Problematizing Qualitative Research

Abstract

This article problematizes the concept of data and experiments with rhizoanalysis to think data in terms of problems, questions, and concept creation. At issue is representation and interpretation, foundational blocks of qualitative research that are incommensurate with rhizoanalysis and post-qualitative research. Deleuze has problematized this issue through questions and experimentation within an asymmetrical world filled with paradoxes that gave rise to concept creation of sense and nonsense. In the Logic of Sense, sense is the event itself. Sense emerges out of nonsense. In this article, representation and interpretation are deterritorialized (virtual becoming) and reterritorialized (actualized) as nonsense–sense and palpation. Palpation is a concept that refers to data experienced indirectly. Rhizoanalysis is deployed because of its non-hierarchical and non-linear approach to data. Multiple Literacies Theory follows a similar path. It releases school-based literacy from its privileged rank to engage reading in multiplicitous and heterogeneous rhizomatic connections. Reading a data assemblage is untimely and not pre-given. It plugs into Multiple Literacies Theory, an analytic approach to reading an assemblage in rhizoanalysis. Reading a data assemblage is explored in a study on how writing systems in multilingual children function and what writing systems produce through affect. A rhizomatic approach is proposed and constituted through a research assemblage whose differential elements enter into a relationality of affect that flows through and transforms the assemblage. It produces a movement that dissolves dualisms in favor of multiplicity, uncertainty, and the untimely. It decenters the cogito human, maps assemblages, and extends experiences of a material world. Posing problems and questions open paths to a future yet to become.