Key publications
Dawney L, Jellis T (2023). Endurance, exhaustion and the lure of redemption.
cultural geographiesAbstract:
Endurance, exhaustion and the lure of redemption
This paper is concerned with the lure of redemption in contemporary academic and accounts of exhaustion, endurance, and biopolitical life. Drawing on, and contributing to recent work on negativity in cultural geography, the paper analyses how optimism and redemption find their way in to academic writing on the contemporary condition. It interrogates the optimism in these literatures, paying attention to the genealogical roots of the propensity to redeem accounts of slow and attritional violence and biopolitical subjectivity. In particular, the paper charts the implicit politics and ethics at play in the invocation of the Deleuzian ‘otherwise’ which haunts many accounts of the transformatory potential of exhaustion, and the remnants of dialectical historicism and Christian morality at the heart of redemption narratives in accounts of endurance. The paper ends by questioning the motives behind such hopeful readings, and asks what it might entail to refuse to redeem tales of violence with optimistic glimmers of an as-yet unspecified world.
Abstract.
Dawney L, Kirwan S, Walker R (2020). The intimate spaces of debt: Love, freedom and entanglement in indebted lives.
Geoforum,
110, 191-199.
Abstract:
The intimate spaces of debt: Love, freedom and entanglement in indebted lives
In the context of a perfect storm of measures – welfare reform, precarious work, stagnating wages – increasing numbers of households find themselves in complex webs of debt. This paper addresses the lived experience of debt in the UK, tracing some affective contours of indebtedness that are often overlooked in debt research. Focusing on domestic settings and emotional routines, the paper explores how the everyday experience of indebted life seeps into relationships, frames life projects, and mediates hopes for one's children. The paper argues that the affective architecture of debt operates just as much through moments of intensity – the letter of default, the pressure cooker of an advice session – as through a background hum in which individuals are engaged in ongoing practices of self-assessment, despair, desire and satisfaction. Drawing on in-depth interviews with indebted subjects, this paper investigates contemporary financial subjectivities through such forms of affective modulation that “run in the background”. In addition to those moments of intensity, it argues that indebted lives are composed through low-level affective states that include hypervigilance, dissociation and anxiety. It examines the deep entanglements of people, technologies and objects that produce these affective states, highlighting relations of obligation and codependency, and the forms of vigilance and anxiety these relations create. In doing so, the paper troubles understandings of debt as a binary relationship between creditor and debtor and argues for a perspective that considers the complex affective entanglements of indebted lives and the imbrication of indebtedness, financial subjectivity, love and care in the making of life projects.
Abstract.
Dawney L (2019). Affective War: Wounded Bodies as Political Technologies.
Body and Society,
25(3), 49-72.
Abstract:
Affective War: Wounded Bodies as Political Technologies
This article argues that wounded military bodies are affective technologies in the production of supportive publics in war. It builds on Elaine Scarry’s concept of substantiation, suggesting that the damaged or altered body functions in war as a vehicle for the making material of immaterial beliefs, values and ideas. Scarry’s focus on the affective force of the wounded body is elaborated and pushed further, by asserting that the concept of substantiation needs to be supplemented by an analysis of the work that wounded bodies do as political technologies. These arguments are mobilised through two examples of the public staging of wounded military bodies in the United Kingdom during and after recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. These examples provide an analysis of the political processes of substantiation: the specific mechanisms through which wounded bodies are rendered visible and through which their affective capacities to compel and grip are mediated.
Abstract.
Uprichard E, Dawney L (2019). Data Diffraction: Challenging Data Integration in Mixed Methods Research.
JOURNAL OF MIXED METHODS RESEARCH,
13(1), 19-32.
Author URL.
Dawney LA (2019). Decommissioned places:
Ruins, endurance and care at the end of the first nuclear age. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 45(1), 33-49.
Publications by year
2023
Dawney L, Jellis T (2023). Endurance, exhaustion and the lure of redemption.
cultural geographiesAbstract:
Endurance, exhaustion and the lure of redemption
This paper is concerned with the lure of redemption in contemporary academic and accounts of exhaustion, endurance, and biopolitical life. Drawing on, and contributing to recent work on negativity in cultural geography, the paper analyses how optimism and redemption find their way in to academic writing on the contemporary condition. It interrogates the optimism in these literatures, paying attention to the genealogical roots of the propensity to redeem accounts of slow and attritional violence and biopolitical subjectivity. In particular, the paper charts the implicit politics and ethics at play in the invocation of the Deleuzian ‘otherwise’ which haunts many accounts of the transformatory potential of exhaustion, and the remnants of dialectical historicism and Christian morality at the heart of redemption narratives in accounts of endurance. The paper ends by questioning the motives behind such hopeful readings, and asks what it might entail to refuse to redeem tales of violence with optimistic glimmers of an as-yet unspecified world.
Abstract.
Dawney L (2023). múltiplas temporalidades da infraestrutura.
Aurora. Revista de Arte, Mídia e Política,
15(45), 117-134.
Abstract:
múltiplas temporalidades da infraestrutura
Usinas nucleares, com sua promessa de energia a baixo custo e sem limites, são arquetípicas do progresso da modernidade. Ao reconhecermos os limites do progresso industrial e do capital baseado no crescimento, lugares onde o sonho acabou, cujos habitantes estão encontrando modos de vida em meio à transição oferecerem ontologias práticas emergentes baseadas em manutenção, bricolagem e necessidade. Através de um estudo de caso da cidade atômica de Visaginas, na Lituânia, este artigo aborda a questão sobre como dar conta das formas de vida que surgem em um contexto de esgotamento da alta modernidade. Aqui, infraestruturas operam como recursos culturais e materiais residuais para ontologias práticas e para a construção do mundo pós-progresso. Com base em uma discussão sobre a estética política da infraestrutura, sugiro que sua transição ontológica envolve o que Mark Fisher descreve como a “memória de futuros perdidos”, um futuro anterior que, através dos restos de conexões materiais, de tecnoculturas ede memória cultural fornece limites e condições para formas de vida emergentes “pós-progresso”.
Abstract.
Segurado R, Amaral A, Dawney L, De Alencar Santos N (2023). É preciso olhar para as montanhas.
Aurora. Revista de Arte, Mídia e Política,
15(45), 9-27.
Abstract:
É preciso olhar para as montanhas
Entrevista com o artista multimídia, realizador audiovisual, professor e pesquisador acadêmico Lucas Bambozzi realizada por membros do grupo interdisciplinar e internacional de pesquisadores reunidos em torno da temática do Antropoceno brasileiro. O entrevistado fala de sua mais recente produção audiovisual, o documentário Lavras sobre os atingidos pelos impactos da mineração no Estado de Minas Gerais, refletindo sobre as relações entre o cinema e as ruínas do Antropoceno ou Capitaloceno como ele prefere chamar.
Abstract.
2022
Dawney L, Brothwell L (2022). Conversations on benches. In (Ed)
Ecological Reparation Repair, Remediation and Resurgence in Social and Environmental Conflict, Bristol: Bristol University Press.
Abstract:
Conversations on benches
Abstract.
Dawney L, (tradutor) AA, (tradutor) NDAS (2022). Locais desativados: ruínas, resistência e cuidado no final da primeira era nuclear. Ponto Urbe(30 v.2).
Dawney L (2022). The work that figures do. In Lury C, Wark S, Viney W (Eds.)
Figure Concept and Method, Palgrave Macmillan.
Abstract:
The work that figures do
Abstract.
2021
Bevilacqua I, Emery J, Mustafa D, Shaw J, Tillotson M, Dawney L (2021). Arendtian Geopolitics after the 2021 UK Defence Review. Antipode: a Radical Journal of Geography, 2021
Brigstocke J, Bresnihan P, Dawney L, Millner N (2021). Geographies of authority.
Progress in Human Geography,
45(6), 1356-1378.
Abstract:
Geographies of authority
We propose a geography that pluralizes the sites, practices and politics of authority. We defend an approach that tracks less perceptible forms of authority emerging through everyday micropolitics and experimental practices. In contrast to dominant definitions of authority as institutionalized legitimate power, we define authority as a relation of guidance emerging from recognition of inequalities in access to truth, experience or objectivity. Analysing four intersecting areas of authority (algorithmic, experiential, expert and participatory authority), we propose analyses grounded in political aesthetics that trace authority’s affective force, and its role in disclosing and contesting the common.
Abstract.
Dawney L (2021). The multiple temporalities of infrastructure: Atomic cities and the memory of lost futures. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 39 (3), 405-422.
2020
Dawney L (2020). Dramatising deindustrialisation: experiential authority, temporality and embodiment in a play about nuclear decommissioning. In Rhodes M, Price W, Walker A (Eds.)
Geographies of Postindustrial Place, Memory, and Heritage, London: Routledge.
Abstract:
Dramatising deindustrialisation: experiential authority, temporality and embodiment in a play about nuclear decommissioning.
Abstract.
Dawney L (2020). Figurations of Wounding: Soldiers’ Bodies, Authority, and the Militarisation of Everyday Life.
Geopolitics,
25(5), 1099-1117.
Abstract:
Figurations of Wounding: Soldiers’ Bodies, Authority, and the Militarisation of Everyday Life
This article argues that the figures of the wounded and dead soldier are central organising nodes in public objects, events, and institutions and are generative of intense affects and feelings, which are in turn bound to and constitute geopolitical imaginaries. Through these figurations, bodies of wounded and dead soldiers are brought to visibility, becoming key technologies for the production of authority and attachment, and fostering powerful affective responses in publics that work to amplify and enliven particular forms of neoliberal militarised nationhood.
Abstract.
Dawney L, Kirwan S, Walker R (2020). The intimate spaces of debt: Love, freedom and entanglement in indebted lives.
Geoforum,
110, 191-199.
Abstract:
The intimate spaces of debt: Love, freedom and entanglement in indebted lives
In the context of a perfect storm of measures – welfare reform, precarious work, stagnating wages – increasing numbers of households find themselves in complex webs of debt. This paper addresses the lived experience of debt in the UK, tracing some affective contours of indebtedness that are often overlooked in debt research. Focusing on domestic settings and emotional routines, the paper explores how the everyday experience of indebted life seeps into relationships, frames life projects, and mediates hopes for one's children. The paper argues that the affective architecture of debt operates just as much through moments of intensity – the letter of default, the pressure cooker of an advice session – as through a background hum in which individuals are engaged in ongoing practices of self-assessment, despair, desire and satisfaction. Drawing on in-depth interviews with indebted subjects, this paper investigates contemporary financial subjectivities through such forms of affective modulation that “run in the background”. In addition to those moments of intensity, it argues that indebted lives are composed through low-level affective states that include hypervigilance, dissociation and anxiety. It examines the deep entanglements of people, technologies and objects that produce these affective states, highlighting relations of obligation and codependency, and the forms of vigilance and anxiety these relations create. In doing so, the paper troubles understandings of debt as a binary relationship between creditor and debtor and argues for a perspective that considers the complex affective entanglements of indebted lives and the imbrication of indebtedness, financial subjectivity, love and care in the making of life projects.
Abstract.
2019
Dawney L (2019). Affective War: Wounded Bodies as Political Technologies.
Body and Society,
25(3), 49-72.
Abstract:
Affective War: Wounded Bodies as Political Technologies
This article argues that wounded military bodies are affective technologies in the production of supportive publics in war. It builds on Elaine Scarry’s concept of substantiation, suggesting that the damaged or altered body functions in war as a vehicle for the making material of immaterial beliefs, values and ideas. Scarry’s focus on the affective force of the wounded body is elaborated and pushed further, by asserting that the concept of substantiation needs to be supplemented by an analysis of the work that wounded bodies do as political technologies. These arguments are mobilised through two examples of the public staging of wounded military bodies in the United Kingdom during and after recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. These examples provide an analysis of the political processes of substantiation: the specific mechanisms through which wounded bodies are rendered visible and through which their affective capacities to compel and grip are mediated.
Abstract.
Uprichard E, Dawney L (2019). Data Diffraction: Challenging Data Integration in Mixed Methods Research.
JOURNAL OF MIXED METHODS RESEARCH,
13(1), 19-32.
Author URL.
Dawney LA (2019). Decommissioned places:
Ruins, endurance and care at the end of the first nuclear age. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 45(1), 33-49.
Dawney L, Huzar TJ (2019). Introduction: the Legacies and Limits of the Body in Pain.
Body and Society,
25(3), 3-21.
Abstract:
Introduction: the Legacies and Limits of the Body in Pain
Since its publication in 1985, Elaine Scarry's the Body in Pain has become a seminal text in the study of embodiment. In its foregrounding of the body in war and torture, it critiques the minimising of the body in questions of politics, offering a compelling account of the structure and phenomenology of violent domination. However, at the same time the text can be seen to shore up a mind/body dualism that has been associated with oppressive forms of gendering, racialisation and disablement. Divisive, powerful and elegant, the text has been central in the shaping of approaches to embodiment over the past 30 years. This special issue revisits Scarry's text in the light of 30 years of scholarship on embodiment and the body. Its legacies and limits are exemplified through a series of articles that mobilise the arguments of the Body in Pain even as they push at the limits of the text.
Abstract.
Kirwan S, Dawney L, Walker R (2019). ‘Choose your moments’: discipline and speculation in the indebted everyday. In (Ed) The Sociology of Debt, Bristol University Press, 119-144.
Kirwan S, Dawney L, Walker R (2019). ‘Choose your moments’: discipline and speculation in the indebted everyday. In (Ed) The Sociology of Debt, Bristol University Press, 119-144.
Dawney LA, Kirwan S, Walker R (2019). ’Choose your moments’: Discipline and speculation in the indebted everyday. In (Ed)
The sociology of debt, Bristol: Policy Press.
Abstract:
’Choose your moments’: Discipline and speculation in the indebted everyday
Abstract.
2018
Dawney LA (2018). Diffracting. In (Ed)
Routledge Handbook of Interdisciplinary Research Methods, London: Routledge.
Abstract:
Diffracting
Abstract.
Dawney LA (2018). Figurationing. In (Ed)
Routledge Handbook of Interdisciplinary Research Methods.
Abstract:
Figurationing
Abstract.
Dawney L (2018). The affective life of power.
DIALOGUES IN HUMAN GEOGRAPHY,
8(2), 217-219.
Author URL.
2017
Dawney LA, Harris OJT, Sørensen TF (2017). Future world: Anticipatory archaeology, materially affective capacities and the late human legacy.
Journal of Contemporary Archaeology,
4(1), 107-129.
Abstract:
Future world: Anticipatory archaeology, materially affective capacities and the late human legacy
Using the 2010 film into Eternity as a springboard for thought, this article considers how archaeologies of the future might help us make sense of how to seek commonality and take care across vast temporal scales. The film, about a nuclear waste repository in Finland, addresses the impossibility of communicating across millennia. In thinking with this film, we engage with recent responses to the post-human call, arguing that they are inadequate in dealing with the new questions that are asked by post-human thought. Instead, we attempt to engage the work of Spinoza and Sloterdijk in rethinking the human as a strategic position or point of purchase amongst the shared materiality of present and future worlds. We offer the concepts of the materially affective and atmosphere in order to identify points of connection, drawing on moments in into Eternity to work through these arguments in a tentative repositioning of the human as a site of concern.
Abstract.
Dawney LA (2017). On finding hope beyond progress. In Dawney L, Bresnihan P (Eds.)
Problems of Hope, Lewes: ARN Press.
Abstract:
On finding hope beyond progress
Abstract.
Bresnihan P, Dawney L (2017).
Problems of Hope., ARN Press.
Abstract:
Problems of Hope
Abstract.
2016
Blencowe C, Brigstocke J, Dawney L (2016).
Authority, experience and the life of power.Abstract:
Authority, experience and the life of power
Abstract.
Dawney LA (2016). Into Eternity. In (Ed)
Listening with Non-Human Others, Lewes: ARN Press.
Abstract:
Into Eternity
Abstract.
Blencowe C, Brigstocke J, Dawney L (2016). Introduction: Authority and experience.
Kirwan S, Dawney L, Brigstocke J (2016).
Space, power and the commons: the struggle for alternative futures.Abstract:
Space, power and the commons: the struggle for alternative futures
Abstract.
Dawney L (2016). The figure of authority: the affective biopolitics of the mother and the dying man. In (Ed)
Authority, Experience and the Life of Power, 29-47.
Abstract:
The figure of authority: the affective biopolitics of the mother and the dying man
Abstract.
2013
Blencowe C, Brigstocke J, Dawney L (2013). Authority and experience. Journal of Political Power, 6(1), 1-7.
Dawney L (2013). The figure of authority: the affective biopolitics of the mother and the dying man.
Journal of Political Power,
6(1), 29-47.
Abstract:
The figure of authority: the affective biopolitics of the mother and the dying man
This paper discusses the relationship between authority-production and experience through a consideration of the emergence of certain figures as authorities on particular matters as a result of extraordinary experiences that they have undergone. It argues that analysis of such figures of experiential authority can help us to identify 'objectivities': foundational tenets upon which their authority is based and to which it ultimately refers. With reference to Harry Patch, a veteran of the First World War and Doreen Lawrence, the mother of Stephen Lawrence, who was murdered in a racially motivated attack at a bus stop, I contend that the authority carried by these figures testifies to certain socially produced objectivities which elicit an affective response, an embodied demand that they are listened to. © 2013 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.
Abstract.
Dawney L (2013). The interruption: investigating subjectivation and affect.
ENVIRONMENT AND PLANNING D-SOCIETY & SPACE,
31(4), 628-644.
Author URL.
2011
Dawney L (2011). Social imaginaries and therapeutic self-work: the ethics of the embodied imagination.
SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW,
59(3), 535-552.
Author URL.
Dawney L (2011). The motor of being: a response to Steve Pile's 'Emotions and affect in recent human geography'.
TRANSACTIONS OF THE INSTITUTE OF BRITISH GEOGRAPHERS,
36(4), 599-602.
Author URL.
2010
Dawney L (2010). Therapeutic Landscapes. Emotion, Space and Society, 3(2), 121-122.
