Re-turning to embodied matters and movement through post-qualitative inquiries

Abstract

This chapter engages with theoretical, ethical and practical questions concerning how embodied movement matters in postqualitative inquiries (PQI). Acknowledging the significant influence of various feminist philosophies of ‘the body’, I explore postqualitative examples of thinking through embodied movement via different methodological practices. PQI invites different ways of engaging through research practices that attune researchers to the affects that move us in perceptible and imperceptible ways. These movements of affect are often overlooked in mainstream methods, yet they matter in terms of opening up relations that are formed with materials, techniques, other human and non-humans and thinking-feeling responses. The thread that connects different examples in this chapter concerns how theory, matter and movement are entangled through methodological practices as they trouble conventional ways of knowing ‘the world’, or the researcher/participant ‘self’, and privilege static representation, human centredness and mind-body binaries. I will explore three different movement methodologies with links to visual examples, i) walking methodologies that offer sensory engagements with places and histories (natureculture knowing, de-colonizing), ii) dance practices that invite explorations of complex affects that are not easily spoken, and iii) body mapping practices that connect arts based methods with somatic movement workshops (materialising gender, age, sexual, ability, race and economic difference).