Cardiff University | Prifysgol Caerdydd ORCA
Online Research @ Cardiff 
WelshClear Cookie - decide language by browser settings

Horse-girl assemblages: towards a post-human cartography of girls' desire in an ex-mining valleys community

Renold, Emma ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6472-0224 and Ivinson, Gabrielle 2014. Horse-girl assemblages: towards a post-human cartography of girls' desire in an ex-mining valleys community. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 35 (3) , pp. 361-376. 10.1080/01596306.2014.888841

[thumbnail of Horse-girl assemblages revised post-print.pdf]
Preview
PDF - Accepted Post-Print Version
Download (663kB) | Preview

Abstract

The paper works with queer and feminist post-human materialist scholarship to understand the way young teen valleys' girls experienced ubiquitous feelings of fear, risk, vulnerability and violence. Longitudinal ethnographic research of girls (aged 12–15) living in an ex-mining semi-rural community suggests how girls are negotiating complex gendered and sexual mores of valleys' life. We draw on Deleuze and Guatarri's concept of ‘becomings’ emerging in social–material–historical ‘assemblages’ to map how the gendered and queer legacies of the community's equine past surfaces affectively in girls' talk about horses. Our cartography traces a range of ‘transversal flashes’ in which girls' lives and their activities with horses resonate with a local history coloured by the harsh conditions of mining as well as liberatory moments of ‘pure desire’. We creatively explore Deleuze and Guatarri's provocation to return desire to its polymorphous revolutionary force. Instead of viewing girls as needing to be empowered, transformed or rerouted, we emphasise the potential of what girls already do and feel and the more-than-human assemblages which enable these desires.

Item Type: Article
Date Type: Publication
Status: Published
Schools: Social Sciences (Includes Criminology and Education)
Subjects: H Social Sciences > HT Communities. Classes. Races
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISSN: 0159-6306
Date of First Compliant Deposit: 7 April 2016
Last Modified: 06 Nov 2023 17:01
URI: https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/88394

Citation Data

Cited 33 times in Scopus. View in Scopus. Powered By Scopus® Data

Actions (repository staff only)

Edit Item Edit Item

Downloads

Downloads per month over past year

View more statistics