Chapter 14 Performing Rebellious Theory and Methodology
Going All City
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Abstract
This chapter works across a global range of rebellious concepts and methods currently infiltrating creative fields of inquiry in and beyond the academy. It questions what rebellion might look like in the post-qualitative “afterward” or “end times” of conventional qualitative research. Weaving together anarchic life events with adventurous theoretical concepts, the chapter threads lines of resonance between such diverse practices as hitchhiking, graffiti tagging, animist ritual, quantum physics, creative writing, and post-qualitative educational research. Theoretical concepts are developed as contours of rebellious thinking in practice, including concepts of “micropolitics”, “pluriversality”, “divination”, and “diffraction” that cast posthumanist inflections on what it means to think and perform rebellion. By linking noncompliant conceptual work with anarchic practices of life-living in the everyday, the chapter situates the rebellious performance of theory and methodology within an expanded field of more-than-human ecologies, alliances, and concerns. It borrows the phrase “going all city” from the underground graffiti scene, where it describes all-night graffiti bombings of entire cities by roving bands of anonymous writers. Are we ready to go all city with this?