ABSTRACT
March 16, 2016. Norman Denzin invited me to present one of the Keynote Lectures to open the 2017 Congress of Qualitative Inquiry. My response was one of delightful enthusiasm. By March 28, I had a title and a brief abstract. My plan was to present “The Future of Critical Arts-based Research: Creating Aesthetic Spaces for Resistance Politics.” I intended that the talk would address the political and theoretical implications of critical arts-based inquiry. Critical arts-based research is a performative research methodology that is structured on the notion of possibility, the what might be, of a research tradition that is postcolonial, pluralistic, ethical, and transformative in positive ways. Exemplars of social and political resistance to post-09/11/01 neoliberalism and its propaganda would be used to demonstrate theoretical practices and research imaginaries made possible by arts-and-research political action. I promised to address some of the key questions for critical arts-based research: What is the future of artsbased research in a post-qualitative world? What are the implications for resistance politics in bioarts, biopoetics, and ecoaesthetics? What are the practices of imagination in performances of arts, research, and social justice? Norman was aware of my recent radiation surgery in treatment for trigeminal neuralgia at the time he invited me for the presentation, and the surgery had seemingly worked, until the summer of 2016. From summer on, I was in a tailspin dominated by pain, brain scans, and eventually surgery that induced a stroke. Norman gave me an option, told me I could defer and come back to do the lecture another year, but the meeting of the Congress became my goal. I would not miss it. What follows is the talk I gave, May 18, 2017.
