Readymade Methodology

Neither inside, nor outside. Between art and non-art. Visual artist, Marcel Duchamp’s readymade art installations of the early 20th century mapped a space of between-ness, of liminality, through previously drawn boundaries in the art world. In this article, we put forth readymade methodology as a liminal approach to (post)qualitative research. Drawing from Duchamp’s readymade art installations, we situate dominant methodological practices as collections of ready-made techniques and technologies for interpreting the world (research as instrumentation); such processes, we argue, are distinct from readymade inquiry (research as immanent and multiplicitous). Readymade methodology disorients knowings and illustrates lines of flight produced from inversions of taken-for-granted technical application of research methods. In this article, we think methodology differently, not limiting ourselves to the constraints/comforts of conventional qualitative methodology. Just as Duchamp interrogated the in-between of art and everyday life, readymade methodology flourishes in/with the potentiality of twisted liminal spaces in (post)qualitative inquiry.