An immanent postfoundational methodology for researching the violent trans-sections of ableism, classism and sexism

This paper charts the unfolding of a small-scale qualitative study, presented at institutional ethical approval stage as drawing on posthumanist theorising and seeking to (re)configure the concept of intersectionality, and focusing on the lived experience of postgraduate students of lower socio-economic status with disabilities. The self-selected sample comprised six women, three of whom volunteered accounts of sexual violence that complicated their experiences of dis-ability and class, and highlighted the complexity of their lived experience of intersectionality. We describe a research process in which interviewing became intra-viewing, lived experience came to be understood through Deleuzian and Deleuzo-guattarian concepts and intersectionality became trans-sectionality. We respond to MacLure’s suggestions for postfoundational methods, considering these in relation to the aforementioned study and the concept of transversality, and contend that institutionally mandated research procedures reproduce the violence of normative ableist and socio-political taxonomies whilst the pervasiveness of sexual violence is neglected.