Negotiating Legibility in Participatory Philosophical Inquiry

Abstract This article carves out a specific kind of meeting between philosophy and qualitative inquiry, particularly in the form of participatory philosophical qualitative inquiry. I describe an inquiry group project formed to explore the normative concerns of a group of disabled activists surrounding the concept of epistemic agency. The inquiry group was designed to work against the grain of able‐minded norms of inquiry, particularly in terms of verbal communication, linear processing, and independent reasoning. I describe and analyze the design, implementation, and interpretation of this empirical research project through the framework of legibility. I analyze two interrelated questions that I was asked during the research process, and which pull in different directions. The first, asked by several reviewers from the field of philosophy, was about what makes the inquiry work philosophical. The second, asked of me during an inquiry group meeting by a member of that group, is “Are you getting what you need?” I explore how these questions are methodological and conceptual, but also, and crucially, questions of legibility—about how to create new paths within unmapped epistemological and ethical territory.