Reading-through be-longing: Towards a methodology for political sciences otherwise

Abstract

Inspired by critical feminist, decolonial, and narrative approaches, this paper invites political sciences scholars to engage in different forms of knowledges (unlearning Western-centrism by centering Asia), (collective) methodology, and data collection (centering stories). We offer a pathway to political sciences otherwise, i.e., “as if people matter” and propose reading-through as a methodology for open-ended sensemaking at the service of pluriversal co-existence, prioritizing life in/and dignity over mastery or singular truths and fact-finding. Reading-through encompasses diverse practices of meeting, co-reading, and co-writing, including exchanging thoughts on fictional/scientific stories in a “live” epistolary process paper. To articulate the substantive purchase of reading-through, we engage a selection of novels—Szabo’s The Door, Faye’s Small Country, Thúy’s Ru, and, especially Lee’s Pachinko, a woman-centered multigenerational story on the Korean and wider (north)East Asian colonial/diasporic experience in the twentieth century—and revisit the political sciences theme of belonging as be-longing otherwise. Rather than offering a definitive blueprint for Political Sciences otherwise, this paper seeks a deeper understanding of how method and methodology are an integral, co-constitutive part of our capacity to fundamentally rethink learned disciplinary conventions towards scholarship “as if people matter.”.