Diffracting Through an Ethical Itch: Becoming a Response-Able Dance Education Researcher

Abstract

In this article I describe and discuss how an ethical doubt has performed on my a/r/tographic research journey and led to ethical, methodological and choreographic-pedagogic insights. The ethical doubt emerges from working with the video format as research presentation in a dance education research project where children are involved. The focus of this article is how I dealt with these ethical challenges through a diffractive inquiry, and further how such an inquiry led into a sense-making process entangling ethics, research, choreography, dance and education. Through exploring how the ethical doubt performed on the research process, this article contributes to a rather scarce field of research on the topic of ethical issues in research presentation and ethical-pedagogical-choreographic and research methodological entanglements. In the article I am thinking with the theoretical frameworks of post-qualitative inquiry and agential realism. The apparatus of inquiry is constructed from a/r/tography, performative inquiry, and diffractive inquiry though a transcorporeal engagement with these research methods. As I unravel the research journey, I also diffract with the concepts of response-ability and the expanded notion of choreography. In the final discussion I propose a response-able practice of research through a relational approach and attunement to research, pedagogy, choreography, and ethics.