Methodology in the fold and the irruption of transgressive data

Abstract

In this essay the author identifies transgressive data- emotional data, dream data, sensual data, and response data- that are out-of-category and not usually accounted for in qualitative research methodology. She also attempts to identify the methods that produced those data. In addition, she suggests that if data are the foundation on which knowledge rests, it is important to trouble the common-sense understanding of that signifier in postfoundational research that aims to produce di erent knowledge and to produce knowledge di erently. By using poststructural critiques and Deleuze's image of the fold, the author was able to think about data di erently in her study of the construction of subjectivityin the older, white, southern women of her hometown. Furthermore, her identification of transgressive data in this study suggests that other studies may also yield transgressive data that might shift the epistemologies that define the possibilities of qualitative research in education.