A voice without organs: interviewing in posthumanist research

Abstract

In keeping with the editor’s call for this special issue, this paper discusses how a posthumanist stance has enabled me to materialize a different conception of the interview and interview data in postqualitative inquiry. More specifically, I am thinking with Deleuze and Guattari’s concept, the Body without Organs, one they use to enact thinking without a subject and to liberate thought from overcoded images in order to confront a reliance on objects or material representations to understand and explain. Using this concept, I theorize a Voice without Organs (VwO) as a voice that does not emanate from a singular subject but is produced in an enactment among research-data-participants-theory-analysis. The article concludes with an analysis of data from a recent interview project that illustrates how VwO is both produced by and producing different knowledge and suggests implications for thinking interviewing and interview data differently.

Keywords:

• interviewing
• posthumanism
• voice
• Deleuze and Guattari

Acknowledgements

I would like to extend my gratitude to those who were willing to think with me in the writing of this manuscript: the editors; Patti Lather and Bettie St. Pierre, and my readers; Alecia Jackson, Phillip Prince, and Jerry Rosiek.