Popular culture and media often portray school balls and proms as romantic spaces and having a da... more Popular culture and media often portray school balls and proms as romantic spaces and having a date is perceived as the norm. While gender(ed) and heterosexual discourses continue to shape young people’s experiences, girls’ understandings of the school ball do not necessarily conform to dominant ideas. In this article, I draw on a new materialist ontology of sexuality to explore the relations in-between girls, dates, and the school ball. I examine ball-girl-date encounters as sexuality-assemblages comprising bodies, spatial-material arrangements, practices, and imaginings. In this frame, sexuality is conceptualized as becoming via an array of material-discursive, human, and more-than-human forces. I consider how ball-girl capacities and desires become emergent and contingent, opening up ways of thinking about girls and the school ball beyond popular cultural constructions.
A conclusion often entails providing answers derived from questions like “What does all this mean... more A conclusion often entails providing answers derived from questions like “What does all this mean?” and “What do we now know about the topic we did not know before?” While conventionally appealing, these questions become redundant within a feminist new materialist approach, as they are premised on a separation between the knower (research- er) and the known (subject/s). This chapter explores tensions that emerge between ontological foundations of research and thesis writing conventions, such as a tidy conclusion. Drawing on Karen Barad’s (2007) concepts of onto-epistem-ology and intra-action, I consider how a new materialist ontology re- configures binary concepts such as question/answer, research/ researcher, and knowing/not knowing. These binary concepts often underpin the conclusions a thesis offers, along with doctoral framings of success and failure. The chapter ponders questions that emerge for re-imagining doctoral writing when binaries are blurred.
This article explores the potential of feminist new materialisms and theories of affect for refra... more This article explores the potential of feminist new materialisms and theories of affect for reframing how we might think about beauty and the body. Through an exploration of girls, beauty and the school ball (prom), the article engages with Karen Barad’s concept of intra-action to conceptualise beauty as an affective-material process. This perspective involves an ontological shift in how girls, bodies and beauty are understood; from thinking about beauty and the human as discursively produced, towards a relational approach that conceptualises materiality and affect as co-constitutive forces. The article is interested in how such a framing might invite ways of understanding beauty that avoid binary frameworks, such as good/bad, subject/object and discourse/matter. I consider the potential this might offer feminist analyses of beauty, where the focus is less on what beauty is or what it means, and more on how it comes to be.
Popular culture and media often portray school balls and proms as romantic spaces and having a da... more Popular culture and media often portray school balls and proms as romantic spaces and having a date is perceived as the norm. While gender(ed) and heterosexual discourses continue to shape young people’s experiences, girls’ understandings of the school ball do not necessarily conform to dominant ideas. In this article, I draw on a new materialist ontology of sexuality to explore the relations in-between girls, dates, and the school ball. I examine ball-girl-date encounters as sexuality-assemblages comprising bodies, spatial-material arrangements, practices, and imaginings. In this frame, sexuality is conceptualized as becoming via an array of material-discursive, human, and more-than-human forces. I consider how ball-girl capacities and desires become emergent and contingent, opening up ways of thinking about girls and the school ball beyond popular cultural constructions.
A conclusion often entails providing answers derived from questions like “What does all this mean... more A conclusion often entails providing answers derived from questions like “What does all this mean?” and “What do we now know about the topic we did not know before?” While conventionally appealing, these questions become redundant within a feminist new materialist approach, as they are premised on a separation between the knower (research- er) and the known (subject/s). This chapter explores tensions that emerge between ontological foundations of research and thesis writing conventions, such as a tidy conclusion. Drawing on Karen Barad’s (2007) concepts of onto-epistem-ology and intra-action, I consider how a new materialist ontology re- configures binary concepts such as question/answer, research/ researcher, and knowing/not knowing. These binary concepts often underpin the conclusions a thesis offers, along with doctoral framings of success and failure. The chapter ponders questions that emerge for re-imagining doctoral writing when binaries are blurred.
This article explores the potential of feminist new materialisms and theories of affect for refra... more This article explores the potential of feminist new materialisms and theories of affect for reframing how we might think about beauty and the body. Through an exploration of girls, beauty and the school ball (prom), the article engages with Karen Barad’s concept of intra-action to conceptualise beauty as an affective-material process. This perspective involves an ontological shift in how girls, bodies and beauty are understood; from thinking about beauty and the human as discursively produced, towards a relational approach that conceptualises materiality and affect as co-constitutive forces. The article is interested in how such a framing might invite ways of understanding beauty that avoid binary frameworks, such as good/bad, subject/object and discourse/matter. I consider the potential this might offer feminist analyses of beauty, where the focus is less on what beauty is or what it means, and more on how it comes to be.
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