P(l)aying Attention: Wilding Correspondence as Methodological Possibility

Abstract

There is an overwhelming focus on scholarly agendas in the field of qualitative inquiry, yet what about scholarly attention? In responding to this question, the authors draw upon Ingold’s (2018) conceptualization of research as becoming “a practice of correspondence,” locating their methodological curiosity and wondering “in the world that affect proposed” (Stewart, 2017). Thinking with these questions and with theorists invited stories, stories invited photographs, photographs invited packages. Letters, poetic ruminations, artworks, time, and conversations unfurled—seeds opening and dissipating across currents of air. Sparked by various understandings of correspondence, the authors created degrees, conditions, and propositions for attending to how correspondence becomes with attention. The authors evoke the concept of p(l)aying—playing and paying attention as minor gestures that open potential for inquiry. Each variation sparked circuits of matter and mattering, as the authors attuned to the question, What might be learned from arts-based approaches to p(l)aying attention to scholarly attention?