Asking queer(er) questions: epistemological and methodological implications for qualitative inquirers

Abstract

This collection of distinct scholarly essays deliberatively turns to queer experience and theorizing as a resource for constructing vibrant qualitative research designs. Queer theory offers a breadth of epistemological and methodological possibilities for qualitative projects that are too frequently overlooked for many reasons. These reasons include frequently strict association of queer theory with queer research topics and researchers, as well as a concurrent reluctance to interrogate the representational needs of heterosexist culture served by the metaphor of the ‘closet.’ Queer theory also compels inquiry that takes up the unique circumstances of queer subjects. Locating educational inquiry within globally complex socio-historical dynamics and a post-Obergefell/post-2016 election U.S. context, this article poses multiple trajectories through which various scholars explore queer(er) qualitative inquiry in educational studies. These perspectives invite researchers to rethink qualitative inquiry designs through engagement with the queer, inclusive of research topics not initially perceived to be queer.

Keywords:

• Queer theory
• queer education research
• qualitative methodology
• queer theology
• qualitative inquiry

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to the following for consistently excellent and thorough assistance in preparing aspects of this manuscript: Xi Yu, Graduate Assistant at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities; Tanya Long, Doctoral Research Assistant at Texas State University; and Amy Biedermann, Doctoral Research Assistant at Texas State University.

Notes

1. Murphy’s study (examining the influence new state-level anti-bullying policy was, and is, having on how school personnel conceptualize and address queer-negative behavior in their schools) explicitly excluded students from being participants. As such he sought to avoid common attempts to justify erasing queer identities from schools--which have claimed schools should not promote homosexuality because queer identities are criminal (which is no longer the case, since Lawrence v. Texas), that queers are pathological (be it that they are ‘naturally’ at-risk or that queer identity itself is ‘contagious,’ and might turn straight children queer--both of which stand in stark contrast to the preponderance of research on sexuality and sexual identities), and that queer identities are somehow corrosive to children’s religious identities (see: Eskridge, 2000; Lugg & Adelman, 2015; Lugg & Murphy, 2014). All of these claims rely on the trope that queer identities supposedly ‘harm children.’

2. Of course, such an approach opens Lugg up to the charge that she is engaging in the historical fallacy of ‘presentism’ – that she is using the past to argue for or against contemporary points (Hackett Fischer, 1970). Yet, as William Pencak points out, ‘All historians, including those who pretend to be objective, write with an agenda for their own times: to promote or prevent social change, to glorify or vilify particular people or societies’ (Pencak, 2002, p. 3). At this point in her career, she’s far more concerned with Pencak’s opinion than Hackett Fisher’s.