Resistance, desistance: bad girls of post-qualitative inquiry

Who or what might be the illegitimate offspring of the “bad girl” as a figure for post-qualitative research? I consider the witch as a figure of posthuman efficacy and affective relationality, drawing on recent invocations of witchcraft and divination as theoretic practice. The witch might help post-qualitative methodology fulfil its own aspirations to get beyond language and the closures of coding by infusing method with divinatory practices. Examples of such practices in recent qualitative research studies are discussed. Divination does not seek to understand, but to transform from within, by sensing and redirecting the flows and intensities of that which is coming into existence. I also consider, more briefly, the witch’s near relation, the crone—a figure that feels more befitting to my own age and status. As an anomaly in the networks that sustain human conviviality, the crone’s uselessness might also have some disruptive force. I suggest that post-qualitative method might learn from the witch the arts of transformation and resistance, and from the crone the power of desistance and the passion of disinterest.