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3 - In the Practice Agencement

Rhythms, Refrains and Feminist Snaps

from Part I - The Politics of Time: Ontologies and Metaphysics of Organization as Time

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 June 2023

By
Silvia Gherardi
Edited by
François-Xavier de Vaujany ,
Robin Holt  and
Albane Grandazzi
François-Xavier de Vaujany
Affiliation:
Universite Paris Dauphine-PSL
Robin Holt
Affiliation:
Copenhagen Business School
Albane Grandazzi
Affiliation:
Grenoble Ecole de Management
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Summary

The chapter assumes a feminist new materialist approach to explore the entanglement of temporality, materiality and power within a practice agencement. Feminist new materialism in empirical research is a methodology that emphasizes the vitality of matter and the performative and affective flow of agency. The chapter deals both with the materiality of human bodies (and normative embodiment in organizations) and with the materiality of digital technologies and their normative power over teens’ sexuality. Temporality is explored by means of two concepts – refrain and feminist snap – that create orientations for thinking about how the entangled elements that form a practice assume in time different configurations according to the elements’ capacity to affect and be affected. While refrain illuminates the lines of flight within differentiating practices, feminist snap highlights the breaking moment of discontinuity when digital networking subverts the control on women’s bodies.

Keywords

agency as flowdigital activismfeminist new materialismpractice as agencementrefrain
Type
Chapter
Information
Organization as Time
Technology, Power and Politics
 , pp. 61 - 82
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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