The Work of Thought and the Politics of Research

This chapter begins by framing the work of thought and the politics of research with author's own story of generational shifts in feminist theory. It provides an "expose" or current state of a so far virtual project that might remain that way. The chapter draws on the Deleuzean language of Brian Massumi, perhaps this space is a "pure virtuality, barely thinkable" where the present practice of qualitative research carries the seeds of its own collapse and where a virtual metalogic is called for in thinking within and beyond it. The "positivist qualitative" dominant unleashed by "best practices" and "caling up" with calls for procedural transparency, handmaiden to the state sorts of policy usefulness and consequent fundabilities, evidence-based this and that, and systematicities that reduce the wild profusion to the too rational-technical: all of this positivist qualitative work subsumes the "infinite" variety of interpretive research approaches.