Post-qualitative mo(ve)ments: Concluding remarks on methodological response-abilities and being wounded by thought

Abstract

Post-qualitative research methodologies require us to work within, against, and beyond our methodological inheritance to respond to the world’s ongoing becoming. It is our responsibility; yet do we have the ability to respond to that which is beyond and yet-to-come? This article begins by asking this question of the process it engages in: concluding. Following an exploration entangled practices of textual closure, (fore)closure, and the clôture of metaphysics, the article expands outward through the relation between closure and responsibility. Specifically, the lived concept of response-ability as an engaged practice of (re)opening the lines of closure (beyond knowledge already known) to respond to and enact responsibility for that which is not-yet and/or to-come. Drawing from Kuokkanen, Spivak, and Barad, response-ability is explored respectively as necessary homework, as (not) hearing the call of the other, and as account-ability toward co-constitutive relationality. The article concludes with further lines of questioning as to what it might mean to responsibly inherit (post-)qualitative methodological pasts and futurities.