When dust gets in your eyes: Researching the taboo

This paper has emerged out of a black cloud which disseminates dust and soot more than epistemic knowledge. How do we talk into our research topics when soil folds in to the crevices of our trachea and the earth is in our eyes? How do we embrace a speculative pragmatism in order to stay with the processual and the more-than and avoid making a priori decisions? And what if we find ourselves during this process to be thinking with the taboo, thinking in the act (Erin Manning and Brian Massumi, 2014) with the grime that has tangled in our hair? This paper examines how affect theory puts the political firmly on the table.