Non-Representational Theory & Health

The Health in Life in Space-Time Revealing

Gavin J. Andrews

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781472483102
• eBook ISBN: 9781317086949
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

Non-representational theory is an academic approach that animates the active world; its taking-place. It shows how material, sensory and affective processes combine with conscious thought and agency in the making of everyday life.

This book offers an agenda for health geography, providing the first comprehensive overview of what a 'more-than-representational' health geography looks like. It outlines the basis of a new ontological understanding of health, and explores the key qualities of 'movement-space' that are critical to how health emerges within the assemblages that enable it.

It shows how non-representational events and concerns are key to human happiness and wellbeing, to the experience of health and disease, to activities that add to or detract from health and to health care work, not to mention to the broader initiatives and operation of health institutions and health sciences.

This book bridges the gap between non-representational theory and health research, and provides the groundwork for future developments in the field. It will be of interest to students, researchers and professionals alike working in health, geography and a range of other disciplines.

1New intellectual energies

The emergence and basis of non-representational theory

We all know the feeling, often vague and in the background yet very familiar. The feeling of not only being present in the moment and participating in the moment, but experiencing life’s basic movement and energy. The passion pushing it and us forwards; the surge and the ride. It can be a subtle undercurrent, adding momentum to what we are doing, or a powerful force that sweeps us up and moves us along. It arises through the actions and motions of people and things, but it seems to have a life of its own; something more than the sum of its parts. It is basic, physical and not often consciously reflected on, yet it has a bearing on our immediate sense of wellbeing because being in sync with it, and working in the same direction as it, can be an energising and joyful experience. On the other hand being out of sync with it or moving against it can be difficult, draining and frustrating. It’s an experience that happens to greater or lesser extents in all areas of, and places in, our lives; in our homes, workplaces, where we are entertained and spend our leisure time, where we shop and where we are educated and are cared for. It is an important but academically neglected part of the world engaged by non-representational theory.

A group of nurses are at their work station for the last hour of their shift; a geometrically shaped beige island home to computer screens, plastic furniture and wires bathed in artificial light, all but the smallest of corners observable through its see-through acrylic barrier. Despite the nurses’ tiredness, many things happen that make it a busy time for them, shortening the hour. Some of these things involve a great deal of their conscious thought and action, particularly regarding the latest institutional infection control strategy which seems to be the order of the day (e.g. attention to the leaflets given to them, patients’ families and doctors appearing and asking questions, their shared notes on the day’s practices). Some of these things do not require much conscious thought or action on their part (e.g. various internet information that flashes unread on their computer screen, the sun’s warmth filtered through a window hitting their faces, bodies moving past in various directions, and background chitter chatter). Meanwhile some of what happens they do not think about at all (e.g. their breathing, repetitive typing, subtle movements of their legs and arms to undertake simple tasks or for comfort). Regardless of their levels of attention, all of what happens in that hour rolling out constitutes their working lives. All of it has some energy and movement to it, and all of it contributes in some way to the whole. It reflects and affects their mood, alters the feel and content of their communications, and turns the course of meaningful events. Missed by much research, yet not by non-representational theory, are these realities. How life happens all the time and everywhere. How it moves on unabated, constantly becoming. How it unfolds as a stream of action and feeling.

I wrote these two vignettes for a graduate lecture I give on non-representational theory (NRT). In my experience, they provide an initial entry point to NRT as an approach which focuses on life’s ‘ever-breaking wave’; its happening, its taking-place. Beyond this entry point the key task for my graduate students, and this book, is to think more deeply how these types of events are composed and how they unfold as space-time. Moreover, to think about what NRT does and could contribute to the geographical study of health.

Conceived by Nigel Thrift in the mid-1990s (see Thrift, 1996, 1997), and more widely developed and applied by him and other scholars in the last decade (see Thrift, 2008; Anderson and Harrison, 2010; Vannini, 2015a), NRT is a style of thinking and researching based on a plurality of theories that puts the raw performance of the world front and centre in research inquiries (Simpson, 2010). On one level it communicates the many wordless, unreflective, automatic and accidental practices involved, and their expression. On another level it communicates how these are registered and sensed by and affect humans. Thus, NRT moves the focus of academic inquiry onto the physicality and experience of the active world; the bare bones, basic mechanisms, root textures in the rolling out of occasions (Thrift, 2008). The ‘non-representational’ in NRT has always been the subject of different interpretations and debate, in terms of what it means and whether it is an appropriate descriptor (Lorimer, 2005; Carolan, 2008; Jones, 2008). However, it is generally accepted that there are two levels to non-representation. The first is concerned with events that are both non-representational in their form (based on acts rather than speech), and non-representable in research terms (that are difficult to show); events that constitute what is fundamentally going on in the world. In other words, rather than being concerned with what humans purposefully represent through language and other communication (such as ideas), and the complex and consciously acted phenomena that often follow (such as rules or policies) – events that, for researchers, are eminently representable – NRT is concerned with how humans act and communicate without purposefully representing; the often prior, less-than-fully conscious presentations of life. As Simpson (2015) suggests, this thinking also constitutes a clear rejection of a form of body ‘representationalism’ embedded in much contemporary social science which assumes meaning to be something formed in the mind that acts as a precondition for physical action (which shows this meaning); NRT’s antidote to this thus being its emphasis on less-than-fully conscious practice, embodiment, materiality and the processual.

The second level of non-representation in NRT is concerned with the nature and implication of non(not) representing such events, and what might instead take its place as a research practice. So instead of representing, NRT aims to ‘show’ and ‘animate’ the push of the world; to convey it in ways which reflect as much as possible its physicality, energy and intensity (substantive methodological challenges which will be addressed in the final chapter of this book) (see also Thrift, 2000; Dewsbury et al., 2002; Vannini, 2009; 2015a). In short then, although it is an absolute mouthful, it could be said that NRT rejects the automatic drive in much traditional social science to be representational by representing representable representational processes and events, and instead chooses to be non-representational through animating unrepresentable non-representational processes and events.

Importantly, NRT is not an exercise in trivializing or simplifying the immediacies in life. Rather, despite they being omnipresent, as an approach it opens up the complexity of the present, thinking about the different forces that form it. Nor does NRT exist simply to expose some specific and hitherto unexposed non-representational empirical realities of the world. When Thrift and others have challenged scholars to ‘go beyond representation’ they meant precisely that, not to dispense with it (as some critics have incorrectly assumed). Hence, NRT is an approach that augments traditional forms of geographical research and knowledge by thinking about how humans consciously shape the immediate, physical and sensory in life, and how these things in turn shape the human experience often less-than-fully consciously. In other words, how immediate, physical and sensory non-representational processes (i.e. the forming and performing of life) overflow and interplay with conscious personal, social, political, economic and institutional representational processes (i.e. what more clearly comes into view), and together how they both contribute to power, significance and meaning in life (i.e. what is more clearly produced). Indeed, NRT understands that representations themselves can only ever be very briefly stable due to their composition from ever changing non- representational events, and how representations themselves might be non-representational in the way that they are performative and intially apprehended (Dewsbury et al., 2002). As Thrift (2008:148) suggests, ‘meaning shows itself, only in the living’.

Notably, the emergence of NRT has been motivated by range of factors which, whether they be theoretical arguments or more to do with the organization and culture of human geography, have acted as underlying positive currents, pushing and pulling geographical scholarship in its direction and opening up fertile ground for its development. The following two sections summarize the most influential of these.

Pushes towards NRT

I admit that at times I can get frustrated with geography, much of it seems to follow the logic of the corpse, interested in the broken, the static, the already passed… I have therefore tried to develop an approach which can act as a means of providing something livelier. I call this approach non-representational theory … The stakes are high because what I am attempting to do is to overturn much of the spirit and purpose of the social sciences and humanities… Human life is largely lived in a non-cognitive world… The varieties of stabilities we call representation can only cover so much of the world.

(Thrift, 2004a:81–89)

We murder to dissect. I cannot think of a more apropos descriptor of the academic enterprise which stultifies and deadens the world via the relentless search for explanation, prediction, and meaning. Rendering post-mortems is the stock-in-trade of meddling intellects. This is the malady that is stimulating streams of non-representational thought and ‘performative’ geography.

(McHugh, 2009:209)

Five critiques of the dominant research paradigms in human geography have emerged, providing a direct and quite forceful push towards NRT as an alternative way of going about research. The first critique is about missing the active world; that social constructionism in particular has suffocated a good portion of what happens in space and time due to its commitment to theory-driven interpretative searches for meaning, and under the orders, structures and processes that are imposed by researchers who employ it (Dewsbury et al., 2002). Indeed, the thinking is that that all too often scholars report on quite specific things that have happened to their subjects and then almost immediately resort to theorizing and interpreting; to peeling off the layers in order to find the mechanisms, consequences and meanings involved (Thrift, 2008). The critique follows that this process has not only led to quite abstract self-serving theoretical debates and the conveyance of a drained and embalmed version of the world (Thrift and Dewsbury, 2000; Dewsbury et al., 2002), it has also left a gaping hole the social scientific coverage of what goes on in the world. As McCormack (2013) explains, much qualitative research is, using a sports analogy, formulaic ‘post-game’ interrogation and analysis. By this he means that we (researchers) go all out to find ‘the player’ (e.g. in health contexts a marginalized, disadvantaged or oppressed patient or sufferer) in a break from, or after, ‘the game’ (e.g. an illness episode or treatment or recovery determined by biology, structures and powers which caused their predicament) and probe to find out what it felt like (i.e. what we already think we know). The player, for their part, then struggles to convey what happened after the fact. Then, feeling slightly dissatisfied, we press further for them to tell us what it all means; all the while their emotions being demonstrable. Getting some of what we were looking for, we then ‘send it back to the studio’ (i.e. our university office) for in-depth interpretation and analysis (e.g. often filtered through philosophy) (see also Andrews, 2017a). McCormack (2013) notes that this is all based on an underlying assumption that rigour in research can be achieved through triangulated accounts involving interpretative sense making. The NRT critique is that for a discipline that claims to be in tune with people’s lives, this process sure feels lifeless, obscure and texty, and – back to sports analogies – largely misses the game (Andrews, 2017a).

The second critique of the dominant paradigms in human geography is about acknowledging the excessiveness of life and the limitations on research this imposes. As Dewsbury et al. (2002) note, even if researchers wanted to attempt to represent life, given all the millions of micro-events/happenings that constitute its taking-place – all of its liveliness and movement – this could never happen. Life is far too excessive to ever be fully understood or theorized, and this excessiveness needs to be actively celebrated by research, rather than ignored or reduced.

The third critique is about the consequence of always and inescapably being in the moving world. In his early writings on NRT, Thrift (1999) argues that most traditional research approaches attempt to distance themselves from the world in order to assess it, when this is not really possible. Instead Thrift argues that researchers occupy a forever shifting position within a forever moving world, their changing relationalities to others things in the world affecting anything they observe or judge. Hence, NRT involves a new kind of realization on the positionality between the researcher and what is researched, that acknowledges constant fluidity and interplay. Indeed, Thrift (1999) comments:

Non-representational theory arises from the simple (one might say almost commonplace) observation that we cannot extract a representation of the world from the world because we are slap bang in the middle of it.

(1999:296)

The fourth critique is centred on life as ever constructing. This argues that social constructionism deals in fundamental understandings on constructed categories – such as race, health, sex, nation and place – but that these constitute general and premature conclusions that researchers adhere to (Taussig, 1993; Anderson and Harrison, 2010). The theoretical point here is that even if we were to believe that life can reach a constructed state, this necessarily has to come after earlier states of existence that were less constructed and constructing; that were far more fluid, messy, raw and acted (Taussig, 1993; Anderson and Harrison, 2010). These need to be in some way addressed in research, rather than leading empirical inquiry straight into the collection of data on a constructed subject (moreover into human opinions that are always subjective, relational, and often result from personal emotional (over)amplification). In sum, in contrast to social constructionism, NRT does not perceive there to be a constructed world requiring representation. The idea is instead that, in its purest form, the lived world is an ongoing performance; a physical never ending (re)construction (Thrift, 2004a).

The fifth critique is an empirical observation about the form of the emerging twenty-first-century Euro-Americanized world that should not be approached only by conventional research paradigms. It is claimed that, on one level, this is a deconstructing world in which categories such as sexuality, gender, race and class mean less. On another level it is a world in which, somewhat replacing these, consumption and experience have moved to the foreground on an accelerating plane of velocity (Thrift, 2008). Indeed, in this ever faster world new capitalist commodification strategies engineer the root textures and feels of our lives, adding multiple aesthetics, attractions and distractions that play to multiple senses (Thrift, 2008). Thus our possessions, buildings, neighbourhoods, towns and cities ooze synthetic atmospheres. Our bodies move in an increasing range of environments and relate to an increasing range of objects. Our mechanical and technological obsessions give us new forms of knowledge and awareness of the world, and multiple co-existing timescales and levels of consciousness to our existence (Thrift, 2008). Our new affective sensory pastimes compel, drawing us into them (ranging from environmental and political action to fitness and holistic lifestyles). It is thought that these are a range of parts and symptoms of a greater change, what Thrift (2011) articulates as ‘lifeworld inc’; a move from a military–industrial complex to a security–entertainment complex which produces an exaggerated humanity. With regard to the latter, he argues that:

the entertainment sector has grown in size and influence, becoming a pervasive element of the world. From the base of consumer electronics, through the constant innovations in the spatial customization of pleasure found in mass leisure industries like toys or pornography, through branding, gaming and other spatial practices, to the intricate design of experience spaces, entertainment has become a quotidian element of life, found in all of its interstices amongst all age groups.

(2011:12)

These changes all involve a new emphasis on and privileging of movement in society whereby, for example, the appearance of movement and planes of motion become emphasized over traditional anchors (for example narrative on the history of things). As Thrift (2008) notes:

[T]‌he basic cardinals of what we regard as space are [sic] shifting… we are increasingly a part of a movement-space which is relative rather than absolute… in which matter or mind, reality has appeared to us as a perpetual becoming.

(2008:102)

Thrift’s argument is that traditional social science approaches are not best placed to engage this faster moving sensory world which is more loosely and differently stuck together, and that we need a new lens, something ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Why now and how? Preface and plan
• Acknowledgements
• 1 New intellectual energies The emergence and basis of non-representational theory
• 2 Rethinking health: From what it means to how it becomes
• 3 Key conceptualizations in more-than-representational health geographies
• 4 A mode of health transmission: Affective health geographies
• 5 Characteristic styles and priorities of more-than-representational health geographies
• 6 Rethinking movement in health geography: From a change of location to movement-space
• 7 Qualities of movement-spaces in more-than-representational health geographies
• 8 Research practices and future directions
• References
• Index