Coming to know collectively: a gothic tale of method, metaphor and madness in the academy

Abstract

This experimental article provides an immanent alternative to the neo-positivist outcomes-driven turn currently cannibalising the Academy. It offers a stitched together, multiphrenic creature, formed in darkness, gore and toil; a co-generative performance embodying coming-to-know as a process of creative co-inquiry. It writes into existence an ungainly and seductive creature who is the speciation of a curious collective who met regularly to explore new and experimental ways of performing educational research. Our creature is a response to post-qualitative challenges for invention and re-invention. So we invent! And you, dear reader, are invited to participate in our grizzly performance. The following ethnodrama lays bare our skin in a gothic theatre where the individuated self is dismembered and restitched in order that coming-to-know might be understood as a collective and ongoing performance.