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Paper short abstract:

Through its methodological and theoretical tools, assemblage helps to reveal that activists’ understandings of intersectionality are constantly (re)made by affects, experiences and shifting relations with each other, theories, practices, discourses, institutions, time and spaces.

Paper long abstract:

In my work with activists engaged in various struggles in Flanders (Belgium), the field, topics, scope and limits of the research are highly dependent on the constantly evolving relations between all agents and elements involved – from individual activists and organisations, to broader discourses and political dynamics, to time and space themselves. How these relations play out and interact impacts what is in- and excluded, what becomes visible and is invisibilised in this research. By bringing activists together to discuss what intersectionality means to them in and for their activist practices, I am actively assembling ‘intersectionality in activism’ as both research field and subject. Starting out from one existing relationship, I step by step invite people to become part of the knowledge production process through different modes and temporalities of involvement.

Because of the essential role of constantly shifting relations between heterogenous elements, I turn to assemblage theory to describe and make sense not only of the content but also of my methodological approach. Assemblage ethnography allows me to partially free myself of pre-defined and imposed frames of geographical and organisational boundaries and instead organically follow the relationships and affects (intimate (Weiss 2020) as well as conflictual) that shape understandings of intersectionality in Flemish activism. Through both its methodological and theoretical tools, assemblage helps to reveal that activists’ understandings of intersectionality do not simply ‘travel’ from one place to another but are constantly (re)made by affects, experiences and shifting relations with each other, theories, practices, discourses, institutions, time and spaces.