Darkness Re-Turning

Kristina Vitek

doi:10.7577/rerm.6193

Authors

Kristina Vitek University of Oulu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0011-6375

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7577/rerm.6193

Keywords:

Darkness, Re-turning, dark methodologies, postqualitative inquiry

Abstract

This article re-turns (Barad, 2014) to empirical data from a postqualitative inquiry into the dark common worlds of children in Northern Finland. Drawing on and bringing together Karen Barad’s approach of re-turning, darkness, and Andersen et al.’s dark methodologies, it examines what emerges when “old” data is reanimated through repeating analysis. Through retelling two ethnographic-analytical stories, the article explores how dark re-turning unsettles dominant research paradigms and invites alternative ways of knowing. Dark re-turning becomes a practice which foregrounds wonder, refusal, and unknowing. To close, the article proposes that dark re-turning to data and to childhood is a vital practice for educational research: one that honors the ghosts of childhood and opens space for more ethical, affectively attuned, and temporally expansive inquiry.

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