ABSTRACT
An intriguing discussion of late among qualitative methodologists is the trouble of data, or what Denzin has called the "death of data". Data, as a concept, derives from positivism. It is inscribed in 'conventional qualitative inquiry' as well as quantitative work. Like other social science methodologists in this turn, St. Pierre looks to Deleuze and Guattari's thinking of the world differently, of using imagination, speculation, creativity. Like other social science methodologists in this turn, St. Pierre looks to Deleuze and Guattari's thinking of the world differently, of using imagination, speculation, creativity. Of thinking about intra-connections, and of how things hang together rather than what they mean. Thinking with Baudrillard, Koro-Ljungberg writes about "'data' as vital illusion". Like St. Pierre, she questions our reliance on the constructedness of empirical materials into data. Data is a proxy or antisubstance for real, a real that never really is because it is always a reproduction of something that escapes itself as being constructed.
