Gendered subjectivities of spacetimematter

Abstract

This paper investigates enactments of human subjectivities with a focus on how subjectivities may be studied if spatiality and temporality are taken up as constituting forces in the production of subjectivities. By reading poststructuralist feminist theorising, agential realism and empirical material diffractively through each other I re-situate gendered subjectivity to be of spacetimemattering [Barad, K. 2007. Meeting the Universe Half Way – Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham: Duke University Press] rather than something occurring in space and time. From a study of students who changed schools in order to experience ‘new beginnings’ the paper presents an in-depth case study of Mary. By following Mary's transition and how she is complexly enacted through her past and present school lives, it becomes possible to investigate how spatiality and temporality co-existed as forces in her becoming. I argue that this perspective opens up alternative possibilities for understanding the constitution of subjectivity.

Keywords:

• material feminisms
• agential realism
• spacetimemattering
• subjectivities
• empirical analysis
• time space

Acknowledgements

I thank the editors Gabrielle Ivinson and Carol Taylor for their careful language revisions.