Towards Diffractive Ways of Knowing Women’s Moving Bodies: A Baradian Experiment With the Fitbit–Motherhood Entanglement
in Sociology of Sport JournalClick name to view affiliation
This article presents a diffractive experiment in thinking about mothers’ engagements with self-tracking technologies as materially and discursively produced phenomena. Inspired by St. Pierre’s claim that any empirical adventure with new materialisms must begin by living with theory, we share our feminist, collaborative journey with Fitbits and Karen Barad’s agential realism to consider what might emerge when we begin thinking and living with concepts such as diffraction, entanglement, and intra-action. Unfolding within the uncertain intersections of theory, method, and data, our diffractive methodology prompted understandings of maternal, moving bodies as entangled agencies in continuous states of becoming and fostered generative feminist relationships that allowed us to embrace new ways of thinking, knowing, and being.
Clark is a research fellow in the Vitalities Lab, University of New South Wales, Australia; this work was undertaken while Clark was a postdoctoral fellow with Te Huataki Waiora, Faculty of Health, Sport, and Human Performance, The University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. Thorpe is with Te Huataki Waiora, Faculty of Health, Sport, and Human Performance, The University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand.
© 2023 Human Kinetics