Doing interpretation differently with posthumanism and new materialism: Reconceptualizing what data does in postqualitative research

Interpretivist approaches to understanding data which seek meaning about lived experiences have been the bedrock of qualitative research for decades. This chapter focuses on doing interpretation differently using posthumanism and new materialism, as indicated by strikethrough: interpretation. The reconceptualization of interpretation in postqualitative research unsettles representationalist assumptions that valid truths can be uncovered by making people’s accounts accessible. The chapter uses three examples of data – an extract from an interview transcript, a photograph, and an excerpt from a government report – with seven analytical techniques to illustrate how meaning emerges or, rather, materializes in and through theoretical encounters with empirical materials. The seven techniques problematize humanist practices of interpretation-as-usual, illuminating how meaning-making, as a materially entangled theory-practice, is emergent, situated, and contextual. These seven techniques of theory-data encounterings lead us to propose posthumanist new materialist interpretation as a mode of producing knowledge differently. The chapter demonstrates that data are lively; that human-nonhuman materials entangle theory-practice in novel ways; and that, in keeping data on the move, posthuman and new materialist methodological practices generate new possibilities regarding interpretation.