The implications for qualitative research methodology of the struggle between the individualised subject of phenomenology and the emergent multiplicities of the poststructuralist subject: the problem of agency

Abstract

This paper re-visits the problem of how we re-conceptualize human subjects within poststructuralist research. The turn to poststructuralist theory to inform research in the social sciences is complicated by the difficulty in thinking through what it means to put the subject under erasure. Drawing on a study in a Reggio Emilia inspired preschool in Sweden, and a study of neoliberalism's impact on academic work, this paper opens up thought about poststructuralism's subject. It argues that agency is the province of that subject.