Angelo Benozzo

Moving Between Nuisance, Secrets, and Splinters as Data

“[Knowledge is] like the swift flight of a sparrow through the room where you sit at supper in winter…whilst the storms of rain and snow prevail outside; the [data]…while [it] is within, is safe from the wintry storm; but after a short space…[it] immediately vanishes out of your sight, into the dark winter from which [it] had emerged. So [data] appears for a short space, but of what went before, or what is to follow, we are utterly ignorant…”(after Bede, 1969, p104).

Introduction to the Special Issue Claiming Unity and Diversity in Qualitative Psychology

In this article, we position the special issue and explore some of the common interests and voices that tend to be shared among the field of qualitative psychology and the authors and assays that appear in the following pages. In doing this, we draw the contours of qualitative psychology that, in our view, is characterized mainly by the appreciation of complexity of knowledge, by the strong belief in the relational and collaborative view of the process of creating knowledge and acting on it, and finally by the effort to promote social justice through the findings of the research.

Post Author/Ship Five or More IKEA Customers in Search of an Author

In this article, imposters’ (or fake authors) aim is to problematize fixed concepts such as author, authoring, and authorship both in qualitative research and in organization studies—especially in relation to organizational communications that ostensibly promote and value diversity of (sexual) identity. In seeking to do so, these imposters engage with an IKEA ad and, in a process of “prospective” writing, inductively explore the absence or void of an author through a series of writing events.

Coming out of the credenza1: An Italian celebrity unveils his ‘new’ gay self

In this article I offer a discourse analysis of Tiziano Ferro coming out in a regulatory Italian context. The critical texts for analysis come from the first page of the entertainment section of two Italian newspapers, Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica, where Ferro, an Italian pop star, came out of the closet in as public a way as possible. The pages contain a letter from the singer, other articles (editorial and comments), an interview and images. I present a discourse analysis of these newspaper pages, highlighting how the construction of this narration of coming out, with its ideology-laden and rhetorical discourse, combined visual aspects and written texts. In this way I deconstruct the narrative of coming out; I discuss the intertwining of the regulatory discourses so that homosexuality is made acceptable in the Italian social landscape, and the consequences of this coming out.

Neo-Liberalism in the Italian University: Encroachment and Resistance

Neo-liberalism has spread throughout the world in tandem with globalization. This article attempts to address the way in which neo-liberalism has operated in the Italian university system, an academic context that has its own history, values, and traditions. A brief overview of the consequences of neo-liberalism in Italy is followed by a description of the stages in the neo-liberal university reforms that have characterized the Italian academic world since the end of the 1980s. Finally, three forms of resistance that hinder the process of neo-liberalization and make it non-linear are examined in depth.

Creative (Critical) Discourse Analysis of Tiziano Ferro and Ricky Martin "Coming Out"

In this article, we explore and problematize the coming out discourses of Ricky Martin and Tiziano Ferro’s through a creative (critical) discourse analysis. We first contextualize the historicity of Ricky Martin and Tiziano Ferro’s artistic careers and argue that their coming out process is a privileged laboratory to understand the ways strategies and tactics of discourses are deployed. Second, through a Critical Discourse Analysis and collaborative writing inquiry approach, we present a creative fictional dialogue to showcase our analysis. This can be called creative (critical) discourse analysis. Third, we further reflect and theorize about these coming out discourses using Queer Theory, Governability, and the concept of Glory and the Media as privileged spaces for power. This will lead us to question the centered subject or a solid identity, the manifestations of coming out discourses, and the role of Glory and the Media in the socialization process.

The Doing and Undoing of the “Autistic Child”: Cutting Together and Apart Interview-Based Empirical Materials:

This article discusses how posthuman and new materialist theories afford us opportunities to rethink the production of the “autistic child,” drawing on a qualitative research project on parenthood in the context of childhood disability in Italy. We will put some Baradian’s key concepts (intra-action, agential cut and cutting together-apart) to work in glancing at the complexities we keep encountering when a mother, Arianna, describes her relationship with her daughter Laura. The aim of this article is twofold: first, to methodologically re-turn the production of the “autistic child,” and second, to rethink and unsettle the dichotomies that constitute some children as “disabled human beings,” abnormal, and undesirable.

Improvising Bags Choreographies: Disturbing Normative Ways of Doing Research

Postqualitative research-creation improvisations offer new possibilities to explore method/ology. In this article, we question how bags, as seemingly mundane objects, work as ontologically lively matter—as active agencies—to choreograph human–nonhuman relations and heterogeneous materialities. Working from three questions—How might a bag become? What do bags do? What do bags enable and enact?—we discuss four research-creation improvisations and the insights they generated. The article maps how bags choreographies put affects, bodies, and materialities into comotional relations to disturb normative approaches to research both within conference sessions and through writing articles.

Gay and Queer Coming Out into Europe (Part 1)

When South Pacific opened in 1949 racial segregation was the law in the US southern states. Lawmakers in the south tried to ban the following song … but failed. It was a monumental act of courage by the writers and producers of South Pacific to refuse to back down. In this chapter we will present our ideas around how research practice can helps to query the boundaries between what is considered “professional” and legitimate knowledge and behaviour and what is not as four ‘queers’ in academe. Academic culture when thought of as primarily being about the transmission of knowledge situates the roles of gay men who are researchers in specific ways of being, belonging, acting and speaking.