The Joy of Sprawly Mess Unknowing: Volcanic Data Eruptions and Irruptions

This article uses the figuration of the volcano to demonstrate the disruptive and irruptive power of post-qualitative research. The article’s volcanic irruptions aim to keep data on the move, to show how data continually and slowly proliferate in rhizomatic, nomadic, and unforeseen ways via different, ongoing experimentations, instantiating the processual research practices of knowledge-ing. This article includes, and celebrates, empirical materials collectively produced as part of a collaborative research project entitled Get Up and Move!, which enacted posthumanist, feminist materialist research practices. We were curious about how we might activate the volcano to disrupt traditional modes of data collection, analysis, and dissemination rituals through research-creation events. By concept-ing with the volcano, through the creation of volcanic calligrams, we intra-act with data, as data erupt and irrupt in powerful, agentic, and surprising ways.