Question: I want to call a generic function, defined as:

      Public Shared Function DeserializeFromXML(Of T)(Optional ByRef strFileNameAndPath As String = Nothing) As T

Now when I call it, I wanted to do it with any of the variants below:

Dim x As New XMLserialization.cConfiguration
x = XMLserialization.XMLserializeLDAPconfig.DeserializeFromXML(Of x)()
x = XMLserialization.XMLserializeLDAPconfig.DeserializeFromXML(GetType(x))()
x = XMLserialization.XMLserializeLDAPconfig.DeserializeFromXML(Of GetType(x))()

But it doesn't work. I find it very annoying and unreadable having to type

    x = XMLserialization.XMLserializeLDAPconfig.DeserializeFromXML(Of XMLserialization.cConfiguration)()

Is there a way to call a generic function by getting the type from the instance ?