Reflexivities as Affective Ways of Relating That Produce

Abstract

In this article, I consider reflexivities (in plural) as affective ways of relating to ourselves/others/texts that produce. The way in which I relate to myself when I am reflexive expresses an implicit notion of subjectivity and, drawing on a Foucauldian understanding, produces this very subjectivity. Building from this, I engage Barad, perhaps counterintuitively given her challenge to reflexivity, to think about different reflexivities as apparatuses that produce the boundaries—the agential cuts—that create its objects (including the subjectivities involved). In that sense, each reflexivity produces its own world. Crucially, reflexivity is not produced by an isolated subject but from intra-actions. I invite the reader to question the ways in which we are relating to ourselves/others/texts—including how we engage affectively—and what they are doing. I suggest that different reflexivities can be useful in different contexts because of how they keep on producing these very contexts.