In and Against Rhythms of the Neoliberal Public: Toward a Qualitative Inquiry of the Street

In this article, we offer commentary on moving bodies and the spaces they simultaneously inhabit and produce, pointing specifically to dominant rhythmologies of the contemporary market society. We offer as the article's core thrust the pedagogical, political, and performative exigencies of the street: its traversal and occupation, its flow and stasis. We utilize the theories of Jean-Luc Nancy, Roberto Esposito, Lieven de Cauter, Guy Debord, and Paul Virilio to build an argument against hermeneutic determinism(s). In so doing, we (temporarily) look past conceptualizations of the street as late modern discursive metonym, and instead turn toward public dimensions of time and space. In so doing, we encourage qualitative inquirers to look beyond the dynamic texts or fixed environs and toward the sensual and sensory, postulating a (re) location of the flesh and bones that has often been missing from the thinking(s) and doing(s) of qualitative research.