Emergence, multiplicity and connection: rethinking ethical discernment in qualitative research through a rhizo-ethics approach

Abstract

Numerous qualitative researchers employ the Deleuzoguattarian construct of rhizome in their work. In this paper, we consider the ethical affordances made possible by the rhizome’s theoretical features to propose rhizo-ethics: an approach to ethical discernment in qualitative inquiry which engages with the Deleuzoguattarian construct of rhizome. Across an exploration of Deleuze & Guattari’s writing, educational scholarship, and further qualitative work that employs rhizomatic thought, we examine how engaging with a rhizomatic approach affords researchers the means to reconfigure research ethics hierarchies by decentralizing their position in the research context. Such a perspective generates possibilities to: acknowledge fluctuating power relations, enrich representations, embrace a relational onto-epistemology, and consider the interactions between human and nonhuman matter as ethically significant.

Keywords:

• Deleuze
• Guattari
• ethics
• rhizome
• post-structuralism

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

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

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Notes on contributors

Danica Facca

Danica Facca is a doctoral student of Health Information Science at Western University, Canada. Her research focuses on users’ critical digital health literacy skills across the lifespan and their generation of digital data. She seeks to understand the relations between human and nonhuman actants, in addition to how users of digital technologies harness their digital data in various health contexts. Her research interests include: digital data assemblages, critical qualitative research, surveillance capitalism, and ecofeminism .

Elizabeth Anne Kinsella

Elizabeth Anne Kinsella is a Professor in the Institute of Health Sciences Education, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, McGill University. She is interested in health professions education, conceptions of professional knowledge, reflective practices, ethics, epistemic justice, and philosophical foundations of qualitative research.