The everyday skills that get us by: Non-representational theories for a linealogy of quotidian cultures

Abstract

In this article, I have three key aims. Firstly, I want to offer a particular definition and a bold defence of ‘non-representational theories’, indicating the importance of their anti-rationalist and anti-structuralist tendencies, and also pointing to their positive assertion of the primacy of practices or movement. Although a non-representational theoretical approach is closely associated today with contemporary geographic thought, I make a case here for an understanding of non-representational theories as a far broader cross-disciplinary project. Secondly, in the light of non-representational theories, I will be revisiting an old debate between culturalists and structuralists on matters of experience and representation. I consider, in a spirit of re-evaluation, Stuart Hall’s now classic essay on two paradigms in the development of cultural studies, as well as a selection of related interventions made by Hall. Thirdly, I will look to potential future directions for empirical research that is informed by a non-representational theoretical approach, in an area which I call ‘quotidian cultural studies’. My recommendations are for work that might explore, for example, acquired habits or ways of the hand in the uses of new media technologies (among other skills of tool use), and paths that are trodden along the ground on foot and through narrative or other media settings. A critical appropriation of Tim Ingold’s writings in anthropology leads me to describe such work as ‘linealogical’ investigations of everyday life.