Animating rhizo research: the ethico-politics of a zombie apocalypse survival course

Abstract

As critical posthumanist and (new) materialist scholarship become more established in educational research, a reconsideration of methodological approaches suited to a radical relational onto-epistemology is required. A popular figuration adopted by researchers to help think and do such research is the Deleuze-Guattarian “rhizome.” Coming to terms with how rhizomic styled research (rhizo research) is undertaken and what it can yield however, can be challenging. In this paper, a study involving a Zombie Apocalypse Survival Course run at a human pathology museum becomes an animated example of rhizo research. Through it we demonstrate how infusing this research with an “analytic of lines” (derived from Deleuze-Guattarian rhizomatics) provides for a practice of research that has the power to shift the ontological and epistemological positions that continue to define qualitative research in education and bring understudied, ethico-political dimensions of it into view.

Keywords:

• Rhizome
• rhizo research
• analytic of lines
• ethico-politics
• posthuman
• materialist methodology
• qualitative education research

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to acknowledge the contribution of the human pathology museum where this research took place. Without this empirical context coupled with the generous support of the museum director, Derek, this research could not have occurred in the way that it did. Thank you.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes on contributors

Sarah Healy A Lecturer at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, Sarah works at the intersection of studio pedagogies, affect theory and materialist ontomethodologies. A focus on practice is at the heart of Sarah’s research endeavours, as is a critical and creative approach to ‘doing da(r)ta’ in a more-than-human world.

Dianne Mulcahy A Senior Lecturer at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, Dianne’s research and teaching interests centre on pedagogy, education policy and critical materialist methodological approaches to research as explored through empirical contexts. Presently, Dianne is researching aspects of the ethics and politics of affect, and their implications for pedagogy and professional practice in school and museum settings.

Notes

1 Intra-action is a Baradian term used to replace “interaction,” which assumes pre-established entities take part in action between each other. Intra-action refuses the idea of agency as the exercise of attributes that inhere in the individual or human (e.g., the expression of human emotion); rather, agency is understood to be a dynamism of productive forces (Barad, 2007, p. 141) that exert influence and create effects (e.g., identity effects).

2 Data drawn from interview segment in laminated magazine article on display at the museum reception.