Reflexivities as Affective Ways of Relating That Produce

Abstract

In this article, I consider reflexivities (in plural) as affective ways of relating to ourselves/others/texts that produce. The way in which I relate to myself when I am reflexive expresses an implicit notion of subjectivity and, drawing on a Foucauldian understanding, produces this very subjectivity. Building from this, I engage Barad, perhaps counterintuitively given her challenge to reflexivity, to think about different reflexivities as apparatuses that produce the boundaries—the agential cuts—that create its objects (including the subjectivities involved). In that sense, each reflexivity produces its own world. Crucially, reflexivity is not produced by an isolated subject but from intra-actions. I invite the reader to question the ways in which we are relating to ourselves/others/texts—including how we engage affectively—and what they are doing. I suggest that different reflexivities can be useful in different contexts because of how they keep on producing these very contexts.

Adapting participatory research methods for reflexive environmental management

“…For researchers and sustainability practitioners, reflexive approaches to methods, such as these, can provide a more complex understanding of social, political, and economic dynamics, as well as insights into how environmental management programs are being put into practice and with what effects. Augmenting research praxis in these ways requires critical attention to the actions, embodied meanings, and personal linkages between researcher(s) and participant(s) (Brotman et al, 2019;England, 1994, Serra Undurraga, 2019. In this sense, reflexive approaches to research methods are crucial to socially just sustainability practices.…”

(Un)felt ferments: Limning liminal professional subjectivities with pragmatist–posthuman feminism and intimate scholarship

“…I am particularly interested in Serra Undurraga’s (2020) conceptualization of affective reflexivities (plural) that produce different worlds and selves. For her, reflexivity is an “ inevitable activity that is both expressive of a sense of self and continuously creating this very self” (p. 920, original emphasis).…”

“…Finally, there are different reflexivities at work in the piece that facilitate visibilities of pre-individual affectual intensities. There is Serra Undurraga’s (2020) opaque reflexivity as a movement where intuition and bodily feelings such as 3500 inner ear hairs swaying, is opening up new meanings. McDonald’s (2013, 2016) queer reflexivity is destabilizing me as reflector, going beyond the intersubjective into the transpersonal.…”

“…In this piece my reflexivity is more “transparent and essentialist” (Serra Undurraga, 2020). Others are perceived, including the cake and wine, as enemies, or, in the case of my mentor, an ally.…”

Bodies out of place: Affective encounters with whiteness

“…This partly autoethnographic essay aims to explore how whiteness impresses upon spaces as an affective formation of power, partially extending an existing line of scholarship pertaining to the felt experience of whiteness (Ahmed, 2007;Hook, 2005;Leonardo & Zembylas, 2013;Matias, 2016;Saldanha, 2006). Partially, too, extending on the 'turn to affect' within qualitative cultural inquiry in recent years (Gale, 2014;Serra Undurraga, 2019;St. Pierre, 2020).…”