simple:
empiricism and Vienna Circle logical empiricism to under- don’t apply them” (p. 17). Instead, use them to reorient
stand what, if anything, is “new” about new empiricism and thought. Buchanan (2017) cautioned against a “plain lan-
different about transcendental empiricism. To understand guage approach” (p. 458) to concepts (especially Deleuze
the critique of the doxa, the dogmatic image of thought, I and Guattari’s concepts), that is, assuming we know what
recommend studying what Massumi (1987) called the words that seem ordinary like process or duration or refrain
“orphan line” (p. x) of philosophers, Deleuze’s lineage: mean. Even concept doesn’t mean what we think at first
Lucretius, Hume, Spinoza, Nietzsche, and Bergson—and, glance. Furthermore, a concept like affect has been taken up
in philosophy of science, Gilbert Simondon and Raymond quite differently in psychology and in philosophy. These
Ruyer. As noted in this article, the French poststructuralists concepts we learn in reading must be traced genealogically
are important in understanding immanence. One should not and across disciplines and used carefully.
skip Derrida. At some point, doctoral students have to graduate, and
Studying the history and politics of social science helps that deadline forces focus. My third recommendation, after
us understand that the social sciences and their methodol- avoiding methodology and reading and reading to find new
ogies were invented, made up, and produced in the politics concepts for thinking differently and then differently again,
of their historical time. Since then, they have been legiti- is for students to trust themselves and carve out a temporary
mated by unexamined repetition in text after text and in space in which to think and write about an encounter that
university research courses as if they are real and rational. presses on them. I advise they trust their reading to sustain
However, I argue they are neither normal nor true nor nec- them, trust the concepts they’ve studied that reorient their
essary and represent stuck places that get in the way of thought, and trust experimentation and creativity, which will
experimentation and creativity. We no longer have to be constituted differently in every post qualitative study.
“work the ruins” (St. Pierre & Pillow, 2000) of those Following Deleuze (1990/1995), I advise them to trust their
12 Qualitative Inquiry 00(0)

“belief in the world”: “If you believe in the world, you post qualitative inquiry. I especially appreciated Dr. Guba’s
engender new space-times, however small their surface and (1990) book, The Paradigm Dialog, which helped me under-
volume . . . Our ability to resist control, or our submission to stand the place of methodology in larger conversations about
it, has to be assessed at the level of our every move. We need epistemology and ontology. It is that conversation that con-
tinues to inform my work.
both creativity and a people” (p. 176), a people yet to come
2. Given a recent spate of instances of authors poaching oth-
for whom methodology is unintelligible. Trust is affirmative
ers’ ideas without attribution, it seemed necessary to write
and active, helps keep anxiety at bay, and encourages experi- this sentence to counter such careless scholarship. Having
mentation with the continuous variation of living. to state that “I invented” post qualitative inquiry should not
In this article, I have repeated key points about post qual- be necessary in academia where sound, ethical scholarship
itative inquiry: (a) it uses an ontology of immanence and requires that we attribute an “original” idea to the individual
transcendental empiricism; (b) it begins with a concrete scholar who created it. However, the idea that there is an “I”
encounter with the real that disrupts the doxa of common that precedes an act goes against post qualitative inquiry’s
sense and good sense; (c) it is creative and experimental; (d) ontological image of thought described in this article. This
each instance of post qualitative inquiry is different from dilemma is common when we must both use and refuse what
the next, that is, it is created anew each time; (e) there is no Spivak (1974) called “the only language we know” (p. lxx).
Of course, we can also invent new language, which scholars
post qualitative methodology, hence, no research methods
are doing in this ontological turn.
or research practices to apply; (f) the best preparation for
3. Hillevi Lenz-Taguchi and I recently edited a special issue
post qualitative inquiry is reading theory and philosophy; of Qualitative Inquiry, 23(9), 2017, on using concepts as or
(g) from reading come philosophical concepts that don’t instead of methods in social science inquiry. When we asked
represent reality but reorient thought; and, finally, (h) the Claire Colebrook how we might shift social science and edu-
post qualitative inquirer proceeds with an affirmative trust cational research away from preexisting, often positivist,
that “something may come out, though one is not yet com- methods and methodologies, she suggested we begin with
pletely sure what” (Rajchman, 2000, p. 7). I hope the repeti- concepts and not methods. Authors of the articles in that spe-
tive drumbeat of these key ideas throughout the article cial issue illustrate the very different and creative approaches
serves as a refrain (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980/1987, p. 310) they used when we invited them to think, inquire, and write
that begins to mark a territory for thinking in thought and with concepts.
the not yet we might create.
References
Acknowledgment Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics
and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Durham, NC:
Many thanks to my good friend and colleague, Serge Hein, who
Duke University Press.
rescued me from a stuck place I thought/wrote myself into in this
Baugh, B. (1992). Transcendental empiricism: Deleuze’s response
article.
to Hegel. Man and World, 25, 133-148.
Bogue, R. (1997). Minor writing and minor literature. Symplokē,
Declaration of Conflicting Interests 5(1-2), 99-118.
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect Britzman, D. P. (1995). “The question of belief”: Writing post-
to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. structural ethnography. International Journal of Qualitative
Studies in Education, 8, 229-238.
Funding Bryant, L. R. (2008). Difference and givenness: Deleuze’s tran-
scendental empiricism and the ontology of immanence.
The author(s) received no financial support for the research,
Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Bryant, L. R. (2009). Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism: Notes
towards a transcendental materialism. In E. Willatt & M. Lee
Notes (Eds.), Thinking between Deleuze and Kant: A strange encoun-
1. This article is based on the 2017 Egon Guba Lecture I pre- ter (pp. 28-48). London, England: Continuum.
sented for the American Educational Research Association’s Buchanan, I. (2017). Assemblage theory, or, the future of an illusion.
Qualitative Research Special Interest Group. As I explained Deleuze Studies, 11, 457-474.
in my lecture, I regret that I did not know Professor Guba Butler, J. (1992). Contingent foundations: Feminism and the ques-
personally, but one of his students, Patti Later, was my pro- tion of “postmodernism.” In J. Butler & J. W. Scott (Eds.),
fessor, and I know she passed on to me much of what she Feminists theorize the political (pp. 3-21). New York, NY:
learned from him. Professor Guba’s books with Yvonna Routledge.
Lincoln, Naturalistic Inquiry (Lincoln & Guba, 1985) and Butler, J. (1995). For a careful reading. In L. Nicholson (Ed.),
Fourth Generation Evaluation (Guba & Lincoln, 1989), Feminist contentions: A philosophical exchange (pp. 127-143).
texts I eagerly studied as a doctoral student (1991-1995), New York, NY: Routledge.
helped to invent what I call “conventional humanist qualita- Daly, M. (1973). Beyond God the Father. Boston, MA: Beacon
tive inquiry,” which I know intimately and also critique for Press.
St. Pierre 13

Deleuze, G. (1983). Nietzsche and philosophy (H. Tomlinson, Derrida, J. (1996). Archive fever: A Freudian impression (E.
Trans.). New York, NY: Columbia University Press. (Original Prenowitz, Trans.). Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago
work published 1962) Press. (Original work published in 1995)
Deleuze, G. (1988). Spinoza: Practical philosophy (R. Hurley, Eisner, E. (1996). Should novels count as dissertations in education?
Trans.). San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books. (Original Research in the Teaching of English, 30, 403-427.
work published 1970) Foucault, M. (1970). The order of things: An archaeology of the
Deleuze, G. (1989). Cinema 2: The time-image (H. Tomlinson human sciences (A. M. S. Smith, Trans.). New York, NY:
& R. Galeta, Trans.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Vintage Books. (Original work published 1966).
Press. (Original work published 1985) Foucault, M. (1972). The archaeology of knowledge and the dis-
Deleuze, G. (1990). The logic of sense (C. V. Boundas, Ed., & M. course on language (A. M. S. Smith, Trans.). New York, NY:
Lester, Trans.). New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Pantheon Books. (Original work published 1971)
(Original work published 1969) Foucault, M. (1985). The history of sexuality: Vol. 2. The use of
Deleuze, G. (1992). Expressionism in philosophy: Spinoza (M. pleasure (R. Hurley, Trans.). New York, NY: Vintage Books.
Joughin, Trans.). New York, NY: Zone Books. (Original work (Original work published 1984)
published 1968) Foucault, M. (1988). Technologies of the self. In L. H. Martin,
Deleuze, G. (1994). Difference and repetition (P. Patton, Trans.). H. Gutman, & P. H. Hutton (Eds.), Technologies of the
New York, NY: Columbia University Press. (Original work self: A seminar with Michel Foucault (pp. 16-49). Amherst:
published 1968) University of Massachusetts Press. (Text is a partial record of
Deleuze, G. (1995). Negotiations: 1972-1990 (M. Joughin, Trans.). a 1982 seminar)
New York, NY: Columbia University Press. (Original work Foucault, M. (1997). Ethics: Subjectivity and truth (P. Rabinow,
published 1990) Ed. & R. Hurley et al., Trans.) (Vol. 1 of Essential works
Deleuze, G. (2001). Immanence: A life (A. Boyman, Trans.). In of Foucault, 1954-1984). New York, NY: The New Press.
Pure immanence: Essays on a life (pp. 53-102). New York, (Original work published 1994)
NY: Zone Books. (Original work published 1995) Guba, E. G. (Ed.). (1990). The paradigm dialog. Thousand Oaks,
Deleuze, G. (2004). Desert Islands and other texts, 1953-1974 (D. CA: SAGE.
Lapoujade, Ed., & M. Taomina, Trans.). Los Angeles, CA: Guba, E. G., & Lincoln, Y. S. (1989). Fourth generation evalua-
Semiotext(e). (Original work published 2002) tion. Newbury Park, CA: SAGE.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Habermas, J. (1971). Knowledge and human interests (J. J.
Capitalism and schizophrenia (B. Massumi, Trans.). Shapiro, Trans.). Boston, MA: Beacon Press. (Original work
Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. (Original published 1968)
work published 1980) Halperin, D. (1995). Saint Foucault: Towards a gay hagiography.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1994). What is philosophy? (H. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Tomlinson & G. Burchell, Trans.). New York, NY: Columbia Hayden, P. (1998). Multiplicity and becoming: The pluralist
University Press. (Original work published 1991) empiricism of Gilles Deleuze. New York, NY: Peter Lang.
Deleuze, G., & Parnet, C. (2007a). The actual and the virtual (E. Haynes, P. (2012). Immanent transcendence: Reconfiguring
Ross Albert, Trans.). In Dialogues II (Rev. ed.) (H. Tomlinson materialism in continental philosophy. London, England:
& B. Habberjam, Trans.) (pp. 148-152), New York, NY: Bloomsbury.
Columbia University Press. (Original work published 1997) Hein, S. F. (2013). Thinking and writing with ontological time in
Deleuze, G., & Parnet, C. (2007b). A conversation: What is it? qualitative inquiry. Qualitative Inquiry, 19, 493-501.
What is it for? In Dialogues II (Rev. ed.) (H. Tomlinson & Hein, S. F. (2016). The new materialism in qualitative inquiry:
B. Tomlinson, Trans.) (pp. 1-35). New York, NY: Columbia How compatible are the philosophies of Barad and Deleuze?
University Press. Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, 16, 132-140.
Deleuze, G., & Parnet, C. (2007c). On the superiority of Anglo- Hinchliffe, S., Kearnes, M., Degen, M., & Whatmore, S. (2005).
American literature. In Dialogues II (Rev. ed.) (H. Tomlinson Urban wild things: A cosmopolitical experiment. Environment
& B. Tomlinson, Trans.) (pp. 36-76). New York, NY: and Planning D: Society and Space, 23, 643-658.
Columbia University Press. James, W. (1996). Essays in radical empiricism. Lincoln, NE:
Derrida, J. (1974). Of grammatology (G. C. Spivak, Trans.). University of Nebraska Press. (Original work published 1912)
Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Kuhn, T. S. (1970). The structure of scientific revolutions (2nd
(Original work published 1967) ed.). Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
Derrida, J. (1978). Structure, sign and play in the discourse of the Law, J. (2004). After method: Mess in social science research.
human sciences. In Writing and difference (A. Bass, Trans.) London, England: Routledge.
(pp. 278-293). Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Lecercle, J. J. (2002). Deleuze and language. New York, NY:
(Lecture delivered 1966) Palgrave Macmillan.
Derrida, J. (1982). Signature, event, context. In Margins of phi- Lincoln, Y. S., & Guba, E. G. (1985). Naturalistic inquiry.
losophy (A. Bass, Trans.) (pp. 307-330). Chicago, IL: The Newbury Park, CA: SAGE.
University of Chicago Press. (Original work published 1971) Lyotard, J.-F. (1984). The postmodern condition: A report
Derrida, J. (1994). Specters of Marx: The state of the debt, the work on knowledge (G. Bennington & B. Massumi, Trans.).
of mourning, and the new international (P. Kamuf, Trans.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. (Original work
New York, NY: Routledge. (Original work published 1993) published 1979)
14 Qualitative Inquiry 00(0)

Lyotard, J.-F. (1988). The differend: Phrases in dispute (G. Van Smith, D. W. (2010a). Deleuze: Concepts as continuous variation
Den Abbeele, Trans.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota (J. S. Litaker, Interviewer). Journal of Philosophy: A Cross-
Press. (Original work published 1983) Disciplinary Inquiry, 5(11), 57-60.
Lyotard, J.-F. (1989). Philosophy and painting in the age of their Smith, D. W. (2010b). On the becoming of concepts. In D. Smith
experimentation: Contribution to an idea of postmodernity (Ed.), Essays on Deleuze (pp. 122-145). Edinburgh, Scotland:
(M. M. Brewer & D. Brewer, Trans.). In A. Benjamin (Ed.), The Edinburgh University Press.
Lyotard reader (pp. 181-195). Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell. Smith, D. W. (2012). Concepts and creation. In R. Braidotti & P.
Manning, E. (2013). Always more than one: Individuation’s Pisters (Eds.), Revising normativity with Deleuze (pp. 175-188).
dance. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. London, England: Bloomsbury.
Manning, E. (2015). Against method. In P. Vaninni (Ed.), Non- Somers-Hall, H. (2012). Hegel, Deleuze, and the critique of rep-
representational methodologies: Re-envisioning research resentation: Dialectics of negation and difference. Albany:
(pp. 52-71). New York, NY: Routledge. State University of New York Press.
Manning, E. (2016). The minor gesture. Durham, NC: Duke Spivak, G. C. (1974). Translator’s preface. In J. Derrida (Ed.), Of
University Press. grammatology (G. C. Spivak, Trans., pp. ix-xc). Baltimore,
Massumi, B. (1987). Translator’s forward. In G. Deleuze & F. MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Guattari (Eds.), A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizo- Stagoll, C. (2010). Force. In A. Parr (Ed.), The Deleuze diction-
phrenia (pp. ix-xv). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota ary (Rev. ed., pp. 110-112). Edinburgh, Scotland: Edinburgh
Press. University Press.
Massumi, B. (Ed.). (2002a). A shock to thought: Expression after St. Pierre, E. A. (1995). Arts of existence: The construction of
Deleuze and Guattari. London, England: Routledge. subjectivity in older, while southern women (Unpublished
Massumi, B. (2002b). Parables for the virtual: Movement, affect, doctoral dissertation). The Ohio State University, Columbus.
sensation. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. St. Pierre, E. A. (2011). Post qualitative research: The critique and
Massumi, B. (2015, November 8). Undigesting Deleuze. Los the coming after. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The
Angeles, CA: Los Angeles Review of Books. SAGE handbook of qualitative inquiry (4th ed., pp. 611-635).
Miller, J. (1993). The passion of Michel Foucault. New York, NY: Los Angeles, CA: SAGE.
Doubleday. St. Pierre, E. A. (2012). Another postmodern report on knowledge:
Nietzsche, F. (1983). Untimely meditations (R. J. Hollingdale, Positivism and its others. International Journal of Leadership
Trans.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. in Education, 15, 483-503.
Patton, C. (2008). Finding “fields” in the field: Normalcy, risk, St. Pierre, E. A. (2013). The posts continue: Becoming.
and ethnographic inquiry. International Review of Qualitative International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 26,
Research, 1, 255-274. 646-657.
Rabinow, P., & Sullivan, W. M. (1979). The interpretive turn: St. Pierre, E. A. (2016a). The empirical and the new empiricisms.
Emergence of an approach. In P. Rabinow & W. M. Sullivan Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, 16, 111-124.
(Eds.), Interpretive social science: A reader (pp. 1-21). St. Pierre, E. A. (2016b). Untraining educational researchers.
Berkeley: University of California Press. Research in Education, 96(1), 6-11.
Rajchman, J. (2000). The Deleuze connections. Cambridge, MA: St. Pierre, E. A. (2017). Haecceity: Laying out a plane for post
The MIT Press. qualitative inquiry. Qualitative Inquiry, 23, 686-698.
Rajchman, J. (2001). Introduction. In G. Deleuze (Ed.), Pure St. Pierre, E. A., & Pillow, W. S. (Eds.). (2000). Working the
immanence: Essays on a life (A. Boyman, Trans.) (pp. 10-23). ruins: Feminist poststructural theory and methods in educa-
NewYork, NY: ZoneBooks. tion. New York, NY: Routledge.
Reichenbach, H. (1938). Experience and prediction. Chicago, IL: St. Pierre, E. A. (in press). Writing post qualitative inquiry.
The University of Chicago Press. Qualitative Inquiry.
Richardson, L. (1994). Writing: A method of inquiry. In N. K.
Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative
research (pp. 516-529). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
Author Biography
Richardson, L., & St. Pierre, E. A. (2005). Writing: A method of Elizabeth A. St. Pierre is professor of critical studies in the edu-
inquiry. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of cational theory and practice department and affiliated professor of
qualitative research (3rd ed., pp. 959-978). Thousand Oaks, both the Qualitative Research Program and the Institute for
CA: SAGE. Women’s Studies at the University of Georgia, USA. Her work
Siffrin, N. (2017). The untimely: Post-qualitative inquiry’s machinic focuses on poststructural theories of language and subjectivity
function (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of and, since 2011, on a critique of conventional humanist qualitative
Georgia, Athens. research methodology that she calls post qualitative inquiry.