ABSTRACT

The contrast between the call to stay human and the arguments in favor of posthumanism was striking. The philosophical and methodological reflections from the author's office readings seemed rather disconnected from the human tragedies among refugees and immigrants. Hans Jonas’ philosophy does not solve the refugee crisis or any other crises affecting the planet, but gives some conceptual resources that allow to remain humanists and use this vocabulary against xenophobic politicians, for example, in a way that at the same time preserves the insights of the new materialist thinkers. Building on posthuman and new materialist philosophies of thinkers such as Karen Barad, Donna Haraway and Gilles Deleuze among many others, there is an increasingly prevalent post-qualitative critique of what the “post” scholars summarize as “conventional qualitative research”. The critique amounts to a political, ethical, ontological and methodological questioning of the assumptions and practices of humanistic qualitative inquiry as normally practiced.