Road registers

Abstract

This article is an outline of a method to approach an object of analysis as generative, compositional, and immanent to ordinary ways of living and proliferating worlds. Using the case of the American road as an emergent assemblage, I trace its singular forms and the ways in which these forms register forces of all kinds. Road registers are material-symbolic composites charged with potentiality. They form links between disparate phenomena, scales, and compositional modes from literature to state thinking, structure to fantasy. I use creative non-fiction writing as a mode of critique that can follow the lines of diverging tendencies and events in which a range of elements throw together. I present a series of snapshots of the road's bodies and rhythms, orientations, and atmospheres. Road Registers is a middle-range concept used to rethink designations such as macro and micro, big and small, official and everyday. I elaborate affect theory's insight that structures of living have not just effects or conditions of possibility, but also capacities to affect and to be affected, or an energetics.

Boundary Objects Revisited: A Comparative Analysis of World Making in Avant-Garde Fashion Design and Animal Husbandry

“…Consequently, for this analysis the technical and interpretive skills of makers were just as important as the ways in which materializing activities organized the social parameters of creative practices. This article is therefore consonant with and draws inspiration from the work of scholars exploring the intersection of human and nonhuman encounters-notably, these scholars are experimenting with counterdialectical methods for describing complex social phenomenon (Haraway, 1991;Hartigan, 2014;Stewart, 2014).…”

“…As such its impetus emerges from a surge of insight; two past experiences coming together for the briefest moment, each of which were witnessed by the ethnographer, but at different times, under contrasting conditions, and for varied reasons (cf. Stewart, 2012). Yet the brevity of this moment is enduring; it lingers as a source of wonderment and begs for further reflection, a way forward (cf.…”

“…Yet the brevity of this moment is enduring; it lingers as a source of wonderment and begs for further reflection, a way forward (cf. Stengers, 2011;Stewart, 2014). To pursue this reflection, I draw on the notion of a boundary object in order to illustrate how ethnography can act as a means for not just describing social practices, but generating new imaginaries for engendering human and nonhuman relationships (cf.…”

Residual Categories in Medical Simulation: The Role of Affect in the Performance of Disease

“…They are part of the formal system but excluded from the "live zone" (Star & Bowker, 2007, p. 280), the moment where a complex story of the lived experience comes into contact with standardized forms. Aligning with Stewart's (2007Stewart's ( , 2014 work on affect, I propose that there are productive possibilities in thinking about residual categories as operating through affective forces. Both Star and Stewart accounted for the sociality that cannot be accounted for through explicit representational forms.…”

Teorias Não-Representacionais Na Geografia Ii: Métodos Para Uma Geografia Do Que Acontece

“…Hoje, através da lente das teorias não-representacionais, abordam-se temas tão diversos como as geografias dos transportes e mobilidades (Bissel, 2010;Vannini, 2012;stewart, 2014), interfaces tecnológicos (ash, 2015, o papel dos sentidos na experiência geográfica (Middleton, 2010), doenças mentais (Blackman, 2010;Beljaars, 2015), adições (Bøhling, 2015), processos legais como adopções (Posocco, 2011); tortura de prisioneiros polí-ticos (anderson, 2014), preparações governamentais para emergências futuras (anderson, 2010), ou fenómenos económicos como a inflação (McCormack, 2015b). apesar disto, existem algumas críticas que têm sido apontadas à aplicação das teorias não-representacionais na geografia.…”