In this introduction to the special issue, we (a) describe the unconventional and iteratively constitutive processes by which this special issue came into being and (b) provide a brief overview of how the body-focused research “nodal points” featured therein contribute to the fields of education, social theory, arts, gender studies, and sport and physical cultural studies. We outline a process whereby, in seeking to “diffract the special issue,” contributors to this project engaged in an ongoing process of creating more affirmative, response-able, generative relations between academic texts, people, places, ideas, and bodies. The purpose in so doing, and potential benefit to the reader, is to foreground not only the contents of the special issue but also to map out the ethico-onto-epistemological foundations of the diffracted special issue and to provide some detail as to how ethico-onto-epistemologies surfaced in the praxis of the special issue’s becoming.
BarnesN.NetolickyD. (2019). Cutting apart together: A diffracted spatial history of an online scholarly relationship. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 32(4), 380–393.
4.
BozalekV. (2017). Slow scholarship in writing retreats: A diffractive methodology for response-able pedagogies. South African Journal of Higher Education, 31, 40–57.
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BozalekV.MurrisK. (2021). Diffraction. In MurrisK. (Ed.), A glossary for doing postqualitative, new materialist and critical posthumanist research across disciplines (pp. 54–57). Routledge.
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BozalekV.ZembylasM. (2017). Diffraction or reflection? Sketching the contours of two methodologies in educational research. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 30(2), 111–127.
BriceJ.ThorpeH. (2021). New materialisms, material methods, and the research process: A creative experiment in cutting together-apart. Leisure Sciences. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/01490400.2021.1981504
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ClarkM.ThorpeH. (2020). Towards diffractive ways of knowing women’s moving bodies: A Baradian experiment with the fitbit/motherhood entanglement. Sociology of Sport, 37(1), 12–26.
10.
DaviesB. (2017). Animating ancestors: From representation to diffraction. Qualitative Inquiry, 23(4), 267–275.
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DolphinR.van der TuinI. (2012). New materialisms: Interviews and cartographies. University of Michigan Library: Open Humanities Press.
12.
FrigerioA.BenozzoA.HolmesR.Runswick-ColeK. (2018). The doing and undoing of the “autistic child”: Cutting together and apart interview-based empirical materials. Qualitative Inquiry, 24(6), 390–402.
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GoughN. (2012). W(h)ither gatekeeping? Academic publishing and peer review in complex and networked systems. Critical Perspectives on Communication, Cultural and Policy Studies, 31(1), 35–41.
14.
HandforthR.TaylorC. A. (2016). Doing academic writing differently: A feminist bricolage. Gender and Education, 28(5), 627–643.
15.
JacksonA.MazzeiL. (2011). Thinking with theory in qualitative research: Viewing data across multiple perspectives. Routledge.
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Lenz TaguchiH. (2012). A diffractive and Deleuzian approach to analysing interview data. Feminist Theory, 13(3), 265–281.
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Lenz TaguchiH.PalmerA. (2013). A more “livable” school? A diffractive analysis of the performative enactments of girls’ ill-/well-being with(in) school environments. Gender and Education, 25(6), 671–687.
18.
LevyG.HalseC.WrightJ. (2016). Down the methodological rabbit hole: Thinking diffractively with resistant data. Qualitative Research, 16(2), 183–197.
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LinghedeE. (2018). The promise of glitching bodies in sport: A posthumanist exploration of an intersex phenomenon. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, 10(5), 570–584.
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McKnightL. (2016). Swimming lessons: Learning, new materialisms, posthumanism, and post qualitative research emerge through a pool poem. Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, 13(3), 195–205.
21.
MurrisK.BozalekV. (2019a). Diffraction and response-able reading of texts: The relational ontologies of Barad and Deleuze. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 32(7), 872–886.
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MurrisK.BozalekV. (2019b). Diffracting diffractive readings of texts as methodology: Some propositions. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 51(14), 1504–1517.
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PhillipsD. K.LarsonM. L. (2013). The teacher-student writing conference reimagined: “Entangled becoming-writing conferencing.”Gender and Education, 25(6), 722–737.
24.
van der TuinI. (2011). “A different starting point, a different metaphysics”: Reading Bergson and Barad diffractively. Hypatia, 26(1), 22–42.
25.
SheltonS. A.GuyotteK. W.FlintM. A. (2019). (Wo)monstrous suturing: Woman doctoral students cutting together/apart. Reconceptualizing Education Research Methodology, 10(2–3), 112–146.
