Thinking like a feminist and reading with love

Abstract

In this paper, we expand the Foucauldian question of what is thinking doing? We approach the question in the context of reading as an entirely ontological enterprise. Aligned with the special issue theme of reading as a “long preparation,” and prompted by Deleuze’s discussion of “reading with love,” we link the two to present how reading with love has been enacted in our work, both collective and individual, as transformative and intensive. The feminist philosopher Elizabeth Grosz, and her own readings of Deleuze and Foucault, prompts us to envisage what it is to think like a feminist and read with love after the ontological turn. As ontological, reading is neither consumption nor the acquisition of knowledge but an act of creation, an act of freedom, an act of love.

Keywords:

• Thought
• ontology
• feminism
• reading
• qualitative inquiry

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Foucault’s argument in this interview is to refuse opposition between ideal/real, with those conducting intellectual “ideal” critique set against those who do “real” transformation. Foucault (1981) explains, “So there is not a time for criticism and a time for transformation; there are not those who have to do criticism and those who have to transform … I believe that the work of deep transformation can be done in the open and always turbulent atmosphere of a continuous criticism” (p. 457). We rely on Foucault’s dismantling the ideal/real binary opposition to make our claim that thinking is an ontological doing—not an “ideal” activity that is inaccessible to the world but an enactment in the world. And these enactments—or doings—can engender new thought, taking it elsewhere. We extend this idea to reading throughout the paper: the doings of reading, as a long preparation, are ontological in that they open to creation (i.e. new concepts, the unthought).

2 In the Preface to the second edition of Thinking with Theory in Qualitative Research (2023), we wrote: “Since 2011, we have read more, thought more, and engaged with colleagues from around the world as well as hundreds of students in our own teaching. These connectives have engendered reconfigurations that are responsive to the collective in which we find ourselves” (p. vii). We offer this reading, teaching, thinking, and writing over the course of a decade as an example of a “long preparation” that has brought about new thought in our process of thinking like a feminist and reading with love. See Chapter 1 of Thinking with Theory for a lengthy discussion.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alecia Y. Jackson

Alecia Y. Jackson is Professor of Social Theory and Research at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC—where she is also affiliated faculty in the Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies program. Her scholarship seeks to animate philosophical frameworks in the production of the new, and her current projects are focused on the ontological turn, qualitative inquiry, and thought. With Lisa Mazzei, she is co-author of Thinking with Theory in Qualitative Research (Jackson & Mazzei, 2012, 2023), and co-editor of Voice in Qualitative Inquiry (2009).

Lisa A. Mazzei

Lisa A. Mazzei is Alumni Faculty Professor of Education at the University of Oregon where she is also affiliated faculty in the Department of Philosophy. She is interested in philosophically informed inquiry that opens thought to the not yet. With Alecia Jackson, she is co-author of Thinking with Theory in Qualitative Research (Jackson & Mazzei, 2012, 2023), and co-editor of Voice in Qualitative Inquiry (2009). She is also the author of Inhabited Silence in Qualitative Research (Mazzei, 2007).