Suspending the “I” in Self-portraiture

This paper explores what might happen to the concept of “I” in qualitative research, specifically during the construction of self-portraiture. The experience of portrait-making offers a space, between identifiable categories of “I” or identity, where multiplicities come into play, untethering to previous and future bodies of existence and past notions of self. This creative movement presents opportunities for new “I”s to be generated, which, in turn, may result in various moving and shifting representations of self (see also Deleuze and Guattari, 1987). These creations are not simply superimpositions of existing experiences, but rather superimpositions that result as an emergence of new ideas, selves, and bodies; a result of an operative transversality of differences (see also Blumenfeld, 2015). The decisions made by the research-creators, where the “I” is suspended, nestled between thought and performative processes, emerge as new knowledge and thus produce new forms of knowing and knowing oneself. This form of inquiry can offer practices and reflections on the multiple ways participants, scholars, research-creators view themselves, as well as an opportunity to explore and question the topic of representational multiplicity especially at the times when the “I” has been suspended