Performative Methodologies: Geographies of Emotion and Affect in Digital Storytelling Workshops

Bliss, Elaine

Performative Methodologies: Geographies of Emotion and Affect in Digital Storytelling Workshops

dc.contributor.advisor	Johnston, Lynda
dc.contributor.advisor	McLeay, Colin
dc.contributor.author	Bliss, Elaine
dc.date.accessioned	2015-06-04T21:51:02Z
dc.date.available	2015-06-04T21:51:02Z
dc.date.issued	2015
dc.date.updated	2015-06-04T21:26:27Z
dc.description.abstract	This thesis advocates digital storytelling as a geographical methodology to understand how emotion and affect are produced. Digital storytelling is a flexible and workshopped methodology that captures experimental, creative and imaginative performances of emotion and affect. Through digital storytelling geographers may build understandings of how emotion and affect are experienced individually and collectively. I use 11 digital storytelling workshops, with more than 100 participants, as the primary sites for my research. The workshops were conducted in the United States and New Zealand and were modelled on the practice established by the Center for Digital Storytelling in Berkeley, California, United States. It is argued that digital storytelling workshops co-create emotion, affect, people and place. Individual and group interviews, reflexive autobiographical journal writing, and digital storytelling workshop training, participation, and observing are used to access emotion and affect in digital storytelling workshops. A combination of qualitative research methods and critical social theories are used to highlight embodied, emotional and affectual geographies. Three findings frame my discussion. First, digital storytelling workshops are performative spaces for the staging and circulation of emotion and affect. The concepts of infrastructure, improvisation, and intimacy are critical for understanding the dynamic nature of emotion and affect in digital storytelling workshops. Second, a focus on relationality allows for an examination of psychotherapeutic practice and the transformative capacity of digital storytelling workshops. Workshop spaces are understood as ‘connective mediums’ in which a third position – the gap between the flow of emotions and the representation of that experience - is possible. Third, voice in digital storytelling is a political process of speaking and listening. A focus on voice permits an exploration of the acoustic politics of emotion and affect at individual and collective spatial scales. Digital storytelling workshops facilitate processes of seeing, hearing and experiencing emotion and affect as a way of interpreting the geographical worlds of research participants. The Center for Digital Storytelling’s model incorporates a commitment to social justice that honours and values emotional knowledge. As a practice-based research methodology digital storytelling requires researchers to be reflexive and negotiate their multiply layered ethical positionings. As geographers continue to experiment with innovative ways of conducting research, the messiness of digital storytelling can contribute to methodological debates about the ‘doing’ of emotion and affect in geographical research.
dc.format.mimetype	application/pdf
dc.identifier.citation	Bliss, E. (2015). Performative Methodologies: Geographies of Emotion and Affect in Digital Storytelling Workshops (Thesis, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)). University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10289/9354	en
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/10289/9354
dc.language.iso	en
dc.publisher	University of Waikato
dc.rights	All items in Research Commons are provided for private study and research purposes and are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated.
dc.subject	digital storytelling
dc.subject	emotion
dc.subject	affect
dc.subject	performance
dc.subject	geography
dc.subject	disability
dc.subject	methodology
dc.subject	workshop
dc.subject	higher education
dc.subject	embodiment
dc.title	Performative Methodologies: Geographies of Emotion and Affect in Digital Storytelling Workshops
dc.type	Thesis
pubs.place-of-publication	Hamilton, New Zealand	en_NZ
thesis.degree.grantor	University of Waikato
thesis.degree.level	Doctoral
thesis.degree.name	Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)