https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800418809533 Qualitative Inquiry 1–9 © The Author(s) 2018 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/1077800418809533 journals.sagepub.com/home/qix Original Article Aporias of Neoliberal Data How can aporias of neoliberal data trouble the ideology of neoliberalism from ontological, epistemological, and ethi- cal positionings? Data, as an ontological practice, pose questions of knowledge, subjectivity, relationality, politics, and power, to name a few. Data are not one thing, or even many things: There is an inherited multiplicity of data that, if not overlooked, challenges the established order of things, and expected outcomes and ready-to-be-delivered compu- tations and solutions. Data, if not simplified, fill the produc- tion practice not to colonize them but to free them. Practices of allowing a view of the connectedness to different politi- cal structures, discursive variations, multitudes of scholarly adventures and contesting the linguistic assumptions are engraved in the notion of aporia that this article addresses. We question how data can function, are produced, and mul- tiply in different contexts under the neoliberal ideology. Indeed, the notions of neoliberal data associated with meth- odological practices are not static, but continue to change as a result of neoliberal forces, privatization discourses, mar- ket-driven decision-making that governs human subjects’ ontological positioning toward the world, epistemology that we are allowed to inherit, and the ethical relations that we form. These ideas are also relevant to the institutional prac- tices of higher education, scholarship, and curriculum. Aporia, Greek for difficulty, puzzle, or impassable, plays a significant role in Derrida’s conceptualization of ethics, decision-making, and limits of truth. Also viewed as “a momentary paralysis in the face of the impasse, it [apo- ria] is the ‘testing out of the undecidable; only in this testing can a decision come about’” (Derrida, 2005, p. 154). Aporia “duplicates itself interminably, fissures itself, and contra- dicts itself without remaining the same” (Derrida, 1993, p. 16). Furthermore, as Wang (2005) argues, “[i]t is in the very event of exceeding borderlines—an impossible passage—that aporia is experienced” (p. 46). In the process of exceeding borderlines and impossible passages, the aporias of suspension, undecidability, and urgency both enable and disable researchers’ (and readers’) responsibility (see Edgoose, 2001). Applying aporia to data, data become nondata, data without direction, and data without limits. Data without data. Data face their own limit questions and (un)remember their own memories. According to Derrida (1993), aporetic data (especially in neoliberal times) have a plural logic. First, the impermeable nonpassage, a door that does not open; second, the absence of limit or too porous a limit, that is too easily permeable as a border; and third, the impossible. Neoliberal data generate contradiction without a pass, step, criteria, and replacement that aligns with neoliberal “principles.” There are no more data with clear 809533QIX XX X 10.1177/1077800418809533Qualitative InquiryKoro-Ljungberg et al. research-article 2018 1 Arizona State University, Tempe, USA 2 University of Auckland, Meadowbank, New Zealand Corresponding Author: Mirka Koro-Ljungberg, Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University, P.O. Box 871811, Mail Code 1811, Tempe, AZ 85281, USA. Email: Mirka.Koro-Ljungberg@asu.edu Aporetic and Productive Undecidedness of (Data in) Neoliberalism Mirka Koro-Ljungberg 1 , Marek Tesar 2 , David Lee Carlson 1 , Anna Montana 1 , and Byoung-gyu Gong 1 Abstract In diverging from a follow-the-heard idealism that has scholars spinning in paradox, this article opens the possibility that neoliberal data can ground themselves in the reality of being in the world via a search for the immanent other, friend, concept, or practice. This article is not concerned with a search for ultimate (data) truth, but rather aporia and the intimate act of parrhesia, or truth-telling, as it is communicated in the context of life. We hover over whether data-as-friendship can be unplanned and unrehearsed as parrhesia, and not just part of the neoliberal networking scheme to gather more data, or follow regulations of “rigor” and “rightness.” We also ponder ways in which free and deregulated data (in all friendship forms) can enable complex, creative, and critical engagements with inquiry, participants, and our environments. Keywords data, neoliberalism, aporia, parrhesia, friendship