Abstract
This article explores how subjectivities are affectively tied to the histories of space, place and time through ethnographic research on young people’s everyday lives in a semi-rural post-industrial locale. Drawing on a longitudinal case study of one teenage girl’s inventive practices, we capture moments in time that we arrange as ‘enunciating assemblages’ (Guattari, 2006) to explore how conscious and unconscious affective relations repeat and rupture sedimented gendered histories of place. We experiment with Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the full and empty Body without Organs to trace the ‘ontological intensities’ of how, when and where newness and change become possible. We argue that making visible young people’s nascent becomings by focusing on what young people already do and imagine, we can potentially support young people pursuing new horizons without losing the very sense of place that makes them feel both safe and alive.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
This publication is based on research supported by the Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research, Data and Methods (WISERD) funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (Grant number: RES-576-25-0021) and the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales.
While the case study in this article features data generated with Emma Renold, the full research team included Gabrielle Ivinson, Emma Renold, Kate Moles and Mariann Martsin.
The study has been informed by a number of historical and contextual sources specifically: Judith Marshall’s 2008 Doctoral thesis, supervised by author 1 and Mike Ward’s Doctoral thesis supervised by author 2; historical sources including; Bruley, 2007 and Penlington, 2010 and visits to various museums including the Welsh National Museum and the Big Pit, National Mining Museum.
References
Alaimo, S. and Hekman, S. (eds.) (2008) Material Feminisms. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Barad, K. (2007) Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham: Duke University Press.
Bennett, J. (2004) The force of things: Steps towards and ecology of matter. Political Theory 32 (3): 347–372.
Bennett, J. (2010) Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Berzin, S.C. (2010) Educational aspirations among low income youths: Examining multiple conceptual models. Children and Schools 32 (2): 112–124.
Blackman, L., Cromby, J., Hook, D., Papadopoulous, D. and Walkerdine, V. (2008) Editorial: Creating subjectivities. Subjectivity 22 (1): 1–27.
Bollas, C. (1993) Being and Character: Psychoanalysis and Self Experience. London and New York: Routledge.
Braidotti, R. (2002) Metamorphoses: Towards a Material Theory of Becoming. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press.
Braidotti, R. (2006) Transpositions: On Nomadic Ethics. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press.
Braidotti, R. (2013) The Posthuman. Malden, MA: Polity Press.
Brown, S.D. and Stenner, P. (2009) Psychology Without Foundations: History, Philosophy and Psychosocial Theory. London: Sage.
Bruley, S. (2007) The politics of food: Gender, family, community and collective feeding in South Wales in the general Strike and Miners’ lockout of 1926. Twentieth Century British History 18 (1): 54–77.
Buchanan, I. (2000) Deleuzism: A Metacommentary. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press.
Butler, J. (2004) Undoing Gender. Routledge.
Coleman, B. and Ringrose, J. (2012) Deleuze and Research Methodologies. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press.
Deleuze (1969/1990) The Logic of Sense. Translated by M. Lester, C.V. Boundas (ed.). New York: Columbia University Press.
Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1983) Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by R. Hurley, M. Seem and H.R. Lane. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1987) A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by B. Massumi. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Deleuze, G. (2006) David Lapoujade (Editor), Ames Hodges (Translator), Mike Taormina (Translator) Two Regimes of Madness: Texts and Interviews 1975–1995. Semiotext(e): New York.
Foucault, M. (1986) Of other spaces. Daicritics 15 (1): 1–9.
Grosz, E. (1994) Volatile Bodies: Towards a Corporeal Feminism. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Grosz, E. (2011) Becoming Undone: Darwinian Reflections on Life, Politics and Art. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Guattari, F. (2006) Chaosmosis: an Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm. Translated by P Bains and J. Pefanis. Sydney, Australia: Power Publications.
Haraway, D. (1991) Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge.
Hart, M and Negri, A. (2000) Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Hollway, W. (2010) No title. Plenary Panel for one day colloquium, ‘Affective and Affecting Research: Researching Affect in the Social Sciences’, Cardiff University, 26 March. http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/socsi/newsandevents/events/innovation/seminar6/seminar6.html, accessed 19 July 2013.
Henriques, J., Hollway, W., Venn, C. and Walkerdine, V. (1984) Changing the Subject: Psychology, Social Regulation and Subjectivity. London; New York: Methuen.
Ivinson, G. (2010) Redefining masculinity: New lines of thought. Education Review 22 (2): 37–45.
Ivinson, G. (2012a) Boys, skills and class: Educational failure or community survival? Insights from Vygotsky and Bernstein. In: H. Daniels (ed.) Vygotsky and Sociology. London: Routledge.
Ivinson, G. (2012b) Skills in motion: Boys’ trail motorbiking activities as transitions into working-class masculinity in a post-industrial locale. Sport, Education and Society, iFirst Article pp. 1–16.
Ivinson, G. and Renold, E. (2013) Valley girls: Re-theorising bodies, and agency in a semi-rural Post-industrial locale. Gender and Education 25 (6): 704–721.
Kintrea, K., St Clair, R. and Houston, M. (2011) The Influence of Parents, Places and Poverty on Educational Attitudes and Aspirations. Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
Lave, J. (1988) Cognition in Practice: Mind, Mathematics and Culture in Everyday Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Marshall, J. (2006) Symbolic Resources and Educational Trajectories: From the Physical Locale to Psychological Trajectories to Learning. Postgraduate Conference, Cambridge.
Marshall, J. (2007) Learner Identities in Post-Industrial South Wales. Postgraduate Conference, Cardiff.
Marshall, J. (2008) Experience of Learning: A Generational Study. Doctoral thesis. Cardiff University.
Moles, K., Renold, E., Ivinson, G. and Martsin, M. (2011) Innovating as we go: Ethnography as an evolving methodology. Qualitative Researcher 13 (Spring): 1–3.
Penlington, N. (2010) Masculinity and domesticity in 1030s south Wales: Did unemployment change the domestic division of labour? Twentieth Century British History 21 (3): 281–299.
Probyn, E. (1996) Outside Belongings. London: Routledge.
Quinn, J. (2012) New learning worlds: The significance of nature in the lives of marginalised young people. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, iFirst Article pp. 1–15.
Quinn, J., Thomas, L., Slack, K., Casey, L., Thexton, W. and Noble, J. (2005) From Life Crisis to Lifelong Learning Rethinking Working-Class ‘Drop Out’ From Higher Education. York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
Renold, E. and Ivinson, G. (2012) Young people and sexual assemblages: changing theories, changing subjectivities in changing times, Invited panel: ‘Studying gender and sexuality psychosocially: Dialogue across perspectives’, Open University, 15 May.
Renold, E. and Ivinson, G. (2013) Girls, Camera, (intra)Action: Applying a diffractive analysis to teen girls’ engagement with visual participatory methodologies in ethnographic research on gender, identity and place. Paper presented at American Education Research Association conference; San Francisco, 27 April—1 May.
Renold, E. and Ringrose, J. (2011) Schizoid subjectivities: Re-theorising teen-girls’ sexual cultures in an era of sexualisation. Journal of Sociology. special issue on ‘Youth identities, Cultures and Transitions’ 47 (4): 389–409.
Sinclaire, S., McKendrick, J.H. and Scott, G. (2010) Failing young people? Education and aspirations in a deprived community. Education, Citizenship and Social Justice 5 (1): 5–20.
Walkerdine, V. (2010) Communal beingness and affect: An exploration of trauma in an ex industrial community. Body & Society 16 (1): 91–116.
Walkerdine, V. (2013) Using the work of Felix Guattari to understand space. Place, social justice and education. Qualitative Inquiry, first published online September 30, 2013 doi:10.1177/1077800413502934.
Walkerdine, V. and Jimenez, J. (2012) Gender, Work and Community after De-Industrialization: A Psychosocial Approach to Affect. Basingstoke, UK: PalgraveMacmillan.
Wulf, C. (2013) Mimesis in early childhood: Enculturation, practical knowledge and performability. In: M. Kontopodis, C. Wulf and B. Fichtner (eds.) Children, Development and Education: Cultural, Historical and Anthropological Perspectives. New York: Springer, pp. 89–103.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank three anonymous reviewers for their encouragement, knowledge and insights. Without their support we could not have written this article.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Ivinson, G., Renold, E. Subjectivity, affect and place: Thinking with Deleuze and Guattari’s Body without Organs to explore a young girl’s becomings in a post-industrial locale. Subjectivity 6, 369–390 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1057/sub.2013.15
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/sub.2013.15