Qualitative Responses/Recovery in Repressive Times

Recovery in Repressive Times

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The inaugural International Conference of Qualitative Inquiry (ICQI) was held in May 2005 and saw 750 scholar–artist–activists from more than 45 nations come together in the pursuit of social justice in a time of global uncertainty. A mere 5 years later, the number had nearly doubled to over 1300 delegates and by 2019, the importance of this critical gathering on the qualitative calendar can be registered through the involvement of 2150 people and over 1600 presentations. As flights and accommodations were booked, abstracts dispatched, performances envisioned, excitement provoked in responses to calls for panels and symposia, a fracture to this bloodline was unthinkable, and unimaginable. Yet, on Tuesday, March 10th, an e-mail was dispatched with sadness, informing us all that the 2020 ICQI was canceled due to the Coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19).

In the weeks that followed, a collective of scholar-artist-activists from around the world, all with deep and long histories with ICQI, were rallied to continue their critical and performative collaborations; bridging the distance between place and space, across national and international borders. The effort manifested in three forms:

First, invitations were dispatched to participate in a short performative video that featured our collaborative voices speaking to the power and importance of critical qualitative research in repressive times. The text, which formed the bases of our collaboration, was well known to us all. It was originally penned by Norman Denzin for use in many of the conference handbooks as a “Welcome from the Director” and included the now well-known and familiar lines of T. S. Elliot (No 4 of “Four Quartets,” 1942): “We will not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and to know the place for the first time.”

The video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRYy5tGQHes&feature=youtube lived on the webpage of ICQI for some time, right beneath the cancelation notice; both as a ghosting of the conference that would have been, and the celebratory power of the critical performative engagements that the conference enlivens; knowing no boundaries in the commitments or containments of doing the work.

Second, on May 21, 2020, a Zoom gathering was held with nearly 30 scholars from around the world, who would have converged on the University of Illinois–Urbana campus—responding together in a virtual but all-together real community space to share thoughts, feelings, outpourings, promises, and possibilities of critical qualitative research in repressive times. On what would have been the first day of the conference, speakers, both planned and emergent, offered heart-stirring, soul-wrenching, and mind-blowing critical discussions, narratives, and performances that opened spaces of hope for us all; making us yearn even more for the day when we could (will)—all be physically co-present with each other at ICQI again; and strengthening our commitment to qualitative methodologies.

Together, these testimonies reflect a deep commitment not just to social justice and the conference but also to each other. The captured pieces of these performances are archived for public viewing:

Amongst the attending and participating scholars were: David Purnell, Claudio & Analua Moreira, Patrick Lewis, Carolyn Ellis & Art Bochner, David Carless; Kim Etherington, Jackie Goode, Bryant Keith Alexander, Djenane Oliveira, Jonathan Wyatt, Durell Callier, Fiona Murray, Andrew Gillott, Deanna Shoemaker, Elyse Pineau, Kitrina Douglas, James Salvo, Tami Spry, Simone de Arajo, Hannah Shakespeare, Gustov Raimondi, and Sophie Tamas. “The happening” of that day was organized, facilitated, captured, and edited by the adroit hands of Kitrina Douglas and David Carless.

Third, in what follows, we present just a small sampling of work that was anticipated for two planned panels for the formal ICQI scheduled conference: “Flipping the Script II: Performance of Literature in/as Recovery in Repressive Times” and “The Song Book of Our Lives: Lyrical Autoethnographic Performances as Protest and Recovery in Repressive Times.” The themes of these contributions, differentially situated relative to these two panels, breach the borders and boundaries of the anticipated conference, the Zoom gathering, and the conditions of our current knowns and unknowns in these repressive times.

These contributions are situated at the confluence of the present politics and practices that include the 45th president of the United States, Donald J. Trump—and a looming presidential election; Brexit, the departure of UK from a European Union set up to endues there would be no more bloodshed after two devastating world wars that killed millions of people; the international rise of civil unrest and activism surrounding the policing murders of unarmed Black people in America; the push for greater efforts in diversity, equity, and inclusion and strides to becoming “anti-racist”; and unprecedented environmental disasters wreaking wildfires in Australia, Canada, the Amazon, California, Italy, Spain, Croatia, Portugal, and South Africa. And then; the COVID-19 pandemic, the unprecedented infectious disease risk for all persons—that has had once unfathomable impacts on life, our practice of culture, and our everyday circulation in places and spaces around the world. The performative entries that follow invoke what it means to be feelin’ real and unbroken, explore the contact points of a pandemic and lost intimacies of being co-present, how we own our memories in times of COVID-19, how we explore our memories of being in lockdown, while resisting and learning new words to live by (or not) in our current political climate. They evoke images of hope in both the sound and the fury, while beckoning the revolution and introducing us to “grooving” as embodied lyrical resistance.