Decentering the Researcher in Intimate Scholarship Synopsis
"Intimate
scholarship" refers to qualitative methodologies, such as self-study and autoethnography, that directly engage the personal
experience, knowledge, and/or practices of the researcher(s) as the focus of
inquiry. While intimate scholarship offers entrypoints into non-binary thinking
by blurring the line between researcher/researched, much work in this genre
continues to reinforce a humanist "I". In this volume, we ask what happens when
the researcher in forms of intimate scholarship is decentered, or is considered
as merely one part of an entangled material-discursive formation.
Chapters in this volume highlight ways that researchers
of teaching and teacher education can advance conversations in education while exploring theories with an ontological view of the
world as fundamentally multiple, dynamic, and fluid. Drawing on a range of methods, authors "put to work" posthuman, non-linear, and multiplistic theories and concepts to
disrupt and decenter the "I" in intimate methodologies. Also featured in this volume
are conversations with leading posthuman scholars, who
highlight the possibilities and challenges of decentering the researcher in
intimate scholarship as a practice of social justice research.
