Abstract:
Verisimilitude refers to truthiness: the appearance of or approximation to truth or reality. In relation to qualitative inquiry, verisimilitude has been suggested as a criterion for judging the quality of qualitative writing, recognised in terms of whether a written account appears to be a true representation of a real event or evokes something like the true experience of an event for a reader. In this paper, I explore the concept of verisimilitude as a criterion for quality, linked to Deleuze’s ontology of difference and Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of a minor literature, by referencing Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse 5, a story based on Vonnegut's experiences of living through the Allied firebombing of Dresden in February 1945 while a prisoner of war. By examining the ways Vonnegut renounces verisimilitude to realise his account of Dresden, I consider the implications of thinking about qualitative inquiry as a minor literature.