Assemblage Studies and Cartographic Studies: A Comparative Analysis

• In Event: Posthumanist Philosophy and Educational Research: A Review of Analytic and Axiological Features

Abstract

Objective. Posthumanist philosophies have inspired the development of a variety of analytic practices, each with distinct vocabularies and genealogies. This paper compares and contrasts the way two of these modes of analysis-- assemblage studies (Bennett, 2010; DeLanda, 2016) and cartographic studies (Braidotti, 2017, 2019)—have been applied to the field of education research. The paper highlights the promise of these new literatures, as well as some internal performative contradictions that elicit frequent comment.

Theoretical framework: Both approaches focus on the way inquiry generates knowing subjects and patterns of action, which in turn interact with material and discursive context to become parts of self-replicating sociomaterial systems.

Assemblage studies: Borrowed from the work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, the term “assemblage” is used to describe dynamic and complex units of analysis that include a variety of ontological elements, such as material phenomena, affect, discursive practices, subject effects, and more (Dixon-Román, 2016; 2017a; Franklin-Phipps, 2017; Mazzei & Jackson, 2017; Pennycook, 2020; Renold & Ringrose, 2017; Trafí-Prats & Fendler, 2016; Warren, 2021; Wozolek, 2021). The subjectivity of the inquirer, however, generally remains outside the scope of the analysis and thus retains the presumptive form of the humanist spectator subject.

Cartographic studies: Cartographic studies also draw on the language of assemblages. However, the performative subject-constituting effects of inquiry tend to receive more emphasis in these studies. Sometimes the focus is on a distributed community of knowing (Bangou & Arnott, 2018; Renold and Ivinson, 2014), situated ways of knowing (de Freitas, Sinclair, et al., 2022), or a transspecies (Higgins & Madden, 2019; Lloro-Bidart, 2017) or even transmaterial (Flint, 2018) knowing subject. The knowing subjects of cartographic inquirers themselves become nomadic, fluid, and multiple, operating within the relational fabric of the phenomena being studied, bringing different parts of the fabric constituting both the object and the inquiring subject into contact repeatedly.

Data Sources and Evidence: Multiple examples drawn from existing literature will be provided to illustrate the characteristics of these emerging methodological genres. Following the conference theme, the paper will specifically, but not exclusively, focus on the way racism has been analyzed as a shifting assemblage of different substances and processes, including but not limited to economic interests, the semiotics of racial difference, psychological bias, embodied affect, material violence, conceptions of knowledge, legal codes, technological algorithms, and more (de Freitas & Curinga, 2015; Dixon-Román, 2016; 2017a; Gulson, Sellar, & Webb, 2022; Weheliye, 2014).

Substantiated Conclusions: Although there is considerable overlap between the assemblage studies and cartographic studies literatures in the field of education, there are important differences in emphases and purpose between these emerging genres of inquiry. These differences lie primarily in the conception of the subjectivity of the inquirer and that of the audience the study addresses.

Scholarly Significance: A careful analysis is provided of the differences between two emerging genres of posthumanist social analysis that are often conflated. Differences in presumptions about the knowing subject of inquiry carry implications for the ethics, politics, and social impact of research.

Author

• MaryJohn R. Pachuta-Rysak, Grand Valley State University