An Ability Traitor at Work: A Treasonous Call to Subvert Writing From Within

In questioning conventional qualitative research methods, St. Pierre asked, “What else might writing do except mean?” The author answers, it oppresses. Co-opting the race traitor figurative, she calls on qualitative researchers to become “ability traitors” who interrogate how a valuable coinage of their trade—the written word—is used to rank and categorize individuals with troubling effects. In this article, she commits three betrayals: (a) multigenre writing that undermines the authoritative text; (b) assemblage as a method of analysis that deprivileges the written word; and(c) a gesture toward a dis/ comfort text intended to take up Lather’s example of challenging the “usual ways of making sense”. In committing these betrayals, the author articulates her “traitorous agenda” designed to interrogate assumptions about inquiry, power, equity, and writing as practice-as-usual.