Landing in the Post Qualitative

Toward Systems of Engendering

Despite the brevity of the book, Latour covers much ground. It is mostly political, although he certainly grounds his ideas within his larger philosophy. What pertains most directly to social inquiry, however, is his call for an extension of analysis beyond “systems of production” toward “systems of engendering.” It is an extension that that I find reflective of work in the field of postqualitative inquiry.

For Latour, systems of production hinge upon notions of freedom and singular conceptions of humanity. They concern themselves with mechanisms and mechanistic thought, exploring the ways systems work and how parts operate within larger wholes. Human subjects play a central role as the social analyses explore how spaces, discourses, and practices effect individuals. At its core is “the idea that human freedom would be deployed in a nature setting where it would be possible to indicate the precise limits of each property” (Latour, 2018, p. 82). Such ideas insist upon a firm divide between material resources and human actors; each is distinct entities with assumed essences and capacities. The challenge that Latour puts forward is that individuals and subjectivity are always more than what they are made out to be; they extend over diverse networks, emerging differently with different networks.

Alternatively, systems of engendering hinge on notions of dependency and distributed life, centrally concerning genesis. It is a turn away from the Western tendency of modernization and emancipation toward an extending of relations, centrally “based on the idea of cultivating attachments” (Latour, 2018, p. 83). In this way, it is decidedly materialist with transcendent notions of individual freedom taking a backseat to dependency. Here, dependency holds new value as not simply inhibiting but necessary. As Latour sees it, “dependency comes in first of all to limit, then to complicate, then to reconsider the project of emancipation, in order finally to amplify it” (Latour, 2018, p. 83). Systems of engendering consider attachments and how different attachments produce, or engender, different subjects.

This notion of dependency brings a new conception to humanity. If the human is found in attachments, then new attachments bring new humans. But, for Latour, the term human itself might be too confining, for the very concept of the human has resisted a stable and centered understanding. Instead of human, Latour suggests terrestrial. The terrestrial specifies life without specifying a species. In this way, social and political discourse can work not toward specific ends but toward a much broader conception of life and its shifting modes of being.

With new value placed on dependency and terrestrial life, the aim of a system of engendering is that of genesis. With less emphasis on causal sequencing and part-to-whole thinking, the focus is on multiplying life. As Latour describes it,

to become materialist is no longer to reduce the world to objects, but to extend the list of movements that must be taken into account, precisely that movements of genesis that the view from Sirius did not allow us to follow closely. (Latour, 2018, p. 87)

In this way, life itself is understood as movement on various scales, with different movements and different pairings of movement enacting different modes of life. The concern for engendering is a concern for cultivating space of movements of “other beings” and, thus, other life.

For Latour, the shift toward systems of engendering is not exactly zero-sum. As Latour states, “if these two systems [systems of production and systems of engendering] enter into conflict, it is because another authority has appeared” (Latour, 2018, p. 83). The system of engendering does not exclude the system of production. In fact, the system of engendering might actually refine and sharpen the analysis of production. From a political perspective, this emphasis on engendering departs from an advocacy of the “right” or the “left,” the “local” or the “global,” to instead advocate for “land[ing] on earth.” Within systems of engendering, “not only points of view but also point of life proliferate” (Latour, 2018, p. 88). It is with this focus on proliferating life that a new understanding of systems of production might also be had. And it is here, with the goal of proliferating life, that I want to turn to the emergence of postqualitative inquiry.

Postqualitative Inquiry

While St. Pierre (2011) is largely credited with introducing the postqualitative term, Patti Lather (2013) frames it chronologically as QUAL 4.0. She describes the post qualitative as the return of post structuralism with a bent “on becoming in the Deleuzian sense” and as a product of researchers “weary of a decade of defending qualitative research and eager to get on with their work . . . imagin[ing] and accomplish[ing] an inquiry that might produce different knowledge and produce knowledge differently” (Lather, 2013, p. 635). What is noted in the turn toward Deleuze’s becoming is the renewed interest in questions of ontology and empirical reality. Where QUAL 3.0, Lather’s previous version, deployed poststructural theories to open up ideas and concepts, both social and qualitative, QUAL 4.0 deploys poststructural theories to open up materiality and modes of existence. It is through this reframing that qualitative inquiry embraces not so much methods or procedures but theory and experimentation, what Lather (2013) refers to as a “methodology-to-come” (p. 635).

Consider how this turn toward the post qualitative reflects Latour’s call for systems of engendering. As indicated above, the system of engendering demands a rethinking of foundational social and political concepts. It moves away from the concepts of freedom, humanity, and mechanism and toward the concepts of dependence, terrestrialism, and genesis. Each of these three terms—dependence, terrestrialism, genesis—are reflected in the field of postqualitative inquiry, though not always with perfect alignment.

First, the move toward dependence reflects in the postqualitative field the rise of assemblage thinking (see Lenz Taguchi, 2013; MacLure, 2013; Mazzei, 2017). Thinking with assemblages draws on Deleuzian theory to shift concern away from distinct objects and subject toward collectivities. Here assemblages, such as a population of students or a collection of schools, are understood as having agency and fluidity in ways not simply reducible to their component parts, both material and expressive, “not defined by an essence but by a process of emergence” (Delanda, 2006, p. 264). Just as Latour calls for a move away from approaches that presuppose stable human subjects, privileging meaning making, intentionality, and interpretation, postqualitative scholars foreground the emergent aspects of the assemblage over distinct objects and subjects. What results are endeavors to compose assemblages differently, enacting the emergence of different knowledges and entities.

Second, the move toward terrestrial life reflects the postqualitative shift toward posthuman theories of subjectivity (see Bodén, 2015; Jackson, 2013; St. Pierre, 2016). Posthuman theories, such as Rosi Braidotti’s (2013), are of a relational ontology, considering the subject as “constituted in and by multiplicity . . . resting on an ethics of becoming . . . [locating] the subject in the flow of relations with multiple others” (Braidotti, 2013, pp. 49–50). For Latour, the human has always been in flux and multiple, and it is about time to recognize not the diversity of the singular species of humans but the larger diversity of life, which he terms the terrestrial. Postqualitative scholars similarly counter the singular and rational subject to extend the subject across its material relations, taking seriously its excessive and “incalculable” aspects (Lather, 2016). Much like Latour’s call for terrestrialism, the invocation of the post-human in the postqualitative inquiry calls for thinking about social inquiry in ways that extend the subject beyond its singular branding.

Third, the move toward genesis reflects in the postqualitative field the turn toward becoming (see Lather, 2013; St. Pierre, 2013). Again, drawing on Deleuze, becoming commits to a world of immanence, finding movement primary to being and difference primary to substance (May, 2005). In a way that is similar to the concepts of the post-human and assemblage, becoming rejects the practice of beginning with static objects or subjects in favor of process and movement itself (May, 2005, p. 47). Scholars in the post qualitative consider tendencies and the ways that life both comes and goes. There is always something indeterminant and incalculable about becoming. For this reason, becoming is not about mapping processes but about opening up and extending life. It is a commitment to complexity, affirmation, and experimentation, working toward the “not yet thought” (St. Pierre, 2013, p. 652). Working toward the “not yet thought” is working toward the new and different, something quite similar to Latour’s notion of genesis.

The point here is not to collapse the post qualitative into a Latourian framework. The post qualitative remains diverse and extends in directions beyond that of Latour. Instead, the point is to indicate how Latour and the post qualitative orient in similar directions, toward a collective engendering of difference. It is the engendering of difference that not only provides an avenue into the field but also a framework for thinking through postqualitative politics. It is this that I turn to in the closing section.

On Value, Responsibility, and Refuge

Recall for a moment Latour’s analogy of passengers boarded a plan without a landing spot. Is this situation not a similar to that of the postqualitative field? Does the field of the post qualitative have a place to land? At times, it seems to extend beyond what is possible in the discipline of the social sciences. Maybe it is more suited for the humanities, specifically philosophy (see Colebrook, 2017). Perhaps, creeping upon 10 years since the term has been introduced, it has already landed, and disciplines will adapt it. Whatever the case, I close with a few considerations on notions of value, responsibility, and refuge.

First, on the value of the post qualitative: Its value should lie not within the field but in the degree to which it can create new value, in the degree to which it generates new questions, new problems, and new ways of living. In this way, its value is speculative, intent on “the multiplication of powers of existence, to ever-divergent regimes of action and expression” (Massumi, 2002, p. 34). In returning to Latour, the value of the post qualitative should be in the degree to which the field multiplies life (Terrestrials). The issue of refuge and the multiplication of life—an ethical, political, and ecological issue—should be central as we think about those inside and outside the field.

Second, on responsibility in the post qualitative: While reflexivity is certainly not the right term, the field of postqualitative inquiry needs measures to account for its own impact. More specifically, if the field has interest in multiplying modes of existence (as noted above), then this interest needs to be directed to its own field. Questions about who and what can and cannot exist within the post qualitative need to be considered. Similar questions have been raised in recent critiques of new materialism (see Todd, 2016), which not only question the “newness” of the field but also its lack of attention to non-Western and non-White intellectual traditions, traditions that have long maintained the entanglement, porosity, and indeterminacy of matter. This is something equally absent from Latour’s call for Europe to “plunge first” into this new political order, assuming this plunge has not already been taken.

Third, on refuge in the post qualitative: As I think about Latour’s call for refuge and a place to land, I wonder about the strategic value of moving beyond the qualitative field. I wonder what from the tradition of qualitative methods can be held onto and marshaled for postqualitative ends. Importantly, I am not sure that the post qualitative, and whatever it becomes, can ever truly leave the qualitative field behind. Donna Haraway (2016) suggests the idea of compost-human over post-human, where we might rethink the field as com(post)ing qualitative inquiry. For compost is a process, not a beginning or an ending, always in the middle, a recomposing with. It might be that with this framing, with less interest in leaving behind and more interest in becoming with, that qualitative researchers can create a bigger tent, more refuge, and livable worlds.