935929

research-article2020
QIXXXX10.1177/1077800420935929Qualitative InquiryHein

Research Article
Qualitative Inquiry

Deleuze and Absolute Immanence:

1­–10
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1077800420935929
https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800420935929
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Serge F. Hein1

Abstract
The concepts of immanence and transcendence have a long and varied history in philosophy. In an ontology of absolute
immanence, immanence is not dependent on something else. Immanence is immanent only to itself, with the result
that all transcendence is eliminated. Deleuze, like Derrida and Foucault, has an unwavering commitment to absolute
immanence, which he conceives of in different ways during his career. There is both a logical and an ethical problem with
any ontology of transcendence, and an ontology of absolute immanence addresses both these problems. Fully immanent
inquiry rejects all forms of methodological transcendence. It avoids relying on the authority of any existing qualitative (or
other) methodological structures such as paradigms, methodologies, methodological concepts, methodological techniques,
and methodological practices. It also avoids all binary opposites and universals and fosters experimentation and creation
of the new. An example of fully immanent research is also discussed.

Keywords
fully immanent inquiry, absolute immanence, Deleuze, transcendence

It was Jean Hyppolite (1953/1997) who, in his book Logic
and Existence, undertook a revision of Hegel’s philosophy
and first made the statement that “immanence is complete.”1
Logic and Existence was also pivotal in shaping the philos-
ophies of Deleuze, Derrida, and Foucault, all of whom were
students of Hyppolite, while he was either a professor at the
Sorbonne or, later, the director of the École Normale
Supérieure.2 More specifically, the concept of positive (or
pure) difference that is so central to the philosophies of
Deleuze, Derrida, and Foucault would not have been pos-
sible without Hyppolite’s discussion, in Logic and
Existence, of the problem of difference in Hegel (e.g., see
Lawlor, 1997), but the development of the concept of posi-
tive difference first required all three of these thinkers to
reject Hyppolite’s reading of Hegel.3 As Foucault
(1969/1972) stated in his inaugural address to the Collège
de France after taking up the position of chair in the History
of Philosophical Thought, which had been vacated by
Hyppolite’s death, “Logic and Existence established all the
problems that are ours” (p. 236).
Much of what I discuss in this article is an attempt to fol-
low the idea that “immanence is complete.” I begin by focus-
ing on the concepts of immanence and transcendence as they
have been used in ancient, medieval, and modern philosophy.
I then discuss the completion of immanence, as absolute
immanence; changes in Deleuze’s conception of absolute
immanence during his career; and several reasons why abso-
lute immanence is an important ontological consideration.
This is followed by an examination of the implications for
inquiry/research of completing immanence. Finally, I present
an example of fully immanent inquiry from my own research.
What is Immanence?
The concepts of immanence and transcendence have a long
history in philosophy and have been used in a variety of
ways in ancient, medieval, modern, and poststructural phi-
losophy. Etymologically, the term immanence is derived
from the Latin term immanere, which could be translated as
“to dwell within.” Transcendence, on the other hand, is
derived from the Latin term transcendere, which means “to
move beyond.” Within modern philosophy, immanence has
normally been conceived as grounded in the human subject,
as conscious life (i.e., immanence is an immanence to con-
sciousness), whereas transcendence has been conceived as
all that exists outside of, or independently of, consciousness
(or that lies beyond what can legitimately be known).
Within poststructuralism, however, immanence and tran-
scendence are conceived in more general terms: Immanence
means to “be a part of,” “be internal to,” “belong to,” or
“remain within,” whereas transcendence means to “go
beyond” or “stand outside of or above.”
1
Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, USA
Corresponding Author:
Serge F. Hein, Leadership, Counseling, and Research, Virginia Tech, 1750
Kraft Drive, Room 2105, Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA.
Email: shein@vt.edu
2 Qualitative Inquiry 00(0)
In terms of philosophies of transcendence, the transcen-
dence of God forms the longest legacy within philosophy.4
For these philosophies, God is generally conceived as a
supreme, external being who is wholly above or beyond
humanity and the world. Moreover, God is viewed as eter-
nal, omnipotent, omniscient, free, disembodied, and the
creator and sustainer of the finite world (and universe).5
Thus, God does not depend on anyone or anything for his
existence. Along with being transcendent to the world, God
has normally also been conceived as incomprehensible (i.e.,
as transcending human experience). Thus, God is viewed as
transcendent in both an ontological and an epistemological
sense.6
The philosophy of Plato (2003) constitutes another type
of philosophy of transcendence, and it distinguishes
between the sensible (i.e., perceivable) world of objects and
a second, imperceptible world of Forms or Ideas (with Ideas
understood as ideals rather than thoughts) that lies beyond
the sensible world, outside of time and space. For Plato, the
sensible world is imperfect and in constant flux, whereas
the Forms (e.g., beauty, goodness, justice), which ground
the sensible, are perfect, eternal, immutable, and complete.
A third type of philosophy of transcendence is that of
Descartes (1641/1993), who is widely considered to be one
of the originators of modern Western philosophy. He rea-
soned that the only indubitable knowledge that he possesses
is that he must exist because he thinks, and this insight
serves as his first principle: cogito ergo sum (i.e., I think,
therefore I am). He also famously establishes a split between
mind (thinking, immaterial, and unextended in space) and
body (unthinking, material, and extended in space), which
he views as radically different types of substances and, in so
doing, establishes the agenda for all subsequent philosophi-
cal discussion of the relationship between mind and body. It
is also important to add that, for Descartes, transcendence
occurs not only in the relationship between mind and body
(i.e., the mind transcends the body, so that the body is in the
mind’s grasp) but also in the relationship between God and
all that he creates (i.e., God transcends the world that he
creates). In this philosophy of dual transcendence, which
views God as transcendent to both the mind and the created
world, God guarantees the clear and valid perceptions or
experiences of the subject (i.e., the subject requires the
assistance of God). As May (2005) notes, “Descarte’s
ambivalence between the power of the cogito and the power
of God reflects the difficult birth of the [modern] human
subject” (p. 28).
The philosophy of Kant (1787/1998), which emphasizes
the transcendence of human subjectivity, represents a fourth
type of philosophy of transcendence. For Kant, the mind
plays an active role in shaping and structuring experience in
that it brings an a priori conceptual structure (e.g., the con-
cepts of cause and effect) to our understanding of the exter-
nal world. He also distinguishes between the thing-in-itself
(i.e., noumenon), which exists independently of human per-
ception, and the thing as it is perceived (i.e., phenomenon).
For Kant, we cannot access or know things-in-themselves
(i.e., the actual objects or events of the external world), only
things as they are for us. An important result of his philoso-
phy is that the human subject or knower is given a central
role in knowledge and the condition of its possibility. More
generally, in terms of the dual transcendence that character-
izes Descarte’s philosophy, in Kant’s philosophy, the first
form of transcendence has been retained and the second one
eliminated, so that the modern subject transcends the world
and gives it form. With Kant, then, philosophy comes to
focus exclusively on the human subject, who “abandons
God not by overthrowing transcendence but by gradually
usurping God’s place in it” (May, 2005, p. 28).
It can be seen that philosophy, from ancient to modern,
has shown a strong tendency to introduce transcendence
into its metaphysics. As de Beistegui (2010) notes, “there is
something like a natural inclination of thought towards
transcendence” (p. 193). With each of the above philoso-
phies of transcendence, it is evident that transcendence
establishes a fundamental dualism (i.e., a two-world struc-
ture or ontology), along with a hierarchy, whereby one of
the two terms or concepts is privileged over the other one.
In a philosophy of absolute immanence, however, imma-
nence is not immanent to a subject (i.e., to a consciousness),
as in the philosophies of Descartes or Kant, or to an object.
In other words, immanence is not in (or dependent on)
something else, whether that something else is a subject or
an object. Instead, immanence is immanent only to itself
(i.e., immanence is only in itself), as is found in Deleuze’s
philosophy. It is in this sense that he refers to immanence as
“pure” (e.g., Deleuze, 1995/2001, pp. 26, 27). Thus, tran-
scendence cannot enter it and create a second world. In
Immanence: A Life, Deleuze (1995/2001) describes abso-
lute (i.e., pure) immanence in the following way:
Absolute immanence is in itself: it is not in something, to
something; it does not depend on an object or belong to a
subject . . . When the subject or the object falling outside the
plane of immanence is taken as a universal subject or as any
object to which immanence is attributed, . . . immanence is
distorted, for it then finds itself enclosed in the transcendent.
Immanence is not related to Some Thing as a unity superior to
all things or to a Subject as an act that brings about a synthesis
of things: it is only when immanence is no longer immanence
to anything other than itself that we can speak of a plane of
immanence. (pp. 26–27)
As is evident in the above quote, Deleuze (1995/2001)
also refers to absolute immanence as a plane of immanence.
When immanence is immanent only to itself, consciousness
is simply one element within a field of immanence. Or, as
Zourabichvili (2012) puts it, absolute immanence “has
abandoned the frontiers of the subject” (p. 211). Thus, any
Hein
claim that we might make to knowing this immanence
would amount to viewing this immanence as immanent to
us (i.e., immanence would be reduced to an immanence to
consciousness). Also, in terms of the fundamental dualism
that is instituted in philosophies of transcendence, when we
begin from absolute immanence, there is no inherent sepa-
ration (i.e., absolute immanence is “prior to” the separation
between binary opposites). More specifically, binary oppo-
sites (e.g., mind/body, subject/object, essence/appearance)
have an immanent relation to one another, whereby each
pole of the binary is contained within the other pole.
Deleuze and Absolute Immanence
Immanence can be said to be the burning issue of all philosophy
because it takes on all the dangers that philosophy must
confront, all the condemnations, persecutions, and repudiations
that it undergoes . . . It is not immediately clear why immanence
is so dangerous, but it is. It engulfs sages and gods. (Deleuze
and Guattari, What is Philosophy?)
Deleuze, like Derrida and Foucault, demonstrates an
unwavering commitment to absolute immanence in his
works, and hence, he refuses transcendence in all of its
forms. In other words, immanence is made complete, as a
pure plane of immanence (i.e., immanence is no longer
enclosed within something transcendent: all transcen-
dence has been eliminated, so that immanence is only in
itself rather than in something else). Already in The Logic
of Sense (Deleuze, 1969/1990), we find that the transcen-
dental field, a term that is used in Kant’s (1787/1998) phi-
losophy to refer to a field that is for a subject, is being
thought as a plane, although the latter term is not used
explicitly. It is in What is Philosophy? (Deleuze &
Guattari, 1991/1994), Immanence: A Life (Deleuze,
1995/2001), and, to a lesser extent, A Thousand Plateaus
(Deleuze & Guattari, 1980/1987), however, that the topic
of immanence is dealt with explicitly.
In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari
(1980/1987) describe how the plane of immanence, which
they also refer to as the plane of consistency or composi-
tion, is a surface on which there are only complex networks
of pure events, forces, intensities, relations, and connec-
tions. Thus, there is no structure or genesis on this plane; as
Deleuze and Guattari note, “there are only relations of
movement and rest, speed and slowness between unformed
elements, or at least between elements that are relatively
unformed” (p. 266). These relations between unformed ele-
ments, or pure events, occur by chance alone. Moreover,
because the plane of immanence is not spatiotemporal (i.e.,
it has no spatial or temporal coordinates), it is imperceptible
and lacks any kind of outside or end. As a result, it is never
given as such; it is not a thing or a being. Deleuze and
Guattari contrast the plane of immanence with the plane of
3
organization, which they also refer to as the plane of actual-
ity or the plane of transcendence, on which subjects, objects,
and various kinds of becoming are found (i.e., the plane of
organization is structural and genetic). It is also important to
emphasize here that transcendence (e.g., subjects, objects)
is always the result of immanence and occurs as soon as
movement on the plane of immanence is stopped.
In What is Philosophy? (Deleuze & Guattari, 1991/1994),
a major portion of the book is devoted to theorizing the
plane of immanence. Here, the plane of immanence is
viewed as integral to the structure of thinking itself, and
immanence is used to refer to any form of thinking that
rejects an external or transcendent perspective. Moreover,
the plane of immanence is used in two significantly differ-
ent ways. First, it is used to refer to the variety of planes that
are associated with past philosophers, with each of these
planes having, in its own way, conceived of immanence and
restored transcendence. Second, Deleuze and Guattari refer
to the plane of immanence, which is absolute, infinite,
unthinkable, and the “source” or “origin” of (and, hence,
immanent to) all thinkable planes:
Is there a “best” plane that would not hand over immanence to
Something = x and that would no longer mimic anything
transcendent? We will say that THE plane of immanence is, at
the same time, that which must be thought and that which
cannot be thought. It is the nonthought within thought. It is the
base of all planes, immanent to every thinkable plane that does
not succeed in thinking it. It is the most intimate within thought
and yet the absolute outside—an outside more distant than any
external world because it is an inside deeper than any internal
world . . . (p. 59)
Also, for Deleuze and Guattari (1991/1994), “Spinoza is
the vertigo of immanence from which so many philoso-
phers try in vain to escape” (p. 48),7 a point that is similar
to one made elsewhere by Deleuze (1968/1992) when he
states that “immanence is the very vertigo of philosophy”
(p. 180). More specifically, thinking that is oriented toward
the plane of immanence, which is infinite and unthinkable,
instead of toward an immanence that is immanent to (i.e.,
dependent on) a subject or an object, will necessarily be
disorienting and destabilizing. Or, as Cull (2012) puts it,
“we will never feel grounded when immanence is the
starting point for our thinking” (p. 9). Thus, absolute
immanence involves a rejection of humanism (i.e., anthro-
pocentrism), the modernist view that the proper perspec-
tive for understanding the world is grounded in the human
subject. Instead, thought is “approached from a cosmologi-
cal perspective in which human life appears as a relatively
limited process unfolding among much larger processes
that it [i.e., human life] will never fully be able to master
intellectually [emphasis added]” (Due, 2007, p. 22). It is
also important to add that the plane of immanence is not a
4 Qualitative Inquiry 00(0)
concept or even “the concept of all concepts” (Deleuze &
Guattari, 1991/1994, p. 36); it is more accurately viewed as
a nonconcept. The plane of immanence exceeds all concep-
tual orders and is the “source” of all concepts, the absolute
ground upon which they are created (i.e., all concepts are
instances of transcendence).8
In Deleuze’s (1995/2001) final work, the essay
Immanence: A Life, which was published only a few months
before his death, he describes immanence as an impersonal,
presubjective power of life. In other words, immanence is
conceived as a life rather than the life of Deleuze or some-
one else. Thus, Deleuze is using the concept of life not in
the conventional sense, to refer to the biological life that is
shared by all living things, but rather, to refer to the virtual
aspect of the actual world (Patton, 2010). His concept of life
does not function as a plane of transcendence but, instead,
is synonymous with absolute immanence:
We will say of pure immanence that it is A LIFE, and nothing
else. It is not immanence to life, but the immanent that is in
nothing is itself a life. A life is the immanence of immanence,
absolute immanence: it is complete power, complete bliss.
(p. 27)
Why is Absolute Immanence
Important?
At this point, the question could be asked: Why is absolute
immanence important to consider ontologically? Or, why is
it important to adopt an ontology of immanence rather than
an ontology that is partially transcendent? A general
response to either of these questions is that there are two
major problems associated with any ontology of transcen-
dence. First, there is a logical problem, involving the exis-
tence of two (or more) types of substances. An ontology of
transcendence requires that two substances exist, and these
substances, one of which transcends the other, must neces-
sarily be fundamentally different in nature (e.g., mind is
entirely distinct from body). Nevertheless, ontologically,
both substances must interact in some way. Thus, what is
the relationship between both substances (i.e., how do they
interact)? The problem of explaining how substances inter-
act, however, has proven to be intractable. For example,
how does the human mind relate to the body? How does
God relate to all that he creates? How do physical objects
participate in Plato’s Forms? In addition to this ontological
problem, for modern philosophies of transcendence that
emphasize human subjectivity, the relationship between the
mind and external reality poses a related epistemological
problem. More specifically, how do my perceptions or
knowledge claims correspond to external reality? Like the
above ontological problem, this epistemological problem
has proven unresolvable, with the result that there is endless
uncertainty about the relationship between knowledge
claims and the corresponding independent, external reality.
Second, there is an ethical (or moral) problem with
ontologies of transcendence that involves the privileging
of one substance over the other one. More specifically, an
ontology of transcendence requires that one of the sub-
stances be made superior, in both value and power, to the
other substance. In terms of the philosophies of transcen-
dence discussed earlier, the human subject, mind, God,
and Forms are all made superior to the substances that are
transcended. Also, as far as the valuations that result from
this moral hierarchy, the “lower” substance finds its value
or redemption in the “higher” substance. For example, in a
modern philosophy of transcendence, the human subject
constitutes the world (i.e., objects), giving it order or
meaning.
An ontology of immanence is able to address both the
above problems with ontologies of transcendence. More
specifically, an immanent ontology assumes the univocity
of being: Being consists of only one substance, which is
indivisible (i.e., there is only one substance and, hence, a
kind of sameness in all beings).9 Or, as Due (2007) states,
“univocity means that nothing, not even God, exists in a
reality that would lie beyond the reality of the world, as a
separate transcendent realm that we could only think about
and refer to in indirect or symbolic terms” (p. 36).
Transcendence, however, introduces equivocity: Whether
transcendence involves a human subject, mind, God, or
Forms, being then consists of more than one substance (i.e.,
being is equivocal). When being is univocal, however, sub-
stance cannot be differentiated into different types or levels,
and all forms of division and hierarchy (i.e., transcendence
and dualistic thinking) are avoided.
For Deleuze (1969/1990) in particular, being is a univo-
cal plane. In this regard, he states that “pure immanence
requires as a principle the equality of being, or the positing
of equal Being: not only is being equal in itself, but it is seen
to be equally present in all things” (p. 173). Elsewhere, he
defines the univocity of being in the following way: “Being
is said in a single and the same sense of everything of which
it is said, but that of which it is said differs: it is said of dif-
ference itself” (Deleuze, 1968/1994, p. 36). What both these
quotes make clear is that, for Deleuze, pure immanence and
univocity involve only one kind of being, which is present
in all things. As a result, there is no inherent separation
between the nature of subject and object, mind and body,
representation and external reality, or sign and referent, for
example. But, as far as the presence of being in all things, it
is important to avoid concluding from this that being is a
thing. Instead, as is evident in the final portion of the above
second quote, univocal being is difference itself, a pure,
ungrounded process of differentiation, whereby being dif-
fers even from itself.
Hein
Achieving Fully Immanent Inquiry
Today, “immanence” and “transcendence” present a lot of
problems. (Lawlor, 2006, The Implications of Immanence)
Only a small body of qualitative literature (Hein, 2016,
2017, 2019; St. Pierre, 2017, 2019) has, thus far, dealt with
the concept of immanence. In what follows, I try to articu-
late what the idea that “immanence is complete” might
mean for inquiry or research and, in doing so, to think
immanence both in and as inquiry. In its purest form, this
would be a form of inquiry that is immanent only to itself.
All the work of inquiry, which normally includes the out-
come of inquiry (e.g., a text), would be “within” (i.e., origi-
nate from within) inquiry, and inquiry would therefore have
no “outside.” In other words, fully immanent research
would reject all forms of transcendence (i.e., all external
perspectives); it would be entirely self-organizing. But this
characterization of fully immanent inquiry immediately
raises the question: Is it possible for any study to be imma-
nent only to itself, to be independent of all external, estab-
lished perspectives or authority (e.g., established writing
techniques or literary devices, linearity, narrative develop-
ment)? In my view, fully immanent inquiry of this kind can-
not be achieved, but I do believe that research that is fully
methodologically immanent10 can be achieved. Thus, in the
remainder of this article, I use the term fully immanent
inquiry to refer specifically to the achievement of full meth-
odological immanence.
During the course of inquiry, then, a fully immanent
study would be independent of anything outside of itself
methodologically rather than appealing to the (transcendent)
authority of any established, qualitative (or other) method-
ological structure. This would include the qualitative para-
digm in general and specific qualitative paradigms,
qualitative methodology in general and specific qualitative
methodologies (e.g., autoethnography, ethnography, phe-
nomenology), qualitative methodological concepts (e.g.,
sampling, data, data analysis, validity, trustworthiness, gen-
eralizability), qualitative methodological techniques (e.g.,
coding, check coding, peer debriefing, member checks), and
qualitative methodological practices. A complete lack of
external methodological structure (or even something
approaching it), though, would likely be unacceptable to
some qualitative researchers. Moreover, existing method-
ological structures or authority may prove to be stubbornly
resistant in that some qualitative researchers may find it
tempting to fall back on them. Drawing on Deleuze
(1968/1992), we could say that absolute immanence is the
“vertigo” of qualitative inquiry in that a lack of external
methodological structure, in the form of methodological
markers or guidelines during inquiry, may be disorienting,
destabilizing, and unsettling to some qualitative researchers.
In thinking and researching immanently, researchers would,
as discussed earlier, lack any kind of grounding.
5
It is worth noting here that, like fully immanent inquiry
(in the general sense that I referred to it initially), fully tran-
scendent inquiry is also not attainable. That is, any given
study will, to some extent, be immanent in that some of the
work of inquiry will be unique to that study (i.e., some of
the work of inquiry will originate from within that study).
Similarly, full methodological transcendence cannot be
achieved because all research involves at least some imma-
nent processes in this regard. For example, it is possible to
imagine a mainstream qualitative study that adheres strictly
to one or more methodological techniques (e.g., coding,
check coding, member checks), but the qualitative method-
ology, whether general or specific (e.g., grounded theory,
phenomenology, ethnography), that guides the study would,
necessarily, allow some immanent processes to occur. More
specifically, qualitative methodologies are abstract and pro-
vide the general logic and theoretical perspective that
informs a study. Thus, the specific form that a methodology
takes will vary, to some degree, across studies because of
those aspects of each study that make it unique (e.g.,
grounded theory, as a methodology, takes somewhat differ-
ent forms across ground theory studies). Also, even main-
stream qualitative inquiry participates in becoming and
creates new methodologies, concepts, techniques, practices,
and other methodological formations over time.11
It is also important to add that in this article, I have
referred to fully immanent inquiry rather than fully imma-
nent qualitative inquiry. A fully immanent qualitative
inquiry is not possible because qualitative inquiry is reliant
on the qualitative paradigm in general. Thus, even if a
study was successful in not relying on any specific qualita-
tive paradigm (e.g., postpositivism, interpretivism, critical
theory), qualitative methodology in general or any specific
qualitative methodology (e.g., grounded theory, autoeth-
nography, phenomenology), qualitative methodological
concepts, qualitative methodological techniques, and
methodological practices, it would, to be considered quali-
tative research, need to draw on the qualitative paradigm in
general. As is well known, paradigms include fundamental
beliefs or assumptions about ontology, epistemology, and
methodology. Thus, because of its reliance on the qualita-
tive paradigm in general, qualitative inquiry is not capable
of achieving full methodological immanence. It is also
clear that fully immanent inquiry shares important similari-
ties with postqualitative inquiry (e.g., Lather & St. Pierre,
2013; St. Pierre, 2011, 2013; 2017, 2019). More specifi-
cally, both forms of inquiry involve the rejection of exist-
ing methodological formations, which has the effect of
allowing for experimentation and creation of the new, but
they differ in how this rejection occurs. Fully immanent
inquiry emphasizes the elimination of all methodological
transcendence, whereas postqualitative inquiry emphasizes
the refusal of methodology in all of its forms, including the
systematicity that it presupposes.
6 Qualitative Inquiry 00(0)
In one important ontological sense, one that involves the
concepts of immanence and transcendence, then, it could be
said that inquiry is now complete in that immanence has
been made complete, as absolute immanence (i.e., ontologi-
cally, all methodological transcendence has been elimi-
nated, so that inquiry is immanent only to itself; inquiry is
no longer enclosed within something else). But absolute
immanence also has a number of more specific implications
for the work of inquiry. First, as discussed earlier, fully
immanent inquiry would not rely on any existing paradigm,
methodology, methodological concept, methodological
technique, or methodological practice because all these
would be transcendent to inquiry itself. In other words,
inquiry (i.e., the work of inquiry, including its outcome)
would be (methodologically) immanent only to itself. Thus,
fully immanent research would reject all existing method-
ological concepts (e.g., sampling, data, data collection, data
analysis, validity, generalizability, rigor). Also, it would not
measure the value of any activity completed during the
course of inquiry (e.g., analysis) or the value of the outcome
of inquiry (e.g., a text) against an external reality or stan-
dard. For example, the mainstream qualitative methodolog-
ical technique of member checks (e.g., Patton, 2015), which
involves the external authority (i.e., transcendence) of par-
ticipants, would be avoided. Similarly, peer debriefing
(Patton, 2015), which relies on the external authority of a
trusted and knowledgeable colleague, and check-coding
(Patton, 2015), which involves the external authority of a
second, independent analyst, would be rejected. It is also
important to emphasize that, given the stubborn resistance
of transcendence that was discussed earlier, the fight against
transcendence would likely need to be renewed perpetually,
for each new study and for each researcher.
Second, fully immanent inquiry would require that
researchers avoid reinserting dualisms (i.e., binary oppo-
sites) into their thinking and the other work of inquiry. As
discussed earlier, ontologies of transcendence cannot
avoid establishing a fundamental dualism or two-world
structure. Apart from the immanence/transcendence
binary, other prominent binaries that operate within main-
stream qualitative inquiry include self/other, subject/
object, theory/practice, essence/appearance, determinate/
indeterminate, meaning/reference, literal/figurative, pat-
tern/randomness, science/art, and order/chaos, for exam-
ple. Within a radical immanentism, though, binary
opposites are not possible. Instead, binary opposites must
be thought immanently, as concepts or terms that are
internal to one another rather than mutually exclusive.
Third, inquiry that adopts a fully immanent ontology
would foster active experimentation and creation of the
new, a topic that has already received some attention in the
qualitative literature (e.g., Hein, 2017; Richardson & St.
Pierre, 2018; St. Pierre, 2015; Taguchi & St. Pierre, 2017).
More specifically, the creative production and use of new
concepts, research techniques and practices, and other
research activities would replace adherence to existing
methodological structures. Also, as part of the processes of
experimentation and creation, researchers would need to
avoid setting up new forms of transcendence, where new
concepts, research techniques/practices, and other research
activities themselves became formalized, methodological
structures for subsequent research.12 In What is Philosophy?,
Deleuze and Guattari (1991/1994) famously conceived of
philosophy as the creation or construction of concepts,
which are aimed at solving specific problems. By their very
nature, experimentation and creation involve breaking with
the past and creating “movement” (i.e., avoiding various
forms of transcendence). Moreover, as Deleuze and Guattari
(1991/1994) note, “experimentation is always that which is
in the process of coming about—the new, remarkable, and
interesting that replace the appearance of truth and are more
demanding than it is” (p. 111).
Finally, fully immanent inquiry would reject all univer-
sals because they constitute a form of transcendence.
Universals (e.g., the concept of humanity, truth, or freedom)
describe types or common properties of things, or relation-
ships between things. Thus, universals are abstract, repeat-
able, and instantiated by a variety of concrete particulars or
individuals. Because Deleuze (e.g., Deleuze, 1995/2001;
Deleuze & Guattari, 1980/1987, 1991/1994) is opposed to
all forms of transcendence, he rejects the universal on the
grounds that it stops movement and creation on the plane of
immanence. But it is important to add here that Deleuze is
only opposed to some ways of understanding abstraction.
More specifically, he is opposed to abstractions when they
are represented as eternal (i.e., transcendent).
An Example of Fully Immanent
Research
As an example of fully immanent research, below I discuss
a text that I developed recently that deals with my experi-
ence of ending a friendship (see Hein, 2019). The text is
relatively brief (624 words) and was included, for illustra-
tive purposes, in an article that addresses two major forms
of Deleuzian writing: nonlinear texts and being a traitor to
writing. Portions of Blanchot’s (1973/1981) story, The
Madness of the Day, are also discussed in the article, to
illustrate each of the above forms of Deleuzian writing. I
devoted more than 15 hr, over a period of 2 months, to
developing the text, and I normally returned to it once or
twice per week to review, revise, and expand on it.
In developing the text, I made use of some of the basic
writing style of The Madness of the Day (Blanchot,
1973/1981). I also consciously avoided relying on any
existing (i.e., transcendent) methodological structures. That
is, I avoided relying on the qualitative paradigm in general
and specific qualitative paradigms (e.g., postpositivism,
Hein
interpretivism, critical theory), qualitative methodology in
general and specific qualitative methodologies (e.g., auto-
ethnography, phenomenology, narrative inquiry), qualita-
tive methodological concepts, qualitative methodological
techniques, and qualitative methodological practices. In a
methodological sense, then, the text was entirely self-orga-
nizing and immanent only to itself. In other words, while
developing the text, all the work that occurred in the place
of drawing on existing methodological structures emerged
during the process of inquiry and, hence, was entirely
“within” inquiry itself.
Moreover, the rejection of existing methodological
structures encouraged me to experiment, which I sometimes
found difficult and uncomfortable, particularly in the begin-
ning, and to work, without self-criticism or other pressure,
toward a text whose final form was unknown to me. This
experimentation also led me to make use of a new research
technique: a nonlinear textual structure that is similar to the
one used in The Madness of the Day (Blanchot, 1973/1981).
It was only after I adopted this nonlinear textual format that
it occurred to me that it challenged the mainstream (i.e.,
modernist) qualitative methodological assumption that a
text needs to be linear, unified or cohesive, and meaningful.
Predictably, there were also many unforeseen changes,
large and small, to the content and structure of the text. In
this regard, I developed new sections of text that became
essential to the final text and that, earlier, I could not have
anticipated, and I sometimes discarded sections of text that,
earlier, I had thought would be essential to the final text.
The first paragraph of the text involves a description of
some aspects of myself that are relevant to friendships in
general:
I am neither forgiving nor unforgiving, neither patient nor
impatient. I am not timid, I can speak my mind. I consider
myself to be a good judge of character, but I also know that
sometimes I am not. I have my flaws, but no more or less than
others, I think. And I have had my share of friendships,
although perhaps fewer than most people. Has my life been any
less rich as a result? Perhaps. Perhaps not. I have known stable,
harmonious friendships that lasted decades, and I have also
known volatile, conflict-prone friendships that lasted only a
short while. I enjoy the company of friends, but I also enjoy
solitude. In fact, there have been times when I was alone and
thought that I was completely miserable and unfortunate in life,
but I was nevertheless happy and content. I am satisfied with
the friendships that I have had in the past and those that I have
at present, and the friendships that I foresee myself having in
the future seem adequate enough to me. (Hein, 2019, p. 87)
In the above quote, it can be seen that binary opposites
(i.e., dualisms) are often avoided or undercut. That is, much
of the description that I provide of myself fails to conform
to a binary structure, and those aspects of me are therefore
undecidable, in the Derridean sense of the term. Also, this
7
undecidability fails to conform to the mainstream (i.e.,
modernist), qualitative methodological assumption that
lived experience has a basic binary structure and can there-
fore be described unambiguously. As mentioned earlier, for
fully immanent inquiry, binary opposites must be thought
immanently, as concepts that are internal to one another
rather than mutually exclusive.
The second paragraph of the text deals with some
important aspects of the specific friendship that is the focus
of the overall text, as well as the eventual deterioration of
that friendship:
Can I describe what happened? The friendship was neither
short-lived nor long-lived. The amount of time that we spent
together was neither great nor small. Sometimes we would
meet twice per week and, at other times, six weeks or more
would go by between meetings. At times, we agreed on issues
involving politics, religion, or human nature, and at other times
we didn’t. But disagreements were always dealt with tactfully
and smoothly, at least in the beginning. I tried to be helpful,
whenever possible, and it always seemed well received:
“Thanks. A million thanks.” Then things changed, but I can’t
be sure of precisely when. Near the end of the friendship, on
three separate occasions when I had done my utmost (perhaps
too much) to help, the response, at first, was gratitude, it
seemed. But days or weeks later, it suddenly showed itself to be
anger and contempt. Some of the words cut deeply. And I can
tell you that after the first two, the third time came as a real
blow to me. (Hein, 2019, pp. 87–88)
In the above quote, it can be seen that the description of
important aspects of the friendship, including my identity
and that of my friend, lacks a binary structure and that the
status of these aspects of the friendship is therefore unde-
cidable. As mentioned earlier, this undecidability violates
the mainstream (i.e., conventional), qualitative method-
ological assumption that any human experience possesses a
binary structure and can be described in a coherent and
unambiguous way. It is also evident in the above quote that
there is uncertainty about some aspects of the friendship
and its dissolution (e.g., “then things changed, but I can’t be
sure of precisely when,” “the response, at first, was grati-
tude, it seemed”). As discussed earlier, ontologically, fully
immanent research is informed by absolute immanence
rather than an immanence that is immanent to a subject.
Hence, fully immanent inquiry, like absolute immanence, is
antihumanist (i.e., it rejects humanism). Thus, epistemo-
logically, there are limits to our ability to understand any
aspect of human life, such as a friendship and its ending, or
life in its broadest sense, as reality itself.
Also, it could be maintained that, in each of the above
quotes, a universal (i.e., friendship) has guided the develop-
ment of the text. The text, however, does not claim to reveal
anything eternal or essential about friendship. In the first
quote, the text deals only with some immanent aspects of
8 Qualitative Inquiry 00(0)
the friendships that I have experienced over the course of
my life, and in the second quote, the text focuses only on
certain immanent aspects of a particular friendship that I
have experienced. Moreover, in the second quote, the lack
of a binary structure in the description of important aspects
of the friendship and my uncertainty about other aspects of
the friendship undermine even my ability to articulate the
nature of that particular friendship, much less friendship as
a universal (i.e., friendship as eternal).
In this article, I have attempted to follow the idea that
immanence is complete. As part of this process, I have tried
to articulate what the completion of immanence, as abso-
lute immanence, might mean for the work of inquiry. One
outcome of completing immanence is that inquiry has, in
one important ontological sense that involves the concepts
of immanence and transcendence, been made complete.
Fully immanent inquiry also rejects all forms of method-
ological transcendence. In other words, it avoids relying on
the authority of any existing paradigm, methodology,
methodological concept, methodological technique, or
methodological practice. Finally, fully immanent inquiry
rejects all binary opposites and universals and fosters
experimentation and creation of the new. It is likely that
some qualitative researchers will find the idea of fully
immanent inquiry unacceptable, but as I have tried to show,
ontologically, it is important to complete immanence and
to avoid the problems that are associated with any ontology
of transcendence.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with
respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.
ORCID iD
Serge F. Hein https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6331-2488
Notes
1. For Hegel, there is nothing outside of the concept in that his
absolute idealism is able to immanently express all aspects of
being. For Hyppolite (1953/1997), Hegel’s philosophy con-
stitutes a logic (i.e., a language), which prompts Hyppolite
to conclude that Hegel’s philosophy completes immanence.
Hyppolite’s achievement was to reinterpret concept, in
Hegel’s system, as sense, which refers to both the immedi-
ate apprehension of a thing and the significance or universal
underlying the thing. Thus, for Hyppolite, everything that
exists is sense. Also, Hyppolite’s conclusion that immanence
is complete means that he is viewing Hegel, like Nietzsche,
as an anti-Platonist. In other words, there is no “two-world”
structure that we find in Platonism. There is no transcendent
“beyond,” only sense.
2. Deleuze studied Hegel at the Sorbonne, under Hyppolite, and
was also cosupervised by Hyppolite for his DES (diplôme
d’études supérieures) thesis (roughly the French equivalent
of a Master of Arts thesis) on Hume, which later became his
first published book. Hyppolite also supervised Derrida’s
primary doctoral thesis, which dealt with Husserl’s “Origin
of Geometry,” and was a member of the committee when
Foucault defended his primary doctoral thesis, which was
later published, in abridged form, as Madness and Civilization
(Foucault, 1961/1988).
3. Hyppolite (1953/1997), like Hegel, maintains that differ-
ence must be “pushed all the way up to contradiction” (p.
113). That is, upholding immanence requires us to think
totality, which, in turn, requires that opposites be internal
to one another (e.g., animate must include inanimate within
itself; it must be both animate and inanimate and, hence,
contradict itself). Thus, the difference that occurs within
immanence must take the form of self-contradiction (e.g.,
see Lawlor, 1997). Moreover, each position makes sense
only in relation to its opposite (e.g., animate makes sense
only through its opposite, inanimate). Deleuze and Derrida,
however, reject the pushing of difference up to contradic-
tion. In a formal review of Hyppolite’s Logic and Existence,
Deleuze (1954/1997) argues that the emphasis on contra-
diction in Hegel, and in Hyppolite’s reading of him, sup-
ports the view that Hegel’s philosophy constitutes a form
of humanism: “Is not contradiction itself only the phenom-
enal and anthropological aspect of difference? . . . Is it the
same thing to say that Being expresses itself and that it con-
tradicts itself?” (p. 195). For Derrida and Deleuze, a true,
nonhumanistic conception of difference (i.e., positive dif-
ference) requires that contradiction “be pushed back down
to diversity, back down to alterity” (Lawlor, 1997, p. xii).
4. Not surprisingly, the philosophical concepts of immanence
and transcendence are also deeply embedded within Judeo-
Christian theology. In this regard, de Beistegui (2010) notes
that “time and again, instead of remaining faithful to imma-
nence (or univocity), ontology becomes onto-theology (and
analogy)” (p. 20).
5. Also, conceiving of God as a self, in any form, represents the
most extreme form of transcendence.
6. For philosophies of immanence that posit a God (e.g., the
philosophy of Spinoza), God is within (i.e., immanent to) the
world, an immanent God that is manifested in all aspects of
the material world. As a result, the monotheistic, anthropo-
morphic God of established theism is rejected. As Deleuze
and Guattari (1991/1994) remark of Spinoza, “perhaps he is
the only philosopher never to have compromised with tran-
scendence and to have hunted it down everywhere” (p. 48).
7. This sentence is part of a longer quote, below, from What is
Philosophy? (Deleuze & Guattari, 1991/1994):
Spinoza was the philosopher who knew full well that imma-
nence was only immanent to itself and therefore that it was
a plane traversed by movements of the infinite, filled with
intensive ordinates . . . He fulfilled philosophy because he
satisfied its prephilosophical presupposition [i.e., the plane
Hein
of immanence] . . . Spinoza is the vertigo of immanence from
which so many philosophers try in vain to escape. Will we
ever be mature enough for a Spinozist inspiration? (p. 48)
In other words, when the plane of immanence is our onto-
logical starting point, the effort by philosophers to think
this plane of immanence, rather than the more conventional,
modernist ontological starting point of an immanence to con-
sciousness, is disorienting because the plane of immanence is
infinite. Moreover, this disorientation prompts philosophers
to want to limit this immanence, to make it dependent on a
subject or an object.
8. Deleuze and Guattari (1991/1994) add that the plane of
immanence “is like a desert that concepts populate without
dividing up . . . The plane has no other regions than the tribes
populating and moving around on it” (pp. 36–37).
9. Prior to Deleuze, the philosophers duns Scotus, Spinoza, and
Nietzsche all conceived of being as univocal. Deleuze, how-
ever, shows how the philosophies of duns Scotus and Spinoza
depend, in some ways, on forms of transcendence. Of those
philosophers of immanence who preceded Deleuze, only
Nietzsche, with his doctrine of eternal return, achieves a fully
immanent ontology.
10. The term methodology is thoroughly modernist and, hence, is
relevant to mainstream qualitative inquiry. To avoid potential
confusion, though, I have also used this term when describ-
ing fully immanent inquiry. More specifically, if methodol-
ogy (i.e., existing methodological formations of all kinds)
is transcendent to fully immanent inquiry, then, to maintain
clarity and consistency, it also seems necessary to use this
term to refer to its counterpart within fully immanent inquiry
(i.e., the absence of external methodological formations).
Also, I found that any other term that I considered using was
cumbersome and imprecise, and more potentially confusing
than retaining the term methodology. In this regard, St. Pierre
notes that “we [are obliged to] use old concepts but ask them
to do different work” (Richardson & St. Pierre, 2018, p. 827).
11. For example, the methodological concept of triangulation
emerged at a particular point in the history of mainstream
qualitative inquiry.
12. As Cull (2012), writing in a different context (i.e., theater),
notes, there is a need “to unlearn our habitual desire for cap-
ture” (p. 240).
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Author Biography
Serge F. Hein, PhD, is an associate professor in the Educational
Research and Evaluation Program at Virginia Tech. His areas of
specialization are qualitative methodology and the social psychol-
ogy of education, and his research interests include poststructural
theory, the implications of poststructural theory for qualitative
inquiry, and social psychological processes in education settings.