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The Failures and Possibilities of Philosophy in the Material World

Jessica Van Cleave https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2531-3965 [email protected], Travis Marn, and Jennifer R. Wolgemuth https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4124-2239View all authors and affiliations
Volume 18, Issue 1
https://doi.org/10.1177/19408447251319433

Abstract

In this article, we engage the tension between the failures and possibilities of theories to which we hold attachments. The failure of theory for us is also the failure of qualitative research because as scholars who engage in philosophically informed and critical inquiries, research and theory are inextricably bound. Drawing on our individual and collective experiences, we explore moments when the promise of philosophy crumbled as seismic shifts in culture, politics, and public health rendered useless theories we had long relied upon. We attempt to bring the affective feeling of failure into a productive space and explore how the failure of theory in our lives and our research is not static but rather shifts with the material conditions of the world.

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Biographies

Jessica Van Cleave is a professor of curriculum and instruction in the College of Education at Gardner-Webb University. Her work explores the intersections and entanglements of critical, poststructural, and posthuman theories with writing, ethics, and responsibility in qualitative and postqualitative methodologies. Her interests span a variety of areas in education, including literacy education, digital pedagogy, and education policy, with a particular focus on expanding notions of writing and thinking in education research, practice, and theory.
Travis Marn (PhD, University of South Florida) is an associate professor of educational psychology and research methods at Southern Connecticut State University’s College of Education. Using qualitative and post-qualitative methodologies, he explores questions of justice, identity, and subjectivity through new materialist, posthumanist, and poststructural frameworks.
Jennifer R. Wolgemuth is a professor in educational research at the University of South Florida where she directs the Graduate Certificate in Qualitative Research. Her research agenda focuses on ethics and validity in social science research. Drawing on critical, poststructural, and new materialist theories, she explores inquiry as an agential process that simultaneously investigates and creates lives and communities to and for which the researcher is responsible.
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