Individual Presentation or Panel Title

The Affective Bonds Assemblage: Teacher-Activists' Affective Attachments to an Activist Community

Abstract

When the philosopher and cultural theorist Sara Ahmed writes about the formation and maintenance of affective economies—which includes both named emotions and unnamed, pre-conscious affects that interact with each other--and of their importance in the (re)formation of communal identities, she says

emotions do things, and they align individuals with communities—or bodily space with social space—through the very intensity of their attachments. Rather than seeing emotions as psychological dispositions, we need to consider how they work, in concrete and particular ways, to mediate the relationship between the psychic and the social, and between the individual and the collective… while emotions do not positively reside in a subject or figure, they still work to bind subjects together. (2004, p. 119)

This paper discusses how to consider what Ahmed says must be considered; how are affective economies formed and re-formed between teacher-activists and the activist community in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Affect is slippery, dynamic, and resists representation. How, then, “do you identify affective processes and discuss their social consequences through qualitative research strategies if affect is bodily, fleeting and immaterial, and always in between entities or nods?” (Knudsen & Stage, 2015, p. 2). I will employ the qualitative research processes of participant observation, interview, and focus groups, but will engage with them in a post-qualitative (Lather & St. Pierre, 2013) manner, working both within and against the norms that these qualitative methods require (Lather & St. Pierre, 2013; St. Pierre & Pillow, 2000).

Presentation Description

This presentation discusses the methods and methodologies used to map and analyze the affective assemblages that bind teacher-activists to a larger activist community in their city.

Keywords

affect, activism, deleuze, assemblage, methodology

Publication Type and Release Option

Event

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The Affective Bonds Assemblage: Teacher-Activists' Affective Attachments to an Activist Community

When the philosopher and cultural theorist Sara Ahmed writes about the formation and maintenance of affective economies—which includes both named emotions and unnamed, pre-conscious affects that interact with each other--and of their importance in the (re)formation of communal identities, she says

emotions do things, and they align individuals with communities—or bodily space with social space—through the very intensity of their attachments. Rather than seeing emotions as psychological dispositions, we need to consider how they work, in concrete and particular ways, to mediate the relationship between the psychic and the social, and between the individual and the collective… while emotions do not positively reside in a subject or figure, they still work to bind subjects together. (2004, p. 119)

This paper discusses how to consider what Ahmed says must be considered; how are affective economies formed and re-formed between teacher-activists and the activist community in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Affect is slippery, dynamic, and resists representation. How, then, “do you identify affective processes and discuss their social consequences through qualitative research strategies if affect is bodily, fleeting and immaterial, and always in between entities or nods?” (Knudsen & Stage, 2015, p. 2). I will employ the qualitative research processes of participant observation, interview, and focus groups, but will engage with them in a post-qualitative (Lather & St. Pierre, 2013) manner, working both within and against the norms that these qualitative methods require (Lather & St. Pierre, 2013; St. Pierre & Pillow, 2000).