Affective violence: re/negotiating gendered-feminism within new materialism

Abstract

This conceptual paper describes, interrupts and diffractively explores named patriarchal practices as performatively and situationally (re)produced via gender norms. We are attentive to ways in which heteronormative familial conventions maintain and reinscribe gendered binaries reductively as natural. We suggest that heteronormative familial relations re/produce gendered difference as intrinsically disadvantageous to female bodies and that this requires a response; a mobilization of creative feminist affirmative counteraction. In this paper, we respond to the failure of feminism (for us personally and at large) to re-signify gendered norms associated with parental care work that tie the female body naturally to reproduction. By making this move, we aim to (re)deploy theoretical analysis of so named patriarchal power. Through employing a diffractive analysis, we attempt to move on from a simple binary debate that we suspect only reiterates female oppression and disadvantage supported through compulsory heteronormative investment. We discuss a reframing of patriarchal power that necessarily releases it from the male/female, feminine/masculine dichotomy. We frame this relation of power as heteronormative affective violence.

Keywords:

• Gender
• patriarchy
• affective violence
• relationality
• intra-action
• feminism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Genine A. Hook was awarded her PhD from the Faculty of Education at Monash University in May 2015. Her research was awarded the Vice-Chancellor’s Commendation for Thesis Excellence in 2015 and in July 2016 published her first book with Palgrave Macmillan UK titled; Sole parent students and Higher Education: Gender, Policy and Widening Participation. Hook’s theoretical interests include gender performativity and queer theoretical frameworks, her research work include gender and higher education; gender and familial norms; and social policy.

Melissa Joy Wolfe works at Monash University as a lecturer in Visual Art and Media education. She was recently awarded (April) the International Visual Sociology Association 2016 Prosser ECR award for her research project Girls’ tales: experiences of schooling. She was also awarded the Australian Association for Research in Education ECR Award, 2016. Her research focus stems from creative filmic research methodology specifically for utilization in educational research that takes account of gender, socio-economic status and public pedagogical practice. She pragmatically applies Karen Barad’s (2007) theory of agential realism as a conceptual framework. Wolfe’s 2015 film, Girls’ tales: experiences of schooling, was developed as a pre-service teaching aid and was released in December 2015 through Ronin Films. Wolfe’s research interests in education encompass a filmic synthesis of aesthetics, affect, gender and participatory creative methods.