scholarly journals Performance and New Materialism: Towards an expanded notion of a non-human agency

IDEA JOURNAL ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (02) ◽  
pp. 350-361
Author(s):  
Alyssa Choat
Keyword(s):  
Human Agency ◽  
Research Paper ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Critical Perspective ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
Human Interactions ◽  
Creative Research ◽  
Material Agency ◽  
Human Actors

This research paper expands on new materialist notions of material agency within the context of practice-based creative research. New materialist thinking provides a recognition of the agency of non-human actors, and enables a focus on the dynamics of human and non-human relationships. A key concept of new materialist theory is a critical perspective on the binary of human and non-human, arguing that all matter resides within a form of incessant flow, in states of constant transformation. These renewed approaches to understanding matter has drawn from developments in science and physics exploring the nature of forces and networks that constitutes matter. In a world that is continuing to become more technologically reliant and scientifically developed, this research paper explores a non-human agency emerging within human and non-human interactions,  where human and non-human agents (spaces, materials, forces, etc) have efficacy in the co-construction of practices, events and figurations, drawn from looking at the nature of these relationships that unfolded in the performance works. In this paper I will be discussing two performances that were undertaken Material Interactions[i] and BodyBody Experiments [ii]. Considering these works within a theoretical framework of analysis which draws from New Materialist thinking on non-human agency   [i] Choat, Alyssa. Material Interactions, 2017. [ii] Choat, Alyssa. Bodybody Experiments, 2017.

What Kerbstones Do: A Century of Street Space from the Perspective of One Material Actor

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-90
Author(s):  
Tiina Männistö-Funk
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
Source Material ◽  
The Other ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Street Space ◽  
Street Traffic ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Human Actors

In this article, kerbstones are analysed as historical actors that participated in the changes of urban space and street traffic during the hundred years between the 1880s and the 1980s. Using the approach of new materialism and a large photographic source material from the Finnish city Turku, the article provides a new perspective into the tremendous changes many cities went through during this period and proposes possibilities of including non-human actors in the historical analysis of such change. Focusing on non-human actors also sheds new light on human agency. Such actions as moving in street space or planning cities and traffic infrastructure appear as co-actions of shifting and affective constellations of soft and hard bodies. In the changing street space, the kerbstone was able to assume both enabling and resisting agency as a rather permanent, hard and persistent presence. In intra-actions with the other bodies of the street space it softened or hardened as a border toward different vehicles, living bodies, materials and artefacts, thus also forming them.

scholarly journals Can the plant speak? Giving tobacco the voice it deserves

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 472-487
Author(s):  
Andrew Russell
Keyword(s):  
Human Relationships ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
Material Agency ◽  
The Voice

The idea of non-human objects speaking has an illustrious pedigree. Using Holbraad’s (2011) question ‘can the thing speak?’ as a springboard, the author asks what it means to say that tobacco might speak. Accepting a degree of ventriloquism in giving a voice to plants, he tracks examples of tobacco (and its paraphernalia) speaking in English literary sources, demonstrating that the postmodern turn to ‘material agency’ and object sentiency, voice and intentionality is, in fact, nothing new. Taking Miller and Latour’s conceptions of hybridity in human/non-human relationships seriously, he argues further that tobacco can speak, or remain silent, through a number of different human and corporate locutors. Where tobacco speaks in its own words, its voice – in contrast to the ‘tinny but usable’ voice of a mushroom spore – becomes that of an imperious autocrat intent on world domination.

An Assessment of the Level of Community Participation and Localization of Decision-Making in Donor-Funded Projects in Zimbabwe

2016 ◽  
Vol 15 (6) ◽  
pp. 716-728
Author(s):  
Mulwaini Mundau ◽  
Pius Tangwe Tanga
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Community Participation ◽  
Community Involvement ◽  
Research Paper ◽  
Participatory Approach ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
Local Leadership ◽  
South Eastern ◽  
Project Cycle

The aim of this paper was to assess the level of community participation and the localization of decision-making with regards to foreign donor funded projects in Zimbabwe. The participatory approach was the theoretical framework that was adopted for the research paper. The primary data were collected from a survey of 52 project members who were from two localngos that were randomly selected from Chiredzi District, located in the South Eastern low veld of Zimbabwe. The findings show that there was partial to no involvement of the project members in various phases of the project cycle. Furthermore, there were consultations with the local leadership, but not during the assessment phase of the project. The authors conclude there is need for community involvement in decision making, project ownership, and clear lines of communication with thengos, among others.

scholarly journals Parents' experiences of substance use problems, parenthood, and recovery within the 12-step movement

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (6) ◽  
pp. 576-591
Author(s):  
Karin Heimdahl Vepsä
Keyword(s):  
Substance Use ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Transformative Experience ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
Step Movement ◽  
Substance Use Problems ◽  
Study Participants ◽  
Parents Experiences

Aim: The aim of this study was to explore how people with earlier substance use problems narrated their experiences of becoming and being parents. The literature in this area is limited. Method: The study participants, all active members of the 12-step movement, were interviewed about their experiences of substance use problems, recovery, and parenthood. The data were analysed using a narrative theoretical framework seeking to answer the questions of how the parents narrate their experiences of parenthood within the frame of a classic 12-step storyline and how they present themselves as parents through these narratives. Results: The results show that, on the whole, the narratives conformed to a classic 12-step storyline. For example, the narratives’ turning points were often built up around experiences of “hitting rock bottom”, when the negative consequences of substance use culminated in dramatic events forcing the narrators to see the seriousness of their problems. At the same time the motivational potential of having or expecting (or wishing for future) children was downplayed by several study participants, who instead said that positive driving forces such as human relationships were not enough to break through their denial of their substance use problems. Finally, all study participants described how the process of working towards sobriety had been a transformative experience through which they had come in better contact with their feelings and emotions, and they defined this as an important resource in their everyday lives as parents. Conclusion: The results showed that the parents, when narrating their experiences within the frames of a classic 12-step storyline, were also able to present themselves as competent parents, empowered rather than stigmatised by their earlier experiences.

“HOW DOES YOUR COLLAR SUIT ME?”: THE HUMAN ANIMAL IN THE RSPCA'S ANIMAL WORLD AND BAND OF MERCY

2012 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 247-262 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monica Flegel
Keyword(s):  
Animal Rights ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Shared Experience ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
Human Interactions ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
And Control ◽  
Cruelty To Animals ◽  
Animal World ◽  
As If

There is a central contradiction in human relationships with animals: as Erica Fudge notes, “We live with animals, we recognize them, we even name some of them, but at the same time we use them as if they were inanimate, as if they were objects” (8). Such a contradiction is also, of course, present in human interactions, in which power relations allow for the objectification of one human being by another. In an analysis of images and texts produced by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) in the nineteenth-century, I want to examine the overlap in representations of animals and humans as subject to objectification and control. One common way of critiquing human treatment of animals within the RSPCA's journals, Animal World and Band of Mercy, was to have humans trade places with animals: having boys fantastically shrunk to the size of the animals they tortured, for example, or imagining the horrors of vivisection when experienced by humans. Such imaginative exercises were meant to defamiliarize animal usage by implying a shared experience of suffering: what was wrong for a human was clearly just as wrong for an animal. However, I argue that some of the images employed by the society suggest the opposite; instead of constructing animal cruelty in a new light, these images instead work to underline the shared proximity of particular humans with animals. In texts that focus specifically upon humans wearing animal bonds – reins, collars, and muzzles – the RSPCA's anti-cruelty discourse both critiqued the tools of bondage and, I suggest, invited the audience to see deep connections between animals and the humans taking their place. Such connections ultimately weaken the force of the animal/human reversal as an animal rights strategy, suggesting as they do that humans themselves often have use value in economies of labor, affect, and are subject to the same power relations that produce an animal as “animal.”

Technological Materiality And Assumptions About ‘Active’ Human Agency

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grant Bollmer
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Media Studies ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
Media Audiences ◽  
Active Audience ◽  
Real People ◽  
Material Agency ◽  
Methodological Reflection ◽  
Infrastructural Power

Abstract One of the most notable challenges to emerge from the materialist turn in media studies is the rejection of the ‘active audience’ paradigm of British cultural studies. And yet, in spite of the increasing attention to materiality, many of the problems associated with the split between German media studies traditions and those derived from cultural studies persist today. While no longer concerned with representation, privilege is nonetheless often granted to the material agency of ‘real people’ as that which shapes and determines the materiality of technology. This article is primarily a theoretical and methodological reflection on how materiality challenges - but sometimes relies on - long standing and often veiled traditions from cultural studies, especially as they move out of academic discussion and into the popular imaginary of social media and its ‘usergenerated content.’ I focus on some deliberate attempts at excluding materiality found in cultural studies’ history, arguing that an emphasis on the agency of ‘real people’ can only happen through the deliberate erasure of the materiality of technology. Drawing on Ien Ang’s Desperately Seeking the Audience (1991), which argued that television ‘audiences’ must themselves be understood as produced in relation to the demands and interests of broadcasting institutions, I suggest that digital media ‘audiences’ are produced in relationship to the infrastructural power of servers, algorithms, and software. This demonstrates that any attempt to identify ‘human agency’ must also look at how this agency is co-produced with and by technological materiality.

D. H. Lawrence and ‘Living Relativity’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Crossland
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Direct Impact ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
The Impact

Chapter 4 explores Lawrence’s writing of relationships after his direct engagements with Einsteinian ideas in 1921, seeking to ascertain both the extent and the nature of the impact which Einsteinian relativity had on his thinking. Other possible sources for Lawrence’s relativistic ideas are considered, in particular William James’s relativism. However, ultimately the chapter argues that Einstein’s direct impact can be seen in terms of both the language adopted by Lawrence and the theoretical framework behind his ‘theory of human relativity’. Although Lawrence’s writing of relationships does not change much after reading about Einsteinian relativity, he seems more inclined to theorize on this topic after 1921, as a consideration of his novels Kangaroo and Aaron’s Rod emphasizes. Lawrence’s engagement with relativity is also shown to be significantly different from that of other modernist writers, in that he uses relativity in order to explore the issue that interested him most: human relationships.

A Politics of Things? Deleuze and the New Materialism

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 523-542
Author(s):  
Simon Schleusener
Keyword(s):  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
Historical Materialism ◽  
Social Ontology ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
The Political ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
Human Actors ◽  
The Way

Concentrating on the way in which new materialist authors like Jane Bennett have read and appropriated the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, this essay has two major objectives: first, it aims to point out the shortcomings of the new materialism's concept of the political (as it is formulated in Bennett's Vibrant Matter). Second, it seeks to investigate the differences and affinities between neomaterialist thought and Deleuze's philosophy. While Deleuze's focus on material becomings and concrete assemblages certainly lends itself to being utilised by neomaterialist authors, what many of these authors tend to ignore is the Marxian influence in Deleuze's thinking. It would be misleading, then, to see Deleuze as a new materialist avant la lettre, thereby implying that he categorically dismissed the ‘old’ (i.e. historical) materialism. Rather, what is unique about Deleuze's philosophy is its combination of a Marxist understanding of modes of production and their material conditions with a social ontology – inspired, among others, by Spinoza and Tarde – that emphasises the complex intermingling of human and non-human actors.

Men and Gods in Euripides' Hippolytus

Ramus ◽  
1980 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 89-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. A. E. Luschnig
Keyword(s):  
Recent Article ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
Social Existence ◽  
Single Frame ◽  
Dramatic Structure ◽  
Structural Frame ◽  
Human Actors ◽  
Relationship Of

The relevancy of the appearances of the two goddesses, Aphrodite and Artemis, to the action, causation and characterization of the Hippolytus has long been debated. The rationalists' view is that they constitute a superficial and largely structural frame for the real, human drama, having little or nothing to do with what happens on the stage between epiphanies. Indeed, it is hard to deny that the human characters have a great deal to do with their own undoing. The divine nature of the catastrophe, on the other hand, prevents our rationalizing the superhuman element as outside the tragedy. If we include Poseidon in our Olympian cast of characters, it may be possible to find a relationship of the gods to the action of the play of another kind than a strictly causal one. It is the purpose of this paper to show that the characters and motivations of the persons of the drama both human and divine are so closely parallel that they form but a single frame of action within a dramatic structure that is so tight that barely an oimoi is superfluous. And surely two (or three) divinities have not been added for their appeal to the audience's love of the spectacular, or from a simple desire for balance.In a recent article B. D. Frischer has observed that between the human and divine frames, as well as within each frame, the principle of concordia operates. He asserts, however, that the device of reenactment (which ‘harmonizes characters by showing them doing and saying the same things’, 87) functions within but not between frames. My contention is that in action and in character the human actors are like their gods, that their actions parallel those of their gods, that they try to impose on the situation a state of immutability that is not suited to the mortal condition, and that they impose upon themselves and each other an isolation which is very close to the gods' aloofness and anti-social existence. It is through the goddesses' statements and the implications of these statements when transferred to human relationships that we become aware of what is taking place at the human level.

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