Hot-Spots,Diffractions,and Interstellar Poetry: Self-Directed Violence Research Meets Postqualitative Inquiry

Abstract

Seldom is self-directed violence, whether suicidal or nonsuicidal, explored in postqualitative and arts-based ways that eschew binary thinking (e.g., safe/unsafe, researcher/researched). This article explores self-directed violence as part of a dynamic assemblage that includes myriad subjectivities, social discourses, materialities, theory, and data from various spaces—including Reddit. Drawing from MacLure’s notion of “hot-spots” and from poetic inquiry, we selected hot-spots from the research process and rendered them into a version of found poetry we call Interstellar Diffraction Poems. These poems invite readers to encounter open-ended themes including (1) unconventional understandings of a “glimmer” for people experiencing self-directed violence, (2) uncertainty about what helps and what harms, (3) navigating personal boundaries while still showing up for difficult conversations, and (4) the power of the word and. We end with a discussion of how this inquiry might decenter dominant realities of self-directed violence and open space for those that have been shrouded.

Keywords

self-directed violence postqualitative inquiry poetic inquiry safety agency diffraction

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Aagaard

(2022). Troubling the troublemakers: Three challenges to post-qualitative inquiry. International Review of Qualitative Research, 15(3), 311–325. https://doi.org/10.1177/19408447211052668

Augustine

S. M.

(2014). Living in a post-coding world: Analysis as assemblage. Qualitative Inquiry, 20(6), 747–753. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800414530258

Barad

(2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Duke University Press.

Beames

J. R.

Kikas

O’Gradey-Lee

Gale

Wemer-Seidler

Boydell

K. M.

Hudson

J. L.

(2021). A new normal: Integrating lived experience into scientific data syntheses. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 12(763005), 1–4. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.763005

Borders

L. D.

Brown

L. L.

(2005). The new handbook of counseling supervision. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.

Brinkmann

(2014). Doing without data. Qualitative Inquiry, 20(6), 720–725. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800414530254

Brookfield

Selvey

Fitzgerald

Maher

(2023). “More human”: Using ethnographic insights to develop a posthuman framework of “extended recovery” for harmful drug use. SSM—Qualitative Research in Health, 3, 100245. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmqr.2023.100245

Chaney

(2020). Am I a researcher or a self-harmer? Mental health, objectivity and identity politics in history. Social Theory & Health, 18(2), 152–168. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41285-019-00093-1

Clark/Keefe

. (2010). Invoking Mnemosyne: Art, memory, and the uncertain emergence of a feminist embodied methodology. Sense Publishers.

10.

Davies

(2014). Reading anger in early childhood intra-actions: A diffractive analysis. Qualitative Inquiry, 20(6), 734–741. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800414530256

11.

Deleuze

(2004). The logic of sense ( Lester

Stivale

, Trans.). Continuum.

12.

Deleuze

Guattari

(1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia ( Massumi

, Trans.). University of Minnesota Press.

13.

Foucault

(2006). History of madness ( Khalfa

, Ed., & Murphy

, Trans.). Routledge.

14.

Franzén

A. G.

Gottzén

(2011). The beauty of blood? Self-injury and ambivalence in an Internet community. Journal of Youth Studies, 14(3), 279–294. https://doi.org/10.1080/13676261.2010.533755

15.

Fraser

valentine kylie Ekendahl

(2018). Drugs, brains and other subalterns: Public debate and the new materialist politics of addiction. Body & Society, 24(4), 58–86. https://doi.org/10.1177/1357034X18781738

16.

Gilbert

Pasque

P. A.

(2022). Introducing poetic immersion as post-qualitative analysis: A focus on culturally responsive research. International Review of Qualitative Research, 16(2). https://doi.org/10.1177/19408447221131026

17.

Greene

J. C.

(2013). On rhizomes, lines of flight, mangles, and other assemblages. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 26(6), 749–758. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2013.788763

18.

Hansen

G. M.

(2015). Femininity, self-harm and eating disorders in Japan: Navigating contradiction in narrative and visual culture. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315695921

19.

Haraway

(1988). Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective. Feminist Studies, 14, 575–599.

20.

Harford

T. C.

Chen

C. M.

Kerridge

B. T.

Grant

B. F.

(2018). Self- and other-directed forms of violence and their relationship with lifetime DSM-5 psychiatric disorders: Results from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol Related Conditions−III (NESARC−III). Psychiatry Research, 262, 384–392. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2017.09.012

21.

Holmes

(2014). Fresh kills: The spectacle of (de)composing data. Qualitative Inquiry, 20(6), 781–789. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800414530262

22.

Jackson

A. Y.

Mazzei

L. A.

(2012). Thinking with theory in qualitative research: Viewing data across multiple perspectives. Routledge.

23.

Jaworski

(2024). Rethinking the gendering of agency in male suicide: More-than-human connections in violence against the self. In Seymour

Pease

Strid

Hearn

(Eds.), Interconnecting the violences of men (pp. 153–170). Routledge.

24.

Lahman

M. K. E.

(2024). I have hated analysis: Poetic thematic analysis. In Wolgemuth

J. R.

Guyotte

K. W.

Shelton

S. A.

(Eds.), Expanding approaches to thematic analysis: Creative engagements with qualitative data (pp. 186–201). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9871003389149-13

25.

Lather

St. Pierre

E. A.

(2013). Post-qualitative research. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 26(6), 629–633. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2013.788752

26.

Leavy

(2015). Method meets art: Arts-based research practice. Guilford Publications.

27.

Lundeen

L. A.

McCall

J. R.

Bradshaw

A. S.

LeBlanc

E. K.

Humphrey

(2024). Digital catharsis or harmful exposure? A thematic analysis of self-directed violence reddit posts. Social Media + Society, 10(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051241263562

28.

Lundeen

L. A.

Humphrey

Bradshaw

A. S.

(2025). Hiding self-harm: Themes of Nonsuicidal self-injury medical inquiries on Reddit. Health Communication. https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2025.2462063

29.

Lupton

(2019). Toward a More-Than-Human Analysis of Digital Health: Inspirations From Feminist New Materialism. Qualitative Health Research, 29(14), 1998–2009. https://doi.org/10.1177/1049732319833368

30.

Lupton

(2021). ‘Things that matter’: Poetic inquiry and more-than-human health literacy. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, 13(2), 267–282. https://doi.org/10.1080/2159676X.2019.1690564

31.

MacLure

(2010). The offence of theory. Journal of Education Policy, 25(2), 277–286.

32.

MacLure

(2013). Classification or wonder?: Coding as an analytic practice in qualitative research. In Coleman

Ringrose

(Eds.), Deleuze and research methodologies (pp. 164–183). Edinburgh University Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctt1g0b6xx.13

33.

Manning

Massumi

(2014). Thought in the act: Passages in the ecology of experience. University of Minnesota Press.

34.

McMain

E. M.

(2023). The “problem tree” of SEL: A sociopolitical literature review. The New Educator, 19(2), 146–167. https://doi.org/10.1080/1547688X.2023.2202716

35.

McMain

E. M.

(2024). Drawing the line: Teachers affectively and discursively question what counts as “appropriate behavior” in schools. Power and Education, 16(3), 237–251. https://doi.org/10.1177/17577438231200344

36.

Michel

(2021). Suicide models and treatment models are separate entities. What does it mean for clinical suicide prevention? International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(10), 5301. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18105301

37.

Ninnis

(2016). Foucault and the madness of classifying our madness. Foucault Studies, 21, 117–137. https://doi.org/10.22439/fs.v0i0.5016

38.

Preston

E. G.

West

A. E.

(2021). Straight to the source: E-communities for nonsuicidal self-injury and the emerging case for harm reduction in the treatment of nonsuicidal self-injury. Clinical Psychological Science, 10(4), 801–813. https://doi.org/10.1177/21677026211049367

39.

Pugh

Dixon

Bell

(2023). Chairwork and the therapeutic relationship: Can the cart join the horse? Journal of Clinical Psychology, 79(7), 1615–1626. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.23473

40.

Roberts

(2005). The production of the psychiatric subject: Power, knowledge and Michel Foucault. Nursing Philosophy, 6(1), 33–42. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1466-769X.2004.00196.x

41.

Rosiek

J. L.

Snyder

Pratt

S. L.

(2020). The new materialisms and Indigenous theories of non-human agency: Making the case for respectful anti-colonial engagement. Qualitative Inquiry, 26(3–4), 331–346. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800419830135

42.

Salmela

(2018). Fleshy stories. New materialism and female suicides in late nineteenth-century Finland. International Journal for History, Culture and Modernity, 6(1), 1–27. https://doi.org/10.18352/hcm.545

43.

Shin

H. D.

Price

Aston

(2021). A poststructural analysis: Current practices for suicide prevention by nurses in the emergency department and areas of improvement. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 30(1–2), 287–297. https://doi.org/10.1111/jocn.15502

44.

Shirley

(2023). “Not suicidal, just don’t want to live”: A Critical Discourse Analysis of the discursive construction of depression and suicidal ideation in the mental health community on Reddit [Master’s thesis, Stellenbosch University]. SUNScholar. https://scholar.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.1/128420

45.

Sinclair

Mahboub

(2024). Maddening post-qualitative inquiry: An exercise in collective (mad) theorising. Qualitative Health Research, 34(13), 1247–1260. https://doi.org/10.1177/10497323241231896

46.

Stanley

Brown

G. K.

(2012). Safety planning intervention: A brief intervention to mitigate suicide risk. Cognitive and Behavioral Practice, 19(2), 256–264.

47.

St. Pierre

E. A

. (2011). Post qualitative research: The critique and the coming after. In Denzin

N. K.

Lincoln

Y. S.

(Eds.), The SAGE handbook of qualitative research (pp. 611–625). Sage.

48.

St. Pierre

E. A

. (2021). Why post qualitative inquiry? Qualitative Inquiry, 27(2), 163–166. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800420931142

49.

Thompson

Rickett

Day

(2018). Feminist relational discourse analysis: Putting the personal in the political in feminist research. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 15(1), 93–115. https://doi.org/10.1080/14780887.2017.1393586

50.

Weedon

(1997). Feminist practice and poststructuralist theory (2nd ed.). Blackwell Publishing.

51.

Woolhouse

Day

Rickett

Milnes

(2012). ‘Cos girls aren’t supposed to eat like pigs are they?’ Young women negotiating gendered discursive constructions of food and eating. Journal of Health Psychology, 17(1), 46–56. https://doi.org/10.1177/1359105311406151