For me, this much used but tricky ‘materialist’ term emphasises the way matter (the material or the concrete) and thought (the abstract or the theoretical), combine to define and articulate each other to produce meaning. In Barad’s understanding this means neither the material nor the discursive exist - in an ontological or epistemological sense - prior to each other. The material and discursive do not stand separately, but co-constitute or mutually articulate each other (see Barad, 2007 , p. 152).
Published in Chapter:
Trauma and Memory in Women's Photographic Practice: A Diffractive Posthuman Approach
Gail Flockhart (University of Plymouth, UK)
Copyright: © 2023
|Pages: 37
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-6684-5337-7.ch002
Abstract
Situated within the field of women's photographic practice, this chapter investigates the relationship between trauma, memory, and the embodied trace. Using practice examples, the text explores how self-performed modes of self-representation might offer insights into the complex—psychological and physiological—inscriptions left by trauma. Evaluating this relationship, the text draws on analyses by Griselda Pollock, Jill Bennett, and Margaret Iversen. The argument supports post-qualitative research methods that unfold subjective material through the ‘doing-thinking-making' process. Approached through posthuman and new materialist frameworks referencing Karen Barad and Rosi Braidotti, the chapter examines how a diffractive—rather than purely reflective—methodology can synthesise praxis and theory through affective photographic outcomes. The chapter concludes by evaluating how a diffractive approach to photographic self-representation can be productive for re-thinking the self, re-interpreting narratives of trauma, and re-imagining the way we see ourselves in our ‘becoming-with' others.