Methodological Drag

When we first began our careers as qualitative methodologists in a department in which qualitative research was relatively new and novel (and sometimes referred to as “qualitative statistics”), we began to question the work of the subject position “qualitative methodologist” in our institutional setting. What is the pedagogical work (e.g., in-class teaching and mentoring of doctoral students) of qualitative methodologist? What is the work of qualitative methodologist in collegial relations and doctoral student committees? What is the work of qualitative methodologist in our own research? We joked that we felt like we were constantly in drag, performing qualitative methodologist in different settings and to/for different effects. To pay attention to these experiences and the questions they created, we turned to theory, “a powerful, essential, personal tool that [we] needed to study for [our] own good” (St. Pierre, 2001, p. 142) so that we could think about the work of qualitative methodologist in productive ways.

Methodological drag is a performance, or strategy, in which qualitative methodologists make themselves intelligible in various settings (e.g., teaching qualitative research classes, mentoring students, interacting with other faculty in committee meetings, and conducting their own research). Depending on a particular power/discourse network and setting, methodologists perform the subject position differently. Methodological drag, then, is a performance in which qualitative methodologists slip in and out of epistemological, theoretical, and/or methodological frameworks, even those that they may not situate themselves in personally or professionally. In so doing, methodological drag enacts a strategic counter discourse to a stable conception of methodologist and, by extension, qualitative research pedagogy. In this article, we first provide an onto-epistemological framework for methodological drag. We then examine various performances with Butler’s (1995, 1999) concepts of performance and performativity and how these performances point to the impossibility of a stable, coherent, and essential identity of qualitative methodologist. We also discuss how we create compositional spaces for our students to perform methodological drag.

We onto-epistemologically view our work and ourselves as qualitative research methodologists as theorizing intellectuals (Foucault & Deleuze, 1972) theorizing intellectual helps us to think about our work as qualitative research methodologists. Foucault explained that “theory does not express, translate, or serve to apply practice: it is practice” (p. 208). A theorizing intellectual, then, is constantly immersed in “theoretical and practical action [that] serve as relays and form networks” (p. 207). In other words, a theorizing intellectual and, by extension, a qualitative methodologist, is constructed by the networks between both theories and her practices. Given that she is constructed by networks, there is no, nor will there ever be an, originary, singular, qualitative methodologist after which she can model herself. Qualitative research methodologists are constituted by the verbs of theorizing and practicing that form dense networks, or multiplicities, that disrupt positivism’s stable and coherent conceptualization of identity, and, in so doing, create a multiple, contingent subject.

Theory-practice networks are always already entangled with discursive and power relations. Butler (1995) wrote, “to be constituted by language is to be produced within a given network of power/discourse” (p. 135). In other words, we perform methodologist differently in different spaces, within varying power/discourse networks, and with different effects. For example, our research is informed by poststructural and posthumanist theories (Happel, 2013; Happel & Esposito, 2013; Nordstrom, 2013a, 2013b, 2015a, 2015b). However, we often enact more conventional qualitative research methodological approaches in our work with students and faculty members. Within many academic institutions, qualitative research, even the most conventional approaches, is sometimes unfamiliar to many faculty and students. As a result, our methodological practices support students, faculty, and administrators through more conventional approaches to qualitative inquiry that “function in both interpretive/hermeneutic and logical positivist/empiricist structures” (St. Pierre, 2013, p. 223). As a result, we can become intelligible to others as we perform as expected within certain power/discourse networks.

Each power/discourse network asks for a particular iteration of qualitative research methodologist. For example, in doctoral student committee work, we must navigate the particular network formed by the committee. If a student has an advisor who is firmly entrenched in quantitative methodologies, we must first support the student in her methodological choices while helping her to convince her advisor that her research questions will be best addressed with qualitative research methodologies. Then, we are often called upon to be an expert in a particular methodology (e.g., grounded theory, case study, and autoethnography) to help the student design a methodologically strong research project. In navigating the power/discourse networks, we attempt to move seamlessly between teacher, mentor, colleague, and committee member. Methodologist as performance, then, is a contingent and situated agentic act in which one slips in and out of constitutive power/discourse/theory/practice networks, hereafter called networks. As we slip between networks, we disrupt and interrupt taken-for-granted and expected iterations of methodologist.

One such slippage occurred in Susan’s graduate-level Introduction to Qualitative Methods course. A student asked Susan to explain bracketing in phenomenology to the class. Before she expanded upon the reading’s definition of bracketing and how it is used within phenomenology, Susan hesitated and said, “I’ll try my best, but bracketing is something that I’m not comfortable with, too.” The student replied to Susan, “So, it is a performance then.” The student called Susan into a discourse, one in which she is not onto-epistemologically comfortable with, and she had to “draw upon and recite a set of linguistic effects” (Butler, 1995, p. 134) of phenomenology and bracketing to “engage certain kinds of effects” (p. 134). In other words, Susan was called into the network formed by the student’s request, the course, and so on to draw upon and recite the literature of Husserlian phenomenology, a traditionally conventional, humanist methodology. Butler (1995) wrote, “The force or effectivity of a performance will be derived from its capacity to draw on and reencode the historicity of those conventions in a present act” (p. 134). Put another way, for us to convince others of a certain methodological performance, we must use the discourses of the networks in which that methodology is situated.

As we reengage “the legacy of conventions” (Butler, 1995, p. 134) associated with conventional, humanist methodologies, we also open up “possibilities of resignification” (p. 134). Said differently, as we deploy certain conventional, humanist discourses, we also open them to different ways of thinking about them. Susan’s hesitation and verbalized discomfort interrupted a normative performance of conventional, humanist qualitative research methodologist and pedagogy. The verbal exchange made clear to the rest of the class that the following explanation of bracketing was performative. Such a disruption is a point of poststructural agency that Davies (2004) explained as “a capacity to recognize [a] constitution and to resist, subvert and change the discourses themselves through which one is being constituted” (p. 4). The hesitation, discomfort, and acknowledgment disrupt the normalized and taken-for-granted pedagogical performance of qualitative methodologist and qualitative research pedagogy.

One taken-for-granted conceptualization about qualitative methodologist and qualitative research pedagogy is that both entities are conceptualized as nouns. However, as we have argued, both entities are “relative point[s] of convergence among culturally and historically specific sets of relations” (Butler, 1999, p. 15). These relations, or networks, disrupt the coherence and continuity of qualitative methodologist and qualitative research pedagogy (Butler, 1999). Moreover, the constitutive verbs (theorizing and practicing) of Foucault and Deleuze’s (1972) theorizing intellectual, which serves as our onto-epistemological framework, disrupt the idea that qualitative methodologist and qualitative research pedagogy can be thought of as nouns. It follows, then, that both terms are “always a doing, though not a doing by a subject who might be said to preexist the deed” (Butler, 1999, p. 33). Both qualitative methodologist and qualitative research pedagogy become verbs, open to re-deployment and re-signification. Rethinking these terms as verbs serves as a counter discourse to a stable, conventional, and humanist conception of these terms. The verb-oriented counter discourse gestures toward a compositional space in which one knits together a subject position that is always already caught up in networks. This knitting together is a constant negotiation and renegotiation of how we work and perform within various networks. Some performances are easier, and some make us uncomfortable, thereby positioning us in a constant state of methodological disequilibrium. In such a state of disequilibrium, each performance of qualitative research methodologist is contingent, partial, and responsive to the networks in which it is enacted.

In our pedagogical practices in the classroom, we both facilitate a compositional space and openly discuss our methodological performances. We create compositional spaces in which students can think about their performances as methodologists in our course syllabi, assigned readings, and class discussions. We assign readings grounded in conventional, humanist qualitative research alongside research and theory(ies) that critique that work. During our class discussions, we encourage our students to engage with the political work of such critiques. We are careful to point out the politics of such methodological work by discussing our own methodological performances. We explain to students that there are various political effects of a methodological disequilibrium and encourage students to be deliberate and strategic with their performances. Because each performance of qualitative research methodologist is contingent, partial, and responsive to the networks in which it is enacted, we are never sure of the success of our performances—never sure of how we are being read by our audiences. And, like our own performances, students can never be sure of how these performances will be received by others for there are always unintended/unanticipated effects of performances. For example, we recently co-taught a class about data collection methods and analysis. We asked students to take the same data and analyze it with thematic analysis, narrative analysis, arts-based analytical methods, and theoretical analyses. We discussed within which networks students might use these analytical methods, the political work of these methods, and the effects of these methods. We brainstormed possible effects of analytical methods and how committee members, co-workers, and so on might interpret those effects. Our discussions, then, created a space for students to explore the “perpetual displacement [that] constitutes a fluidity of identities that suggests an openness to resignification and recontextualization” (Butler, 1999, p. 176). Many students discussed how freeing they found arts-based analytical methods and questioned how they might strategically incorporate those methods into more conventional spaces (e.g., policy work) and the effects of incorporating those methods in such spaces. In these discussions, we attempted to show how different performances of qualitative methodologist operate within networks and the political effects of those performances. Some networks (i.e., their doctoral committee) might require a more conventional iteration of qualitative methodologist. Other networks (i.e., formal and informal student groups that focus on qualitative research) might allow for a more fluid and creative performance. Butler (1999) observed, “Construction is not opposed to agency; it is the necessary scene of agency, the very terms in which agency is articulated and becomes culturally intelligible” (p. 187). In mentoring students through their own compositional spaces of becoming qualitative methodologist, we teach them how to be agentic in a Butlerian sense. In so doing, we hope to open up spaces of multiplicity to think critically and agentically about the subject position “qualitative methodologist.”

In many ways, the performances we both enact and teach can be understood as acts of methodological and pedagogical cross-dressing, or methodological drag. Methodological drag seeks to “create a unified picture of [methodologist and pedagogy]” (Butler, 1999, p. 175) while recognizing the “radical contingency in the relations” (p. 175) in networks. Naming the performances and compositional spaces as methodological drag creates a space in which our actions become intelligible to ourselves and others. As we have illustrated in previous examples, our performances of methodological drag look differently based on the networks in which we are entangled. When we explain and defend qualitative research to, for example, skeptical colleagues, we must perform authoritatively and definitively. We must have the “Truth” about qualitative research even though we know there are multiple, contingent, and partial truths about qualitative research. We do this to justify and validate qualitative research to other faculty members and administrators so that our students’ research can, in turn, be validated. In contrast, when we explore theories and methodologies that acknowledge the multiple truths and realities that constitute qualitative research with students in classes or in the student qualitative research group we co-facilitate, we perform, and even experiment with, different iterations of methodologist. Our “parodic proliferation” (p. 176) of qualitative methodologist, then, challenges static and coherent conceptualizations of qualitative methodologist. As such, our performances in methodological drag disrupt the fiction of an essential, originary performance of qualitative methodologist while pointing to the contingency of this subject position.

Butler (1999) claimed that drag, or parody “by itself is not subversive” (p. 176). Instead, she asks us to consider what performance will “compel a radical rethinking” (p. 177) of qualitative methodologist and what performance “will compel a reconsideration of the place and stability” (p. 177) of qualitative methodologist. The success, in Butlerian terms, of methodological drag, then, is contingent in some ways upon the audience of our performances. In some instances, success depends on how convincing we are in our performances as we masquerade in different epistemological, theoretical, and methodological frameworks. And, in other instances, success depends on for whom we are performing and for what intended effects. For example, we see the success of these performances in how we are able to convince faculty members skeptical of qualitative research to be more open to qualitative methodologies. We see the success of these performances when students conduct, write up, and defend qualitative research dissertations. We see the success of these performances in how students pick up and use methodological drag in their own work and lives. We see the success when other faculty members see us in different, and sometimes contradictory, performances.

Methodological drag points to the impossibility of a stable, coherent, and essential methodologist and pedagogical practice. Each contingent, multiple, and partial iteration of methodological drag emerges from entangling networks. Methodological drag is an agentic act, a “recogn[ition] [of] multiple readings such that no discursive practice, or positioning with it by powerful others, can capture and control one’s identity [or pedagogical practices]” (Davies, 2004, p. 4). Methodological drag, then, offers a critical and agentic approach to thinking about becoming methodologist for both professors and students. Instead of singular conceptions of qualitative research methodologist, methodological drag allows for fluid, multiple, and sometimes contradictory conceptions of methodologist. In so doing, methodological drag shows students and other faculty the contingency of identity.

We began this article with a series of questions about the work of qualitative methodologist in our institutional settings. Throughout this article, we have engaged in a Foucauldian skepticism that “questions the self-evidence of a form of experience, knowledge, or power [of qualitative methodologist] [so as] to free it for our purposes, to open new possibilities for thought or action” (Rajchman, 1985, p. 4). The result of our skepticism, methodological drag, creates a freer space for us to think, work, and live our performances as qualitative methodologists. In this way, this skepticism “is the question of our freedom” (p. 7). In developing the counter discourse of methodological drag, we create(d) a fluid and supple space for us to engage with all the questions posed in the first paragraph of this article. The counter discourse, then, is a strategy to think qualitative research methodologist in both pedagogy and practice. Methodological drag is not a dogmatic or prescriptive concept that seeks to reduce qualitative methodologist. Instead, it is a strategy that seeks to open up multiple and contingent ways of knowing and being qualitative methodologist for all those interested in becoming qualitative research methodologist.