New Materialisms, Material Methods, and the Research Process: A Creative Experiment in Cutting Together-Apart

Abstract

New materialisms call for a (re)thinking of matter as agentic and lively. With the aim to recognize the vitality of matter within qualitative research, scholars are developing material methods and creative processes to explore the intimate connections between humans and nonhumans. Herein we use Barad’s understanding of diffraction to revisit the research process as an entanglement of theory, method, and analysis. More specifically, we take up the concept of cutting together-apart, adapting it in a series of creative practices focused on women’s exercising bodies and relationships with activewear. In each activity, we experiment with cutting various materials from the project (i.e., digital data, activewear clothing) with each other, feminist colleagues, and project participants. Across these creative experiments, we came to ‘new’ ways of knowing the activewear phenomenon evoked through the materiality and affective processes of ‘cutting,’ as well as new ethical considerations about human and nonhuman co-participants.