Posthumanist data analysis of mangling practices

In this paper, I argue against traditional coding in interpretive data analysis and offer a posthumanist alternative that offers qualitative researchers a new way to create ontological becomings in their reading of data. I begin with an overview of how humanism enables us to think qualitative data analysis as coding, and then counter human-centered inquiry with a description of Pickering’s mangle and its potential as a both a figuration and a different tool for analysis. I then give an example of a reading of data as/in/of the mangle. I show the agentic features of both human and non-human elements of the mangle to move away from epistemological representations of the “real” to practices of decentering the human in social science inquiry. I conclude that using Pickering’s posthumanist ontological theory of agency is one gesture toward the becoming of what the editors of this issue call post-qualitative research.