Ecofeminist horizoning: Bringing intersectionality and assemblage thinking together through facet methodology

  • Magdalena Rodekirchen

Student thesis: Phd

Abstract

How might methodological innovation enable better understanding, not only the entangled complexity of living in our world, but also of the possibilities to act - as researchers - amid and despite this complexity (Giraud, 2019)? This question, and the research project I have undertaken to answer it, are inspired by Neimanis et al.'s (2015) call for inventive research approaches and methodological developments that facilitate thinking and doing research differently in the feminist environmental humanities. I respond to this call and my research question in a twofold way. By proposing facet methodology as an inventive research approach that accommodates multiple ontologies and epistemologies via methodological research practices in analyses of human- environment relations; and by further developing facet methodology into a reflexive, situated research praxis that facilitates acting as researchers amid complexity. I argue that to rethink understandings of human-environment relations, researchers require a multi-faceted, situated research praxis that allows for open-endedness and frictions. Drawing on heterogenous approaches at the intersections between intersectional ecofeminisms and assemblage thinking, I demonstrate one possible version of such a research praxis, which I call ecofeminist horizoning. Conceptually building on work into intersectionality and assemblage thinking, I use intersectionality as a heuristic device and assemblage as a descriptor. Methodologically, I do so by using facet methodology (Mason, 2011), which centres the pursuit of flashes of insight when bringing together different epistemologies and using a mix of methods. Empirically, I apply facet methodology to a mobile phone video to draw out a range of intersectional and assemblage facets covering human-nonhuman relations and encounters in unexpected places. In doing so, I demonstrate facet methodology's utility for feminist environmental humanities. Additionally, by making transparent the iterative process of simultaneously applying to the video and developing a research praxis, I demonstrate how ecofeminist horizoning enables two things: it facilitates taking a stand for more than one possible world (van Dooren, 2014) and it questions habitual ways of understanding human-environment relations. It does so by practicing being on the lookout for unexpected and discomforting encounters, by politicizing exclusions in our thinking-doing research practices, and by using my methodological tool called tracing the thread of reading and my proposed method thinking-with discomfort. The result of my innovation is a research praxis that encourages open-endedness and frictions in thinking-doing research in small but meaningful ways.
Date of Award1 Aug 2024
Original languageEnglish
Awarding Institution
  • The University of Manchester
SupervisorSherilyn MacGregor (Supervisor) & Matthew Paterson (Supervisor)

Keywords

  • gender and environment
  • transdisciplinary research
  • feminist praxis
  • feminist environmental humanities
  • feminist new materialism
  • discomfort
  • ecofeminism
  • Anthropocene
  • assemblage
  • intersectionality
  • facet methodology
  • qualitative research methodologies

Cite this

'