Doing collaborative deconstruction as an ‘exorbitant’ strategy in qualitative research

Abstract

This paper aims to challenge qualitative research from within our own spaces and practices, by putting to work deconstruction as an ‘exorbitant’ and collaborative methodological strategy. During a seven month period, PhD students used their research-data aiming at doing deconstruction as collaborative processes of writing and talking, rather than treating deconstruction as an object of philosophical study or applying theory to practice. The process was constituted by a turning, bending and twisting of your own analysis, questioning it and trying to displace the meanings of it: in order to identify how and why you do the analysis you do, and foremost, what other analysis might be possible. A piece of interview-data featuring a six-year-old boy is used as an example. A strong desire among the participants was to do better justice to our data using this strategy. The (im)possibilities of doing justice in deconstructive analysis are thus discussed.