Dissertation

Spaces of effort: geographies
of a kinaesthetic assemblage
Abstract
There has been a recent turn in geography towards the study of the body as a
space of research and its interaction with forms of technology. Actor network
theory, emotional and affective geographies, non-representational theories and
studies of kinaesthetic embodiment have helped to close the discursive distance
between bodies and technology, producing a conceptualisation of hybrid
assemblages within which both forms of agency are entangled. Despite
increasing attention to this geographical realm, there has been little discussion of
the experiential geographies produced by the coming together of hybrid actants
in kinaesthetic assemblages. This dissertation investigates the experiential spaces
produced by the kinaesthetic activity of rowing, drawing together a range
discourses in an empirical context.
Three central research questions are dealt with:

− How does one go about researching and depicting kinaesthetic activity,
which by its very nature precedes cognitive and linguistic awareness, in a
written document?
− What kinds of experiential geographies are produced by kinaesthetic
assemblages?
− How are experiential geographies communicated over time and space?
The limitations of conventional research methodologies in the context of

kinaesthetic activity are acknowledged, but retained, and interviews and
personal journal entries are employed alongside alternative forms of data such as
videotape, virtual representation and diagrammatic interventions. In the
discussion, the ways in which kinaesthetic geographies are felt and experienced
by the human actor are discussed with reference to the realm of affectivity and
emergence, and the process of representational circulation is analysed and
reconceptualised in the context of unstable, mutating actor-networks. Circularity
and sphericality are the central themes of this research, defining the nature of
kinaesthetic activity, representational networks, and effort itself.
University of Oxford Candidate Number 44801

Submitted for Examination in June 2008
Word Count 11779
Spaces of effort: geographies of a kinaesthetic assemblage 1
Spaces of effort: geographies
of a kinaesthetic assemblage
University of Oxford Candidate Number 44801

Submitted for Examination in June 2008
Word Count 11779

Table of Contents
Abstract....................................................................................................................1
Table of Contents......................................................................................................3
List of Figures............................................................................................................4
Acknowledgements..................................................................................................4
Chapter 1: Introduction.....................................................................................5
1.1 Key research questions.......................................................................................7
Chapter 2: Literature Review.............................................................................8

2.1 Discipline of effort..............................................................................................8
2.2 Geographies of fitness .....................................................................................10
2.3 Geographies of emotion and affect ................................................................13
2.4 Spaces of affective embodiment .....................................................................14
2.4.1 Totally technical?.......................................................................................15
2.4.2 Collective embodiment .............................................................................17
2.4.3 Virtual embodiment..................................................................................18
2.5 The role of representations .............................................................................19
Chapter 3: Research Methodology...................................................................21

3.1 Personal logbook and journals.........................................................................22
3.2 Interviews.........................................................................................................23
3.3 Videotape.........................................................................................................24
3.4 Enrolling representations.................................................................................25
3.5 Drawing out diagrams......................................................................................27
Chapter 4: Moving through spaces of effort.....................................................29

4.1 Points of Contact .............................................................................................29
4.2 Rythms and cycles............................................................................................31
4.3 The pain of effort .............................................................................................33
Chapter 5: Rowing through representations.....................................................37

5.1 Re-embodying representations through circulating reference .......................37
5.2 Re-reading rowing: tracing networks of flow ..................................................39
5.3 Re-circulating reference in three dimensions .................................................41
5.4 Blind Rowing: representational amputation or reembodied associations? ....47
Chapter 6 Conclusions.....................................................................................51
6.1 Writing about rowing.......................................................................................51
6.2 Geographies of experience ..............................................................................51
6.3 Circulating representations .............................................................................52
6.4 The theme of circularity ..................................................................................52
Bibliography....................................................................................................55
List of Participants .................................................................................................62

List of Figures
Fig. 1 The Athlit ram on display at the National Maritime Museum, Haifa, Israel.
Photograph: A. Oron, 2006 ................................................................................................9
Fig. 2 - The concept2 ergonometer...................................................................................11
Fig. 3 - “A drawing showing the movements of the oarsman and oar in space during the
stroke” (Bourne, 1925) ....................................................................................................16
Fig. 4 - A screenshot from RowPro, a computer program designed for indoor rowers to
simulate races in real-time ..............................................................................................19
Fig. 5 - The Concept 2 Performance Monitor (4th generation) ........................................26
Fig. 6 - A screenshot of the virtual Under 23 Mens race at the 2007 Evesham Golden
Mile. Approaching 4 minutes, the author is some way behind his competitors...............27
Fig. 7 - Andy Osborn rowing the 'Golden Mile' ................................................................29
Fig. 8 - The model grip on an oar, as described in detail by G.C. Bourne (1925: 301).......30
Fig. 9 - A diagrammatic interpretation of the three points of contact..............................31
Fig. 10 - 'Struggling for breath'. The author 'intertwining with the world' after a 5k erg..34
Fig. 11 - What is lost and what is gained in a circulating encounter with rowing.............39
Fig. 12 – A diagrammatic depiction of the chain of circulating reference leading up to
'Summer Eights' and beyond............................................................................................40
Fig. 13 - A three dimensional representation of circulating reference..............................42
Fig. 14 - A diagrammatic representation of overlapping spheres. ...................................43
Fig. 15 - A diagrammatic interpretation of Mark Griffiths' participation in the Evesham
Golden Mile.......................................................................................................................45
Fig. 16 - A co-fabricated diagram of the different emotional and physical features of Mark
Griffith's Evesham Race....................................................................................................46
Fig. 17 – Stills from video recording of H. Frykman at Evesham RC..................................48
Fig. 18 - 'enso' is a spiritual symbol in zen philosophy. Calligraphy by Kanjuro Shibata XX
"Enso" accessed 1/7/08 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Enso.jpg............................52
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to my supervisor and college tutor who responded to my
enthusiasm with encouragement and guidance. Thanks go to my participants for
being generous with their time, information and thoughtfulness.

Spaces of Effort:
Geographies of a kinaesthetic assemblage
Chapter 1: Introduction
“I sit down at the erg without strapping my feet in and begin to pull
the chain lightly. I'm thinking about what distance I'll do today. I get
up to change the music on the gym stereo, do some more stretches
and after about a minute sit down again and continue warming up
half-heartedly. Apprehension verges upon fear as I contemplate my
imminent discomfort. If I'm going to be rowing for the next 20
minutes, then I'm certainly not going to wear myself out on the
warm-up. I get up and adjust the fan. Finally I sit back down and set
the monitor to 5000 metres. I'm going to do this. I'm going to beat
my personal best. A few more adjustments on my seat and my feet
straps, and I'm off.... Not thinking about the 450 painful strokes to
go.” (Diary, 19/7/07)
The seed of this research was an interest in geographies of movement. I began

with alternative visits to the library and the gym. I rowed and rowed and rowed,
but went nowhere. How was this geography? I was unconvinced. There seemed
to be no space for my simple experience of effort in the complex discourses I had
read on. I could not seem to reconcile these two spaces. Gradually, I began to
realise that this experience might be exactly what I was heading for.
How does one understand or depict the kinds of sensual spaces produced by
kinaesthetic practice? In an age of hypermobility and networks of flow, spaces of
movement are an integral feature of contemporary geography and have gained
increasing attention in research (e.g. McCormack, 1999; 2003; Massumi, 2002;
Hubbard, 2005; Markussen, 2006; Spinney, 2006). Discourses such as actor-
network theory have brought about an emphasis on relationality and the
assembled nature of geographical phenomena (Whatmore, 2002; Lorimer, 2005;

2007; Latour, 2005). However, the more these discourses are developed in
geography, the more they seem to become disembodied. Little research has
investigated the kinds of experiential spaces embodied by kinaesthetic activity.1
This dissertation foregrounds the immediate corporeality of effort.
Effort is described in popular discourse as a primarily human engagement of

physical or mental energy in earnest pursuit; both materially and metaphorically
a 'force applied against inertia' (AHD, 2004). However, this research aims to show
that the apparatus and technologies that facilitate human effort are far from
inert, and take on their own agency in the production of spaces of effort.
Whereas effort is commonly viewed as a product of humans employing
technology, the kinaesthetic practice of rowing is presented as a hybrid
assemblage, made up by elements of the human body and mind, the forms and
forces of technology and the range of representations, information and meanings
circulating around the sport.
Contemporary research has focused on the relationship between bodies and

technology (McCormack, 1999; Mackenzie, 2002; Urry, 2004; Spinney 2006;
Sheller, G. 2006), as well as emotional and affective realms of geographical
phenomena (Anderson and Smith, 2001; McCormack, 2003; Thrift, 2004). This
dissertation draws the two discourses together with a focus on experiential
geographies of movement. Rowing is itself an assemblage of bodies, technology,
emotional experience and affective sensibilities, and therefore provides an
excellent platform for synthesising multiple discourses.
How does one understand, investigate and depict hybrid assemblages while
resisting foregrounding human agency? Sensual geographies of effort are felt and
experienced by embodied conduct before they are rendered meaningful and
personal by the individual through processes of reflective interpretation and
linguistic explanation. Investigating the realm of affectivity, where language and
emotion have not yet registered requires careful methodological insight which
delves into the experiences and sensations of kinaesthetic actors.
1
Exceptions include Tuan, 1975; Mark & Frank, 1996; Parr, 1999 and Wylie, 2005.
Non-representational theory can help to foreground affective experience and
deal with the limitations of language. By questioning how knowledge is
produced, and challenging the hegemony of primarily linguistic research
methodologies such as interviews or questionnaires, representations can be
analysed as artefacts of research and not entirely dispensed with (Nash, 2000;
Latham, 2003; Thrift 2004; Lorimer, 2005). The methodologies of this dissertation
aim to surmount the limitations of discursive representations in documenting
geographical phenomena by accounting for the performative potential and
sociolinguistic constraints of certain forms of research, and utilising other
methods (Katz, 1999; Latham, 2003; Wacquant, 2004). Videotape, participation
and diagrammatic interventions are explored as non-linguistic methodologies.
1.1 Key research questions
Three research questions emerge from an initial encounter with rowing and
spaces of effort:
− How does one go about researching and depicting kinaesthetic activity, which
by its very nature precedes cognitive and linguistic awareness, in a written
document?
− What kinds of experiential geographies are produced by hybrid kinaesthetic
assemblages?
− How are experiential geographies communicated over time and space?
The efforts of this dissertation are to tackle and resolve these questions. But
where will that take us? What will we have achieved? Surely, if an understanding
of spaces of effort allows us to create distance or objectivity, then we have failed
to appreciate the immediacy of experiential geographies. So then what are we
aiming for? It seems that to pour effort into this research without the goal of
intellectual insight or any gaining idea is to truly understand spaces of effort. We
must undertake this research with the aim of arriving back here, at its start.

Chapter 2: Literature Review
“she is a hard mistress; for all sweat and labour she grants, perhaps,
the fewest immediate rewards in proportion to her pains – to the tiro
a few moments now and then, when the boat runs, and eight oars
are one, and he is in heaven” (Fairbairn, 1930: v)
Since its inception, rowing has been an adaptive technology, serving transport,
warfare, recreation and sport; each context producing different configurations of
spaces of effort. Rowing is hybrid assemblage of bodies and technology with
political significance. As a technology of discipline, the practice has been used by
sovereign powers as a means of military-mobilisation and biopolitical control.
More recently, rowing has become intertwined with geographies of fitness, self
improvement and accomplishment as a reflexive technology of the self. In the
context of the turn towards emotional and affective geographies, spaces of
rowing may also be seen as enactments of both precognitive sensation and
emotionally mediated experience.
This review situates rowing in the context of geographical discourse, focusing on

Foucauldian notions of discipline, geographies of fitness, emotion and affectivity,
as well as the ways in which embodied ontologies are produced by the coming
together of bodies and technology. As the diversity of these discourses illustrate,
experiential geographies are constituted multifariously, and overlap with hybrid
kinaesthetic assemblages in a variety of ways.
2.1 Discipline of Effort
Effective team rowing demands a symmetry of forms and a coalescence of forces.

Bodily gestures must be highly disciplined so that within the crew, each body
operates in alignment with one another for the maximisation of velocity and
manoeuvrability. Rowing also demands a necessary level of psychological and
interpersonal commitment, and progress is achieved by means of longitudinal
development, practice and collectively shared experience. In investigating the
geographies of rowing, Foucault's conceptions of biopower and technologies of
discipline can illuminate the ways in which spaces of effort are produced through
kinaesthetic activity. This section examines how technologies of discipline have
been exerted in rowing over three distinct phases in its historical development.
Before the 19th century, rowing was inextricably tied up in wider state projects
and warfare. Although rowing as a means of mobility is as ancient as human
transport itself, its role in military-mobilisation stands out as a significant phase
of its history. Galleys were hybrid sailing and rowing boats, used in war by the
Phoenicians and the Greeks as long ago as 3000BC for their advantage of greater
manoeuvrability over sailing boats in close combat (Foley et al. 1981). By 800BC
rams were developed and adapted to monoremes rendering the rowing boat a
weapon itself. One notable example of a ram reclaimed from a sunken vessel
near Athlit, Israel in 1980 (Figure 1) provides evidence of the mobilisation of
rowing for combat during this period.
Figure 1 - The Athlit ram on display at the National

Maritime Museum, Haifa, Israel. Photograph: A. Oron,
2006
In early galley designs, oarsmen had to be sufficiently skilled and were mostly
volunteers, although some slaves were given training in times of war. Later, as
war-galleys became popular in the navies of maritime Europe and new designs
emphasised muscle power over skill, slave labour was appropriated by state
powers for the transportation of military forces (Bass, 1972). During this period
when the rowing assemblage was configured for battle, the production of effort
was coordinated by sovereign states. Just as Foucault (1977) describes the double
impact of sexuality as a disciplinary technology operating at the dual scales of the
individual and the population, biopower was exerted in war-galley rowing on two
levels. On the scale of the individual, technologies of discipline were centred on
the notion of 'body-object articulation' (1977: 153); the precise gestures of the
body in relation to the oar. Whilst on a broader scale of the population,
oarsmen's bodies were coopted and mobilised by the wider political, territorial
and military objectives of the sovereign state, such as in the 'great galley battle'
of Lepanto in 1571 where rowers were 'thrust to the forefront of the clash
between Christianity and Islam' (Konstam, 2002).
2. 2 Geographies of Fitness
Rowing as a competitive sport follows a different historical trajectory to that of

the war-galley. During the late 18th century, rowing was developed from its
recreational origins into a competitive activity by boys at Eton College, and the
first eight-oared racing boat joined the Eton fleet in 1811, appearing in Oxford
some four years later (Bourne, 1925). The rise of competitive rowing in Britain
saw the kinaesthetic practice shift from its reputation as a slow-paced,
recreational activity upon which the only limits to freedom were yielded by
nature itself; towards a disciplined, ordered and controlled technology in which
individuals set their bodies into motion in synchronisation with others, and
where their direction was predetermined and their speed attentively monitored.
These transformations came about during the height of the industrial revolution,
a period of socio-economic transformation in Britain characterised by the
commoditization of labour and the appropriation of workers' time and embodied
capital in exchange for wages. Ability, commitment and the will to succeed came
to define rowing, just as these characteristics were integral to emergent spaces of
capitalism.

The subservience of the individual to the pursuit of progress was also mirrored by
competitive rowing at this time, as the activity of the collective was emphasised
and inscribed through technologies of discipline. The ordered and synchronous
sequence of bodily gestures in the rowing boat foregrounded the plurality of the
assemblage. The coalescence of individuals in the rowing crew amounted to an
additional layer of biopolitical control, and the political agency of the individual
became deflected and dispersed.
The control and discipline of one's body is an integral feature of geographies of

fitness, and the growth of competitive sport in the 20th century emphasised the
importance of 'reflexive technologies of the self' (Ziguras, 2004: 124). The
development of the rowing simulator, or 'ergonometer2' in the 1980s3 signalled a
significant reconfiguration of the kinaesthetic practice. Whereas the war-galley
was built for speed, manoeuvrability and strength, and the racing-boat to
maximise velocity, the rowing machine was designed solely around the human
body as a barometer of power and a measure of effort.
Figure 2 - The Concept2 ergonometer has become the

standardised rowing machine for competitive indoor rowing.
A flywheel is set in motion by the pull of a chain and the
Performance Monitor approximates virtual speeds based on
the speed of rotation and air resistance. www.rowbics.com
2
The term ‘ergonometer’ is derived from the Greek 'ergon' meaning to work, and 'metron', to
measure.
3
Some machines were being used to simulate rowing as long ago as the 1950s, but were not
commercially available. (www.worldrowing.org)
The ergonometer is a machinic complex that has brought the sport to land and
rendered the space of effort a largely solitary experience. It has also extended
accessibility through space and time and proliferated the rowing-action for
bodies across the world. The increased popularity of the practice has led in
recent years to the advent of competitive indoor rowing. The ergonometer, as the
latest configuration of experiential spaces of rowing, foregrounds the individual,
with emphasis on sensation, fitness and self-improvement.
The development of indoor rowing in the 1980s and 1990s coincided with the
development of a culture of fitness in Europe and North America, a shift towards
self-help and a reconceptualisation of health in popular discourse. Ziguras (2004)
shows how the concept of health has changed over time and is perceived no
longer as the absence of illness, but as aspiration towards self-improvement and
a broader notion of well-being. Social scientists have reflected on the notion of
embodied progress, and a number of studies have investigated the hybrid
geographies forged through the coming together of bodies and technologies in
the context of fitness (McCormack, 1999; Spinney, 2006; Broadhurst and
Machon, 2006).
McCormack (1999) focuses on the ontological purity bound up in geographies of

fitness as a feature of hybrid assemblages of bodies and machines. However, as a
study of transhuman ontologies, his research fails to acknowledge the
importance of experiential geographies in the construction of spaces of fitness.
This dissertation builds on McCormack's attention to the ontologies of fitness
with a focus on the emotional and embodied sensations produced in the
immediacy of kinaesthetic practice. Rather than producing an ontological purity,
spaces of effort acquire ontological status through their emergence.
Geographies of fitness are bound up in notions of self-discipline (Chapman,

1997), and the coming together of bodies and machines on the ergonometer is a
contemporary example of 'body-object articulation' (Foucault, 1977). As a
technology of self-discipline, indoor rowing operates at dual scales. Commitment
to a longitudinal process of training is essential to improve performance, and

competitive rowers' training regimes are intense and unforgiving, demanding
'total self-denial and an unrivalled level of sacrifice...' (J. Matthews, Oxford Boat,
2004, quoted in Andrews, 2004). Simultaneously, a meticulous discipline of the
micro-gestures of the body is crucial for energetic efficiency through every stroke.
The assemblage of physical and psychological effort is an integral part of the
disciplinary technology at both scales. Bourne's precise description of an ideal
rowing stroke illustrates the importance of reflexive self-discipline in competitive
rowing:
“...at this instance the weight of the hands and arms on the handle of
the oar is released; there is a prompt, decisive uplift of the hands,
during which, without the loss of a thousandth part of a second, the
action of the body and slide must be reversed by springing back from
the stretcher.” (Bourne, 1925: 95)
There has been a wealth of work demonstrating the role of biopolitics in

'Western modes of power' (Agamben, 1988; Chapman, 1997; McCormack, 1999),
and Thrift (2004) builds on this to examine the operation of disciplinary
technologies on a micro-scale. He describes 'microbiopolitics' as a 'new domain
[of power] carved out the half-second delay' between bodily sensation and
cognitive interpretation (Thrift, 2004: 67). Thrift's concept is informed by the
notion of 'transductive' processes developed by Mackenzie (2002, 2003) from
Simondon's earlier work (1989, cited in Dodge and Kitchin, 2005). As an
operation of biopower, transduction enacts 'ontogenetic modulations' on the
body and is part of the process of ontological emergence and individuation.
2.3 Geographies of emotion and affect
The emerging study of emotions has led to an expansion of the field of research
for human geographers. Anderson and Smith (2001) is widely cited as a point of
departure for two parallel schools of geographical research, the first based on
psychoanalytic, discursive notions of emotional experience (Davidson and
Milligan, 2004; Davidson et al, 2005), and the second developing from a

phenomenological platform, investigating affective experience in ways that try to
delve beneath the limitations of socially and linguistically mediated thought and
expression (Massumi, 2002; McCormack, 2003; O'Tuathail, 2003; Anderson,
2006; Thrift, 2004). There has been some conflict between these developing
discourses of experiential geographies, largely arising out of the different political
foundations of individuals' academic trajectories (Thien, 2005; McCormack,
2006). The attention to sensual geographies and the emergent ontologies of
kinaesthetic practice in this dissertation necessarily draws from literature on
affective geographies, without dismissing the importance of emotional, linguistic
representations. Personal, post-cognitive accounts of kinaesthetic experience are
taken seriously, and employed as artefacts for research.
Affectivity is a sensual ontology informed by embodied encounters and is

detected in that 'small space of time' (Thrift, 2004) before bodily experience is
rendered meaningful and personal through the 'sociolinguistic fixing' performed
by the consciousness (Massumi, 2002: 28). Understandings of embodied
geographies have been energised by an attention to affect; acknowledging the
multi-dimensional nature of human (and transhuman) embodiment. As an
immaterial, relational realm, affectivity is 'felt, but not as a specific sensation, nor
as a specific feeling' (Rubridge, 2006) and has contributed to critiques of 'social
constructionism', which tends to divide discourses of ontology between the
material and the representational (Burkitt, 1999: 2). For McCormack, affect has
the potential to 'open up the ethical to the relational spaces of more-than-
human worlds' (2003: 489) and, enabling insights into spaces of transduction
therefore provides the pivotal tool for research into transhuman assemblages. An
attention to affectivity encourages insights into the emergent ontologies of
geographies of fitness and movement.
2.4 Spaces of affective embodiment
Affective experience is informed by the immediacy of bodily sensation. Research

encounters with geographies of affect therefore foreground the embodied
relations of human-technical assemblages, de-emphasising cognitively mediated

emotions which are termed 'sociolinguistic fixings' in this context (McCormack,
2003). This section focuses on the ways in which embodiment is mediated by
technology, intercorporeality, and is abstracted by the virtual realm.
2.4.1 Totally technical?
The concept of technology is set apart in popular discourse from human

embodiment. As a pure construct of human ingenuity it is defined in opposition
to the 'natural' body. In the rowing assemblage however, the relationship
between the body and technology is the centrepiece. Spaces of effort are
produced through the technological mediation of embodiment.
Rowing as a hybrid assemblage has always involved a balance between the

technical and human aspects of geographies of movement. An example of this
tension is the debate in coaching practice that emerged in the first half of the 20th
century between the school of 'orthodoxy', which sought to instruct the position
of the body through the stroke with the detailed attention of a technology of
discipline (Figure 3) and the Fairbairn method, which focused on the
connectedness of the body and machine, and the 'technical wisdom' produced in
the refinement of the perfect stroke (Ruskin, 1906, Vol 22: 131). Fairbairn's
rowers were encouraged to engage with the motion and fluidity of the boat, and
'allow their bodies to work unconsciously' (Burnell, 1952: 41). The
implementation of this contentious training philosophy played an important role
in foregrounding technological-embodiment in the hybrid assemblage.

Figure 3 - “A drawing showing the movements of
the oarsman and oar in space during the
stroke” (Bourne, 1925)
More recently, research has shown that technicity can be understood as a

primordial realm of embodiment, rather than as 'something merely added on to
some “natural” core of embodied life' (Hansen, 2006: ix). Enlivening Merleau-
Ponty's phenomenology of the body, Hansen argues that the 'fundamental
indifference between the body and the world' is contingent on an understanding
of the 'originary technicity of the human' (2006: ix). He disaggregates the human
into its 'nonoverlapping sensory interfaces' and argues that primordial technicity
exists in the 'gaps' created between these junctures. The ethereal space-times
produced by the transductive relationships of technology and affectivity
constitute an emergent ontology of being with the world, within which spaces of
effort come to life.
Socio-technical kinaesthetic practices experienced by embodied actors are

technically mediated and detectable in the ephemeral realm of affect (Schiller,
2006). The embodied experiences of proprioception in a car, an elevator and
indeed in a rowing boat or on an ergonometer are each encounters with the
entangled assemblage of bodies and technology. Appreciating the banality of
technical embodiment and its pervasiveness in modern society is crucial, and
helps to dispel dualistic notions of 'body and space or body and machine’ (2006:
109 Schiller's italics). By contrast, a more integrated perspective on the
relationship of bodies and technology can be formed through an attention to

De La Pena’s (2003) research also builds on this integrated conception, arguing
that technical embodiment and geographies of fitness are central to the
construction of American cultural identity. The body has become complicit in a
world dominated by technology, and exercise machines since their inception in
the late 19th century have provided the 'intimate means by which we negotiate
the technologies of daily life (2003: xi)', taking on symbolic significance as a
means of interpolation between the body and the 'modern project' (p3).
Studies such as Hansen (2006), Schiller (2006) and De La Pena (2003) have helped
to reconceptualise the relationship between bodies and technology, showing that
technology can be seen as an integral part of experiential, embodied
geographies.
2.4.2 Collective Embodiment
Embodiment is largely understood as bounded to the individual body, and the

notion of collective embodiment appears to be another paradox. To view the
body as a fixed and individuated entity denies the productive nature of
embodiment, which emerges through its being with the world (Mensch, 2001).
As well as requiring the discipline of one's own bodily gestures and 'body-object
articulation', rowing has always demanded an 'amicable concurrence with the
humours4 of other persons' which if achieved, signifies a 'moral and intellectual
rightness' and honour and grace of character (Ruskin, 1906, vol. 22: 131).
Assembled spaces of effort are made up not only by the individual, but by the
degree of synchronicity between rowers and their connectedness to the non-
human elements of the complex (Weiss, 1999).
Collective embodiment may be best understood in relation to affectivity. Hansen

(2006) builds on Simondon's (1989) study of individuation to suggest that
whereas the notion of reality in the realm of 'perception' is informed by the
'interior of the individuated being' and therefore encloses its own ontology,
4
Humours here refers to its use in ancient physiology: the four bodily fluids blood, phlegm, choler, and black bile

affectivity, 'which mediates between the individual and the preindividual, the
personal and the impersonal' is necessarily open to contributions from an
exterior reality (2006: 170). Affective geographies are directly informed by
kinaesthetic sensibilities, and are not bounded to the lived experience of the
individual.
Transindividual affectivity takes on significance in the context of an assemblage.

Whereas the notion of perception appears to achieve ontological cohesion in the
singular, 'affectivity is precisely the experience of one's incongruity with
oneself' (Hansen, 2006: 68). Affect provides the catalyst for 'collective
individuation' (2006: 171), reconfiguring the category of human embodiment so
as to give agency to other bodies and non-human forms. In the rowing
assemblage, intercorporeal relations between each rower, his oar and the water
are interpolated by affectivity. This transductive intervention reconfigures the
assemblage as a product of 'transindividual' embodiment.
2.4.3 Virtual Embodiment
In the last decade, the internet has developed as a medium for indoor rowers to
discuss training regimes, experiences, personal times and from which to draw
motivation. The Concept2 ergonometer (now in its 5th generation) has become
the standardised rowing machine for indoor rowing clubs and competitions
world-wide, not least because of the success of its interactive, personalisable
website concept2.com/co.uk.
Indoor rowing is largely practised by the solitary individual in a gym or at home,

and collective embodiment is therefore de-emphasised in the ergonometer
assemblage. However, rather than remove embodied and affective interaction
from the complex, the development of online rowing communities reconfigures
the nature of embodied interaction and may even increase the occurrence of
face-to-face contact for some participants (Urry, 2004). Cregan (2006) shows that
understandings of the concept of embodiment have changed alongside shifts in
dominant social formations, and that in postmodern societies, embodied

presence is not necessarily obliterated by abstracted levels of interaction, but
reconfigured alongside contemporary transformations of time and space.
Challenging the notion that connections within virtual communities 'grow more
fragile, airy, and ephemeral' (Heim, 1991: 74), Urry describes a 'compulsion to
proximity' between members of online communities, seeking to reinforce their
virtual relationships through copresence in shared spaces. In the Concept2 online
community, immediate intercorporeality and face-to-face interaction remain
integral to the sport. Not only are indoor rowing events important opportunities
for rowers to materialise their virtual relationships, copresence also provides a
test of honour and integrity: the only opportunity to challenge the truthfulness of
another's logged erg times.
Figure 4 - A screenshot from RowPro, a computer program designed for

indoor rowers to simulate races in real-time
'RowPro' (Figure 4) is a computer programme which provides another platform

for virtual connections, facilitating 'simulated copresence' (Urry, 2004: 34) in the
form of temporally coordinated racing events conducted over the internet. In
light of Urry's arguments, Hillis' (1999) claim that the relocation from concrete to
metaphoric space 'assumes that the act of communication is a wholly adequate
substitute for embodied experiential reality' appears limited. Rather than
constituting an entirely new realm of 'self-enclosed cyberian apartness' (Miller
and Slater, 2000: 5), online interactions are grounded in the mundane
configurations of everyday social interactions and influenced by a powerful
'compulsion to proximity'.
2.5 The role of representations
Non-representational theory is an inaptly-named concept which has gained

increasing attention from geographers (Lorimer, 2005; Thrift, 2003a; 2004). Text,
images, dialogue or even emotional thought are commonly viewed as reflective,
objective representations of geographical phenomena, and their own agency is
rarely acknowledged in research projects. Whilst the term 'non-representational'
seems to imply a rejection of performative representations, theorists in
geography do not aim to dispose of such referents, but rather employ and engage
with them as agents of discourse. This dissertation examines the role of
representations as important features of spaces of effort; constructing, extending
and mutating techno-affective assemblages of rowing.
Effort exists in the realm of affectivity but can take on personal, 'sociolinguistic'
meaning through the ways in which it is portrayed (Massumi, 2002).
Representations are the primary means by which rowers construct reflexive
knowledge, and may therefore be considered a part of the assemblage of effort
itself. The forms and significance of representations have changed over time
alongside other transformations of rowing. The advent of indoor rowing for
example, reduced the significance of collective embodiment as an element of the
assemblage, adding a layer of reflexive informational data and instantaneous self-
representation through the addition of the computerised Performance Monitor
(PM). Rather than a technological-abstraction from the embodied experience of
rowing, the PM serves as an additional form of transductive interaction within
the hybrid assemblage (see figure 5).
Representations are the primary means by which experiential geographies are

communicated across time and space, and this dissertation pays close attention
to their role.

Chapter 3: Research Methodology
“How does one give a word to a wordless movement without stifling

the life of that movement? How, when such movement is often below
the cognitive threshold of representational awareness that defines
what is admitted into serious research, does one give a word to a
movement without seeking to represent it?” (McCormack, 2002: 470)
“There is nothing natural at all about writing, even if its supremacy in

the university context is largely unchallenged” (Melrose, 2006: 7)
Investigating the experiential geographies of hybrid spaces of effort demands a

range of methodological approaches that delve beneath the hegemony of
language and the verisimilitude of representation. The coming together of bodies
and technology in the practice of rowing produces kinaesthetic ontologies that
emerge through geographies of movement and effort. Reflecting the emergent
nature of effort, this research is based on a model of ‘co-fabrication’, (Whatmore,
2003: 90), in which the research process is informed by how 'life takes shape and
gains expression in shared experiences, everyday routines, fleeting encounters,
embodied movements, precognitive triggers, practical skills, affective intensities,
enduring urges, unexceptional interactions and sensuous dispositions' (Lorimer,
2005).
Interviews, videotape, participation and journal entries provide the dominant

research methodologies, and are modelled on a range of contemporary studies
into kinaesthetic practice (Wacquant, 2004; Spinney, 2006; McCormack, 1999,
2003), emotional and affective geographies (Katz, 1999; Meth, 2003; Madge and
O'Connor, 2002; Kindon, 2003) and actor-network theory (Latour, 1999; 2005; J.
Law and A. Mol, 2007).
Spaces of effort are ‘more-than-representational’ in the sense that language or

images alone provide inadequate portrayals of their internal, experiential
geographies. Aligning oneself with non-representational theory does not require
the dismissal of representations however, and McCormack argues that instead
they can be 'reanimated as active and affective interventions in a world of
relations and movements' (2005: 122). Diagrams are used as a technique of
representation which on the one hand seems to deflect the immediacy of rowing,
whilst on the other, provides a performative means of knowledge production
(Kesby, 2000; McCormack, 2005).
Acknowledging the agency of representation leads to the conventional distinction

between 'the field' and ‘the text’ being blurred. As opposed to a space ‘out
there’, the field is conceptualised in this research as an adaptive space of co-
fabrication, existing within and across face-to-face encounters, virtual relations,
the collective of the racing crew and the solitary experience of the gym (Massey,
2003). The assumptions and objectives, experiences and interpretations of both
the researcher and those participating are shaped by the mutable and adaptive
field-space.
3.1 Personal logbook / journals
This research is informed by my own participation in a rowing 'eight' training for a

regatta in May 2007, 9 months and 245,000 metres of indoor rowing and
competing in the 'Evesham Golden Mile', an annual event and key fixture in the
diaries of indoor rowers. The Concept2 ergonometer is central to this research,
and is the centrepiece of the investigation of spaces of effort.
Following Wacquant, and facing the same challenge of how to depict a 'practice
that is so intensely corporeal, a culture that is thoroughly kinetic, a universe in
which the most essential is transmitted, acquired, and deployed beneath
language and consciousness' (2004: xi), the participation of my own 'organism,
sensibility, and incarnate intelligence' (2004: viii) became key to understanding
spaces of effort. Research data includes my own journal entries (Wacquant, 2004;
Spinney, 2006) written after each instance of effort as an attempt to externalise
my own transductive experience within the kinaesthetic complex and compare
my experiences over time. Inspired by McCormack's (2002) effort to use language

performatively, my journal entries, written shortly after working-out (although
most have been edited since) tentatively aim to embody something of my
experience.
3.2 Interviews
In addition to autobiographical data, this dissertation builds upon interviews,

emails and exchanges on internet forum pages with both indoor and outdoor
rowers. As part of the process of research, I joined the 'Free Spirits' indoor rowing
club, currently the largest in the world and a source of motivation for many of my
participants selected at the Evesham event. With over 300 members regularly
contributing their 'metres' to the team's collective goals, the community have
nearly completed their virtual return trip to the moon.
At Evesham, an element of randomness was introduced into the selection of my

participants. Restricted by a maze of wires linking eight ergonometers to the
virtual lakes displayed on four flat screen televisions I had a relatively fixed
position from which to film, close enough only to lanes 7 and 8 and therefore
limited to filming contestants only on two ergonometers.
The range of methodologies used in this research reflects the diverse corporeal
economies of rowing. Informal interviews and researcher-participation
highlighted the importance of intercorporeality, whilst communication conducted
primarily online, or mediated by the remove of informational data led to an
appreciation of the virtual and technical make-up of the assemblage. Of the 29
participants, 6 are women, 2 are over 70 and standards vary from world record
holders to relative beginners. Most interaction with my participants after
Evesham primarily occurred by email and through the post, although interviews
were conducted and transcribed over the telephone.
General explanations of why people do what they do are 'extremely suspect as

anything other than an artefact of the inquiry' (Katz, 1999: 8), so in this study
interview questions were centred on specifics, with videotape and training data

providing the focus. Participants were asked to give a sequential narrative of their
own race, describing the space and atmosphere around them and thinking back
to their sensory experience in that moment. These explanatory efforts were then
compared with close attention to the videotape recording of their race.
In an attempt to emphasise the emergent nature of kinaesthetic knowledge as a

product of 'interface cultures', I tried to frame my encounters with my
participants in a way that created a 'space of thoughtfulness' (Thrift, 2003b: 114).
I made efforts to describe the focus of my research in the same way to each
participant, giving insights into the ways participants' used their imagination to
place my study in the context of their personal encounters with rowing.
3.3 Videotape
Videotape provides a frank representation of kinaesthetic activity, enabling

attention to the minute detail of facial expressions and bodily conduct. At
Evesham, the close attention of the video camera seemed to take on its own
agency as a new addition to the racing assemblage and there was evidence of
anomalous results (a false start, two British and one world record, and a personal
best) influenced perhaps by this additional referent. After the event, I sent the
videotape of their race to each participant through the post, keeping a copy for
myself. These parcels of representational data rendered racers' embodied
encounters with effort a shared experience as the referential objects were
neither owned entirely by me or the rowers, but took on meaning only as a
Videotape provides a good source of affective interpolation, depicting 'regions of

individuals' embodied conduct that lie behind and below their own perceptive
reach' (Katz, 1999: 10). However, some important ethical questions are raised by
the use of such a direct means of affective insight. If affect exists in the pre-
personal realm, as the 'experience of one's incongruity with oneself' (Hansen,
2006: 68), then the notion of 'informed consent' may be contested. As an
attempt to overcome this inherently problematic issue within studies of affect,
this research focuses on participants' encounters with, and subsequent

'sociolinguistic fixing[s]' of their own video-representations (Massumi, 2002: 28).
Meaning is extracted from videos through a process of co-fabrication, and
participants' linguistic accounts are attended to in detail so that the researcher-
participant relationship is not punctuated with assumptions (Katz, 1999). Rather
than portray participants as blind to the affective, pre-linguistic and embodied
nature of their own experience, I try to focus on participants' reflexive accounts
in a way that gives agency both to what they do say, as well as what they omit.
3.4 Enrolling representations
Representations shape the way that affective intensity is rendered personal and
meaningful. In drawing out spaces of effort, this dissertation attends to the
power of representations by both delineating the processes of knowledge
production and enrolling representations as a performative element of research.
Latour’s (1999) study provides a methodological guide. Focusing on the ways in
which natural materials are rendered meaningful and knowable in the realm of
science, he argues that on the voyage 'from the referent to the sign', 'there is
neither correspondence, nor gaps, nor even two distinct ontological domains, but
an entirely different phenomenon' which he terms 'circulating reference' (1999:
40, 24). The distance between the 'field' and the text is conceptualised as a
'chain' of 'immutable mobiles'; traversing a relational network within which
components of change are configured by transformations occurring before and
after each stage of abstraction. Latour demonstrates that knowledge is always
citational and self-referential and that the 'text' can never be divorced from the
'field'.
Indoor rowing is an entanglement of embodied conduct, emotional and affective

sensation and technically-mediated representation. The inbuilt Performance
Monitor (PM) in Concept2 machines is the most immediate form of reflexive
representation, and plays a crucial role in the construction of chains of circulating
reference (Figure 5). The PM codifies the immediate performance of the rower
on the ergonometer, informing long term training regimes, diet plans and helping
to frame personal goals. Data is readily quantifiable and transferable, simplifying
the production of informational data and the representation of rowers' own
affective experience. For many of my participants, the Evesham event indicated
the culmination of long training programs and an extensive process of
technically-mediated, embodied introspection. In other words, the single one-
mile race was the final stage in their personal chains of circulating reference.
Figure 5 - The Concept 2 Performance Monitor (4th

generation). A memory card can be inserted into
the PM to transfer data.
The event on 14th July 2007 was a container for a myriad of intercorporeal
encounters and representations for each individual participant, momentarily
sharing their personal spaces of effort with those of others. By linking up the PMs
to a central computer, a virtual boating lake was displayed across four wide-
screen televisions, re-animating the sense of competitive racing for the rowers
and providing an instantaneous informative referent (Figure 6). As well as
supplying an immediate visual representation of the race, animations were also
made available for public download after the event, extending the sphere of
referential representation limitlessly over time and space through the internet.

Figure 6 - A screenshot of the virtual Under 23 Mens race at the 2007 Evesham Golden
Mile. Approaching 4 minutes, the author is some way behind his competitors.
Whilst Evesham represented a kind of pseudo-conclusion and moment for

reflection on rigorous training regimes for participant rowers, it also provided a
significant point of departure for my own research. The event represented both
an end and a beginning for the rowers; by participating in my research they were
continuing down the 'risky intermediary pathway' of representational abstraction
(Latour, 1999: 40) and blurring the bounds of their personal chains of circulating
reference.
3.5 Drawing out diagrams
Interviews, journal entries, videotape and logbook data provide diverse sources
of data in the 'field', but in a study concerned with flows and transduction, the
problem of how to represent one's own findings in 'text' is a delicate issue.
Furthermore, confronted with the difficulties of portraying the hybridity of the
assemblage of effort without foregrounding either emotional interpretation,
physical exertion or empirical data, representing rowing appears problematic.
'Diagrammatic interventions' (McCormack, 2005, Kesby, 2000; Latham and

McCormack, 2004) are performative inscriptions like any other representational
format, but can nevertheless be considered appropriate means of representing
rowing for two reasons. In reducing the depiction of bodies, machines and
information to simple lines, shapes and vectors, they capture a sense of the
abstraction undergone by different agencies in the process of assembling effort.
Kinaesthetic practice is produced through transductive relationships, emerging in
relational spaces of affect, intercorporeal connections and interactions of bodies
and machines. It is itself a kind of diagrammatic expression of corporeality
(McCormack, 2005: 144). Diagrams therefore, are a metaphorical embodiment of
geographies of movement, representing the lines and flows of movement and
effort.
The diagrams featured in chapters 4 and 5 by no means solve the inherent

problems of representation in geographical research. Instead they are tentative
attempts to engage the reader in a mutual process of co-fabrication; to urge
them to challenge - rather than accept - the constructed representations that
help to narrate geographies of movement. Latham claims that whilst diagrams
are designed 'with a serious intent, [they] are also meant to be playful and
engaging... designed to be suggestive of their own partiality' (2003: 2009). As
inexact depictions of rowing, diagrammatic interpretation becomes an important
part of this performative means of representation. Diagrammatic interventions
may therefore be seen as participatory; carried out by author, participant and
reader.

Chapter 4: Moving through spaces of effort
'Why am I doing this?' was a quasi-rhetorical question raised remarkably often in

my encounters with rowers and was often followed by a self-reflective chuckle
and a shrug of the shoulders. That there seems to be no clear answer to this
question is precisely what signals the affective nature of rowing and the failure of
logic and linguistic explanation in documenting the practice.
Figure 7 - Andy Osborn rowing the 'Golden Mile'
Thoughts, logic, affect, bodily sensation, technology, the material and the virtual
all seem to play a part in the chaotic assemblage of rowing. Acknowledging the
implicit inadequacy of language in depicting this affective experience, this section
focuses on the ways in which sensual geographies of movement are experienced
by the rower at the centre of the chaotic assemblage (figure 7), and subsequently
digested and made meaningful through discourses of pain, fitness and triumph.
4.1 Points of Contact
Using all four limbs and generating power through the back and stomach
muscles, rowing engages the entire body. Three points of contact provide the
interface between bodies and technology. The feet placed in specialised trainers
in the boat, or tied down with straps on the ergonometer; the posterior and the
seat, fixed, but of course simultaneously in constant repetitive motion; and

finally, the hands and fingers on the oar or handle. In contrast to Spinney's
emphasis on the importance of the feet (2006, 719), the position of the hands on
the oar or handle is the most engaging transductive interface in rowing,
producing affective experience through the effort of the 'pull' (figure 8).
Figure 8 - The model grip on an oar, as described in detail by G.C.

Bourne (1925: 301)
Transductive interfaces are an essential feature of spaces of effort, drawing

bodies and machines together through the immediacy of corporeal engagement
and producing emergent hybrid ontologies. Figure 9 is a diagrammatic
intervention that aims to 'get at' the transductive experience of rowing by
drawing out spatial and temporal motion alongside personal meanings attached
to the interfaces.

Figure 9 - A diagrammatic interpretation of the three points of contact
4.2 Rhythms and Cycles
The movement of the hands on the ergonometer draws an asymmetric ellipsis

(Figure 9). Regulating and repeating the flows of these forms is essential to the
rhythmical nature of rowing. The relational motion of the three interfaces (shown
in red on Figure 9) sets the assemblage into pendular motion, gradually
coordinating the lines and forces of the assemblage to emphasise bodily
sensation and cyclical kinaesthetic motion. The volume of thoughts, language
and the presence of socially constructed meaning is reduced.
“As the metre-count goes up along with my heart rate and breathing, I
place my focus on my body. Head up tall, lower back stiff and strong,
toes down, push with the legs. As I begin to develop some kind of
tentative rhythm – hindered by my body's urge to move freely outside
the constraining regularity of the stroke, (and part of my mind
exhorting me to stop before I cover enough ground for it to be worth

my while to continue), I begin to become aware of the settling
regularity of my surrounding environment. I am enframed by the
whur of the fan out of sight behind me and the regular 'whooooshish-
shusc' of the rowing machine, the rhythm only penetrated partially by
the more lively sounds of the stereo, considerably less audible here
within my closely assembled set-up than when it first punctured the
silent gym space 10 minutes ago. (Diary entry, 20/6/07)”
Rhythm pervades the assemblage. The sounds of the ergonometer extend

outwards, creating an arc which holds the human-machine in its centre. The
piston-motion infuses the body. Slowly, with gradual submission; breathing,
thinking, and knowing coalesce with the rhythms of kinaesthesia, and a codified
symbiosis envelops the machine-body. Here, the space of effort becomes a space
of affect as mental and physical exertion dissolve in the immediate event-ness of
rowing (Latham, 2003; Latham and Conradson, 2003). In understanding this
emerging ontological state, insights can be gained from alternative cultural and
corporeal economies of effort including those in which practice is defined in
opposition to kinaesthetic movement. Eastern meditative philosophies can
“Our effort needs to become non-effort. So as long as we are as we

are, we call it effort. But when we become really sincere, the self
becomes just the self and the false self disappears. Then it is no
effort. The effort that takes place in emptiness is no effort.” (Rev.
Geographies of kinaesthetic embodiment are aligned with the lines and spaces of
affect, producing affective geographies of movement. As a meditative, almost
transcendental experience, rowing produces geographies of affect which extend
the 'short space of time' between bodily experience and knowledge production
(Thrift, 2004). Diverse actors come together in the immediacy of kinaesthetic
practice to produce networks of effort and experiential geographies which serve
to question conventional ontological distinctions.
Rowing exists in the 'realm [where] there is no subjectivity or objectivity' (Suzuki,

1970), acquiring ontological status through the emergence of transductive flows
within the actor-assemblage. By shedding layers of language, representation and
explanation, the affective practice of rowing resumes its own existential ontology
through its emergent being-in-the-world. As the 'false self disappears', the space
of effort becomes a space of emptiness (Rev. Sunna, n.d.).
4.3 The pain of effort
Pain is an important feature of experiential geographies of rowing and is a means

of connection between the immediacy of affective experience and reflective
interpretation. Pain has been an element of rowing throughout its history and is
linked to the imagined attributes of masculinity, strength and perseverance. John
Ruskin, for example, suggested that the key to rowing beautifully requires the
practice of 'actions under a resolved discipline of the body, involving regulation of
the passions' (1906, vol 22:131), while Bourne's summation of the qualities
required for success in the 'very masculine recreation' is a 'complete disregard of
discomfort and fatigue [and] a real joy in fighting' (1925: 376).
Pain is an integral element of effort, both as a representation of exertion and an

internal barometer of work. Spinney argues that as the most immediate sensual
reference for embodied experience, 'pain is the currency and language' of
kinaesthetic effort (2006: 727). From one perspective, pain is 'simply a piece of
information' (Pich quoted in Le Breton, 2000: 5), a component of the techno-
affective complex of rowing. Alternatively, for Bissell, pain itself is a product of
the hybrid assemblage; not an internal construction of the individual body but
'induced through the relationality between bodies and objects' (2007: 11). Pain
plays an important role in rowing as a means of bringing affective experience to
the fore. For the individual it can be transformative; as the noise of pain
'increasingly takes over his or her immediate field of experience', language and
thoughts are replaced by affective experience (Spinney, 2006: 727).
Tolerating pain and discomfort and even reinterpreting these as some signal of
achievement or pleasure is an integral feature of rowing (Spinney, 2006).

Muscular burn, nauseousness, cramps, stiffness, aching, desperate shortness of
breath and even vomiting are effortful sensibilities felt with immediacy by the
kinaesthetic actant. Affective experience is coded by embodied sensation, and
the effort of kinaesthetic practice serves to bring the rower closer to an
appreciation of their own affectivity through the heightening of physical
sensation. Katz (1999: 16) claims that 'respiration is the most constant proof of
our natural intertwining with the world'. With a reputation as one of the most
aerobically exhausting forms of exercise, rowing can take on transformative
power.
Figure 10 - 'Struggling for breath'. The author 'intertwining with the world'
after a 5k erg.
For many of my participants, the toleration of pain and discomfort take on

intimately felt significance, signaling an achievement of self discipline or even a
symbolic negotiation with death (Le Breton, 2000).
“[The Golden Mile] was... it was very painful. Certainly towards the
end. The anticipation of the pain, has always been one of the big
things that has led to me, I think, under performing. And the fear of
the pain. But that's also part of the drive to do it... to put myself up
against it. And in some ways, symbolically, I do think, certainly in my,

coming up to 40, at the time of life when serious things happen...
people dying... people coming to terms with, that. Erm... it feels even
more... to believe in my own capacity to endure it. And pain, and
fear. So putting myself into situations where that's going to be hard,
to try and transcend it in some way, just to weather it... feels like a
kind of (laughter), you know, some sort of very strange preparation
for... changes, and ultimate changes like death.” Mark Griffiths
(transcription 02/09/07).
Spinney implies that reinterpretations of pain as a masculine endeavour or as a

pleasurable experience are appealing as a kind of attempt at affective articulation
given the 'absence of suitable referents' for communicating affective experience
(2006: 727). Although such performative articulations are limited in their
depictions of affective experience and Spinney's point is valid, linguistic accounts
of the meanings of pain play an important role in rendering kinaesthetic practice
personal.
Without my asking, many of my participants seemed to try to pre-empt my study

by offering up partial answers to the question 'why am I doing this?', citing self-
discipline, weight loss and general health for example. Such explanations - even
those which delved into self-reflections on the psychological aspects of rowing -
seemed to 'amputate' something of their own commitment and devotion to
rowing (Katz, 1999: 6) which for many rowers means several hours of training a
day, or over 3 marathons per week. In some cases, respondents indicated an
awareness of the inadequacy of their explanations with a stifled chuckle, a shrug,
or even a spontaneous anecdote to deflect the need for self-explanation. One
respondent offered the story of a friend who rowed 12k on the morning of his
wedding and brought on pneumonia during his honeymoon by disobeying
doctor's orders not to row.
Rowers' accounts of pain, effort and commitment are themselves crucial

components of the hybrid assemblage, providing meaning and motivation to the
individual and rendering the practice personal. However, in a kinaesthetic activity

where language and logic always sit awkwardly with the immediate reality of
corporeal sensation, partial explanations of 'why do I do this?' signal the
meaninglessness of pain beyond its role as a 'barometer' of progress (Spinney,
2006: 727).

Chapter 5: Rowing through
representations
Rowing is a chaotic actor-assemblage that invokes affective sensibilities and

ontological modulations. Building on non-representational and actor network
theories, this section explores ways in which representations circulate in time and
space to reflect and inform the self-perceptions of indoor rowers before, during
and after kinaesthetic practice. Diagrams are used as an attempt to demonstrate
the partiality of representations and to draw attention to the process of co-
fabrication within the triangular relationship of author, participant and reader.
Latour's (1999) concept of 'circulating reference' provides the methodological
context of attempts to trace the coming together of actor-assemblages, the
unstable role of representations and the internally mutating networks of
exchange surrounding rowing.
5. 1 Re-embodying representations through circulating reference
Representations of rowing exist at a distance from the affective immediacy of

embodied practice. Nevertheless, representations of the practice are numerable,
and hold significance for the hybrid assemblage as it is arranged in time and
space. This section explores the notion of 'circulating reference' by focusing on a
series of representations leading up to and following the Evesham Golden Mile.
Acknowledging the limitations of representations in portraying rowing, video,
images, graphs and self-descriptions are analysed as performative articulations of
affective experience.
An autobiographical narrative is constructed, beginning with my training for a

regatta in Oxford, May 2007, and navigates the process of circulating reference
through to the Evesham Golden Mile and beyond. However, in an attempt to
depict the overlapping and chaotic nature of actor-networks beyond a linear
narration of my own experience of the rowing assemblage, I aim to add
dimensionality to this longitudinal account by supplementing my chain of

circulating reference with an attention to the emergent experience of others. As
such, the concept of circulating reference is developed beyond the linearity of a
'chain'. By taking seriously the importance of research positionality and my
influence on others' actor-assemblages, circulating reference is explored as a
transdimensional process of intertwining actor-networks5.
Representations provide the most direct means by which humans come to

construct meaning in the world. Latour (1999: 43) claims that 'for the world to
become knowable, it must become a laboratory'; a paradoxical space set apart
from the world with the aim of studying the agencies within it. Although
commonly conceived as inactive mirrors to the 'reality' of the world,
representations transform (and perform) reality and construct new meaning
through a process of abstraction and circulating reference. Discursive inscriptions
and diagrammatic depictions cannot be seen as outside reality, reflecting
inwards, but must be interpreted themselves as agents of a constructed,
emergent ontology.
In aiming to 'get at' kinaesthetic experience, representations take on their own

agency, helping to configure rather than simply reflect the practice of rowing.
Through an exploration of representational abstraction and complex flows of
circulating-reference, this research aims to uncover what is lost and what is
gained through representational inscription. Figure 11 is an adaptation of
Latour's (1999: 71) diagrammatic depiction of circulating reference. It attempts
to portray the mutating constitution of the rowing assemblage by mapping the
process of representational abstraction over time and space.
5
The power relations and role of researcher positionality is acknowledged only briefly by Latour in his fieldwork
(p27, p78). I wish to place more emphasis on the interplay of networks of circulating reference.
Figure 11 - What is lost and what is gained in a circulating encounter with
rowing.
5.2 Re-reading rowing: tracing networks of flow
The first part of my 'photo-philosophical account' of circulating reference (Latour,

1999: 24) begins with my inclusion into the College 3rd VIII, three weeks prior to
the 'Summer Eights' rowing regatta. At this stage, my corporeal experience of
rowing alternated between the boat and the gym; cold, unbalanced, jerky, and
hot, sweaty and painful. Representations of the practice at this stage were
configured by interpersonal encounters, and the collective dynamic allowed
shared experiences of effort. Regular exchanges of email provided important
representational abstractions during training; the virtual space of the internet
seemed to create a distance from the corporeality of the gym, where mind could
conquer matter and pain could be reembodied as pleasure in the safety of the
virtual realm.
“>01 May, 2007 Thomas Harvey: '3 x 7 mins wednesday aft.? 5:30?'
>>2 May 2007, at 08:50, Christopher Dodd: 'Was thinking another
crack at the 6x500s, but if you're offering extra pain I'm in. Pain is
good man.'

>>> On 2 May 2007, at 09:41, Ricklef Wohlers wrote:
>>>'pain? sounds like fun...
>>>count me in.
>>>rick'”
Training 6 times a week for the upcoming race, the masculine bravado and
challenge setting motivation in email exchanges at this stage did little to dilute
the power and immediacy of corporeal sensation experienced on the water and
in the gym. During the week of the regatta, the immediacy of kinaesthetic
experience further suppressed the presence of abstracted representations as a
part of the rowing assemblage. With a race each day spaces of effort were
intimately felt through corporeal practice.
Figure 12 – A diagrammatic depiction of the chain of circulating reference

leading up to 'Summer Eights' and beyond.
Figure 12 partially depicts my personal chain of circulating reference contained in
the 4 weeks of training, preparation, racing and celebrations that took place in
April and May 2007. In contrast to Latour's account of the voyage from field to
text along a linear series of transformations with a relatively finite conclusion,
this diagram indicates the role of informational data and textual representation
at intermediate stages of the training process.
In training for the university regatta, my own chain of circulating reference

intersected intimately with those of my rowing crew. Depicting this process as a
self-contained circulating chain is therefore inadequate. Further, although this
particular voyage appeared to come to an end after the post-race celebrations, it
was in fact partially constitutive of another, wider chain of reference that was to
lead me up to and beyond the Evesham indoor rowing event. In light of these
observations, the concept of circulating reference must be expanded to account
for the unstable trajectories of actor-networks, extending chaotically over time
and space.
5.3 Re-circulating reference in three dimensions
Actor networks are essentially unstable entities, internally chaotic and externally
dynamic. Composed of human and nonhuman actors, networks are not fixed in
space or time, and resist graphical representation. Nevertheless, this dissertation
presents the sphere as an alternative depiction of network ontology and an
attempt to move away from Latour’s two-dimensional representation (Figure 11).
Within networks, actors exist both simultaneously at the core and the periphery,
continually engaging and exchanging with other agencies at equal (radial)
distances. A spherical conceptualisation of networks accounts for their highly
mutable and heterogeneous internal dynamics, whilst also retaining a sense of
cohesiveness as an ontological whole. As the example of my own overlapping
networks illustrates however, networks are far from bounded or complete, and

are always extending, re-shaping, dissolving and reforming. Spheres then, are
also limited as diagrammatic depictions of circulating networks of reference.
Figure 13 - A three dimensional representation of circulating reference
As an attempt to portray a spherical conception of network-assemblages, figure

13 expands Latour's two-dimensional depiction of circulating reference (see
Figure 11) by moving away from the linearity of 'successive stages' and sequential
progression of 'phenomena'. In spherical networks, phenomena traverse time
and space in the same mutable way as text or images, blurring the distinction
between reality and representation that is too readily inscribed by Latour. This
diagrammatic intervention aims to add dimensionality to the sequential
narratives of circulating reference (figure 12), accounting for the multiple
influences of diverse, hybrid actants emerging in the process of circulation.

Figure 14 - A diagrammatic representation of overlapping spheres of circulating
reference. Productive of broader referential trajectories and a wider sphere of
circulation, the smaller sphere is fundamentally reconfigured by its new,
constitutive role.
As actor-networks expand and mutate in time and space, incorporating and

dispensing with different forms of agency, internal components are transformed
in the process. Figure 14 demonstrates how an apparently singular sphere of
circulating reference (the actor-networks assembled around the 'Summer Eights'
rowing regatta) can be co-opted in the construction of another sphere with
broader trajectories. As actor-networks develop and transform, the existing
components of agency – which operate relationally within spheres – undergo
their own transformations, so that the entire relational network takes on new
form. The post regatta celebrations, for example, is a component of agency
whose position within the 'Summer Eights' network is not only constituted by the
circulating reference surrounding the regatta, but is destabilised by the cooption
of new agencies after the event.
Although the sphere of circulating reference constructed around the 'Summer

Eights' regatta did not come to end following the post-race celebrations, this
period signalled a significant reconfiguration of my personal rowing assemblage

as I began to train for the Evesham Golden Mile. The experience of
intercorporeality subsided with the absence of water outings, replaced by the
more solitary experience of rowing on the ergonometer, and a technically and
virtually mediated sense of affective experience. Over the next 6 weeks I was to
row 125,000 meters (or from Oxford to Birmingham) in the solitary virtuality of
the gym.
For many of my participants, 6 weeks and 125,000 metres was laughable

preparation for one of the most high profile events on the indoor rowing
calendar. Evesham was Steve Smith's first event having only taken up the sport 11
months previously at the age of 42. In discussing his preparation for the race,
Steve described the 16 week, 750,000 metre plan nonchalantly: “Training-wise, I
followed the concept 2 plan, which was all pretty easy as long as you know what
your heart rate bands are...” (pers. comm. 05/09/07). Meanwhile Mark Griffiths
was following his own plan in the months before the race 'basically doing 10ks a
day [since the new year]' (pers. comm. 03/09/07). These understated
descriptions of intense corporeal experience not only provide an insight into the
level of commitment and long-term effort put into training, but also hint at the
failure of language and dialogue as means of representing the hybrid assemblage.

Figure 15 - A diagrammatic interpretation of Mark Griffiths' participation in the Evesham
Golden Mile
The Evesham event was Mark Griffiths' first for 5 years, and, sacrificing rowing for
other time commitments, would be his last. Figure 15 depicts him competing in
Evesham Golden mile, where he finished 2nd by 0.1 seconds in a competitive field
of 19. The diagrammatic intervention draws together actual and virtual space,
linguistic reflections on anticipation and post-race analysis, as well as images
from the video of his race. Drawing together immediate representations of

Marks' race and his reflective accounts, this diagram attempts to blur the clarity
of fixed space-times and signal the overlapping, chaotic and relational nature of
time and space produced within spherical networks.
While diagrams of rowing have the power to '[do] more than resemble', these
performative representations do not go so far as to take the place of fixed reality,
nor replace the corporeality of the 'original situation' (Latour, 1999: 67). Far from
disposing of preceding representations and without aiming to construct some
new form of reality, the diagram 'replaces without replacing anything. It
summarizes without being able to substitute completely for what it has gathered'
(1999: 67). In spheres of circulating reference the diagram is a transductive
operator, 'reveal[ing] the connections between bodies and various types of
abstraction' (McCormack, pers. comm.) and binding representations together
along the passage from past, to present, to future.
Figure 16 - A co-fabricated diagram of the different emotional and physical features of Mark
Griffith's Evesham Race
Figure 16 attempts to delve further into the complex sphere of circulating

reference constructed around Mark Griffiths' 'Golden Mile'. This graphical

representation of a range of emotional and physical experiences during the race
is a product of co-fabrication by the author and participant; a materialisation of
overlapping actor-networks. Produced several weeks after the race, it signals an
extension and abstraction of Griffiths' sphere of circulating reference well beyond
the day itself. This diagram is a referential, productive, and performative
component of mutable spheres of reference, referring to the immediate sensual
experience of the race, extending the spherical-network of reference and
producing diagrammatic lines of flow.
5.4 Blind Rowing: representational amputation or reembodied associations?
The various representations of indoor rowing are both a product of, and a means
to inform the human actor in the hybrid assemblage. The body, the mind, the
Performance Monitor, the pull of the chain and the cycle of the fan come
together to produce a myriad of sensual information and cognitive data that is at
once citational and inspirational. Representations may be said to take on their
own agency in of spaces of effort. In aiming to explore the significance of
different forms of representation, I requested 15 of my participants row a 20
minute 'blind' piece towards the end of our research encounter, in which they
would turn the Performance Monitor away from their line of sight, and row
without this crucial provider of instantaneous information until an alarm would
Making this request towards the 'end' of my research, the blind row provided an
unexpected (quasi)conclusion to the multiple spheres of circulating reference
captured in this study. Previously, participation in my research had led to a
proliferation of information and a broadening of the personal spheres of
circulating reference for my respondents. The blind row indicated a significant
amputation of representation and therefore a reconfiguration of the experiential
spaces of rowing which had come to be mediated by digital information.

Figure 17 - Vision is an essential element of the assemblage of
effort. 'Blind' rowing reconfigures experiential geographies of
effort. Participant: H. Frykman.
Responses to the experience were varied. All participants overestimated the

speed of their row, indicating that the instantaneous information provided by the
Performance Monitor has a motivating impact, diluting the immediacy of pain
and effort, which are re-amplified in the absence of reflexive data. This
interpretation was confirmed by one of the most experienced rowers, who
notably kept her gaze unfalteringly on the Performance Monitor throughout her
“If the monitor is reading a really great score I think that's

motivating... it helps to pick you up, to a point. Even if I'm feeling
really bad, then well this is going to be a really good score so I can
push a little bit more. I think when I've had really good races, like
when I got the world-record for my age and I know that in those... it
hurt but you don't remember the pain.. it was more' hey look I'm
doing it' you keep telling yourself 'look I'm on great pace, great pace,
I'll keep going”. (J. Vanblom, pers. comm. 5/9/07)
Despite the chaotic assemblage of representations present and immediate during

the race at Evesham, all of my participants cited the Performance Monitor as the
most significant point of visual focus and mental concentration. Its display
universal to all Concept2 machines, it symbolises familiarity to rowers, as the
closest and most personally oriented referent. Unsurprisingly then, some
participants undertaking the 'blind row' described feelings of discomfort and
emptiness, compelling one rower to actively suppress the raw feeling of
kinaesthetic practice by introducing a subsidiary means of sensual abstraction:
“As expected I found it very odd, distinct feeling of not liking it very
much at the beginning. Without the TV it would have been very
boring, un-enjoyable and probably erratic. Thankfully the TV gave me
something else to focus on and I just rowed and waited for the time
to wind down” (S. Smith, pers. comm. 11/9/07)
Resisting the encouragement to use language to elaborate on their intimate

experience that was implicitly generated in the research encounter, this response
embodies the awkwardness and inadequacy of language in depicting a complex
assemblage of emotions and affective experience; reduced to 'I just rowed and
waited...'
The common experience of 'giving something over to the monitor' was felt and
interpreted in different ways. The range of responses and reactions to the
severed experience of the 'blind row' indicate the multiple and varied
perspectives held by rowers regarding the more-than-human assemblage in
which they are the centrepiece. For some, rowing without instantaneous
reflexive data was uncomfortable and distracting, whilst for others, the absence
of techno-informational mediation seemed to reconnect the reflective and pre-
cognitive spheres of experience, stripping away the primary means of
instantaneous representation that serves to abstract, or even dilute the

immediacy of kinaesthetic practice. 'Blind' rowing could take on a liberating, even
transcendental power.
“I found its easier when you actually see the figures coming up to go
fast.. then when you've got no reference point... It was a different
experience and a more physical one, and I enjoyed it more. I could
sort of just get into the body. Because I do use exercise just as a kind
of meditation and a sort of relaxing my mind... which doesn't relax
that much when I'm constantly looking at the monitors. There's
something much more liberating about just being with the exercise
and just noticing what's happening.” (M. Griffiths, pers. comm.
3/9/07)
Here, Griffiths makes a distinction reminiscent of meditative philosophies,

between rowing undertaken with intention, and the transcendental experience of
kinaesthetic practice 'without any gaining idea' (McLeod, n.d.). Data and statistics
provide motivation for success and physical achievement and many rowers cite
the difficulties of rowing without ideas of progression: “I find that I can't train
without having some target time to aim at” (A. Breeze, pers. comm. 16/9/07). By
constrast, others describe the importance of immediate corporeal sensation, a
state often difficult to achieve and hindered by the introduction of specific and
personal goals: “To truly want to be in the moment, in the experience. You can't
take it away, however hard you try... it becomes a distraction when you try and
impose more things on it.” (M. Griffiths, pers. comm. 3/9/07). To argue that
either experience of kinaesthetic practice is in some way more meaningful or
'true' would be to deny the beautifully anarchic nature of actor-assemblages:
unstable and emergent in time and space.
Rowing is a more-than-human assemblage made up of a variety of forms, forces,

ideas and representations. The arrangements of these assembled qualities,
chaotically and individually aligned according to the spherical relations of actor-
networks and circulating reference combine multifariously (as opposed to
plurally) to render spaces of effort meaningful and knowable.

Chapter 6 - Conclusions
This dissertation is a kind of assemblage itself. It draws together discourses of

affectivity, bodies and technology, actor-network and non-representational
theories in an empirical context. Whereas many conceptually challenging
discourses are dealt with in isolation in contemporary human geography, this
research deals with different conceptual trajectories alongside one another.
6.1 Writing about rowing
The task of depicting an activity which by its own nature avoids linguistic
explanation has raised some important methodological challenges. Non-
representational and actor-network theories have provided methodological and
conceptual insights, facilitating the careful reinscription of conventional research
methods such as interviews. Diagrams have been used as performative
interventions; abstracting, modelling and extending chaotic encounters with
rowing. Although diagrams are a form of abstraction from the immediacy of
corporeal experience, this dissertation has demonstrated that abstraction does
not have to be seen at a distance from lived experience. Rowing itself is produced
by the lines, flows and circles of kinaesthetic activity, indicating its own
diagrammatic ontology.
6.2 Geographies of experience
Experiential geographies of effort are influenced by the immediacy of embodied

conduct and the personal meanings attributed to kinaesthetic practice. Held in
the centre of an assemblage of sounds, movements, thoughts and physical
sensations, the kinaesthetic actor experiences geographies of movement
affectively, through a process of ontological emergence. Affective sensibilities
codify the experiential geographies of rowing in ways that representations and
explanation fail to describe. Acknowledging the diverse make-up of kinaesthetic
embodiment has enabled a conception of rowing as a hybrid assemblage, and
this dissertation has de-emphasised the human body as the paradigm space of
geographies of movement, instead focusing on transductive processes between
bodies and and other agencies.
6.3 Circulating representations
Representations are an integral feature of actor-assemblages, and the ways that

images, text or even emotional thought circulate over time and space influence
how experiential geographies are communicated. By looking closely at the
process of circulating reference in the context of rowing, the instability and
mutability of relational flows emerged in this study. Representations and
phenomena intertwine over time and space, and the experiential geographies of
different actors overlap. As such, this dissertation attempted to move away from
the linear concept of a self-referential 'chain', proposing a spherical model of
actor-networks which accounted for the flows and motions of representations.
6.4 The theme of circularity
Figure 18– The 'enso' is a spiritual symbol in

zen philosophy representing
interconnectedness and one-ness. This symbol
may be seen as a diagrammatic representation
of effort.

This research has shown that experiential geographies are characterised by
ontological emergence, but also that circularity is an integral feature of techno-
kinaesthetic assemblages of effort (Figure 18). This is embodied by the physical
and symbolic assemblage of the ergonometer. Operated by the elliptical pull of
the handle and chain rotating a circular fan, the indoor rower pours effort and
exertion into the assemblage only to dismount in the same location as the start.
Outdoor rowing is rarely different: although racing boats are designed to travel
with speed and direction, 'outings' on the water are ended with the boat being
returned to its frame.
“I pulled splendidly. I got well into a steady rhythmical swing. I put my

arms, and my legs, and my back into it. I set myself a good, quick,
dashing stroke, and worked in really grand style. My two friends said
it was a pleasure to watch me. At the end of five minutes, I thought
we ought to be pretty near the weir, and I looked up. We were under
the bridge, in exactly the same spot that we were when I began... I
had been grinding away like mad to keep the boat stuck still under
that bridge.” (Jerome K. Jerome, 1889: 77)
In an intrinsically circular kinaesthetic practice, the imposition of linearity

produces discordant results. In terms of logic or explanation, questioning why
people row inevitably produces unsatisfactory, even untruthful responses. Rowers
may find motivation in challenges, goals or milestones, (some crews have even
rowed across the Atlantic, www.atlanticrowingrace.co.uk) but ultimately their
effort avoids explanation along the lines of logic. Steven Redgrave, the world's
most successful Olympic rower famously said following his fourth Gold Medal
victory in 1996: "If anyone ever sees me in a boat again they have my permission
to shoot me", before going on to win a fifth Gold medal in 2000. Clearly, there is
distance between the lines of logic and the circular constitution of effort. After
reaching the pinnacle of the sport's hierarchy by winning a gold medal, Redgrave
found himself in the position from which he started: training for a race,
reproducing effort, and extending his spheres of circulating reference.

Although this dissertation has to come to an end, spaces of effort continue to
circulate amongst the flows and motions of kinaesthetic assemblages.
“We must make some effort, but we must forget ourselves in the
effort we make. In this realm there is no subjectivity or objectivity.
Our mind is just calm, without even any awareness. In this
unawareness, every effort and every idea and thought will vanish. So
it is necessary for us to encourage ourselves and to make an effort up
to the last moment, when all effort disappears” (Suzuki, 1970: 37).

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Participants:
Kelly Barritt
Mavis Surridge
Chris Adams
Roger Bangay
Mark Griffiths
Steve Smith
Andy Osborn
Christina Nugent-Lee
Chris Barker
Joan Van-Blom
Helen Frykman
Joe Keating
Graham Benton
Rita-Anne Monde
Dr. Robert B. Jr. Noble
Eddie Fletcher
George Weekes
Gautam Bidd
Alexander Breeze
Alexander Klein
Piotr Orlowski
Max Leeb
Sam Egan
Leanne Abrams
Sandy Smith
Ross McAdam
Tom Etminan
Scott Douglas
Gerard Braak

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Spaces of effort: geographies

Three central research questions are dealt with:

The limitations of conventional research methodologies in the context of

University of Oxford Candidate Number 44801

University of Oxford Candidate Number 44801

Spaces of effort: geographies of a kinaesthetic assemblage 2

Chapter 2: Literature Review.............................................................................8

Chapter 3: Research Methodology...................................................................21

Chapter 4: Moving through spaces of effort.....................................................29

Chapter 5: Rowing through representations.....................................................37

Spaces of effort: geographies of a kinaesthetic assemblage 3

Spaces of effort: geographies of a kinaesthetic assemblage 4

The seed of this research was an interest in geographies of movement. I began

Spaces of effort: geographies of a kinaesthetic assemblage 5

Effort is described in popular discourse as a primarily human engagement of

Contemporary research has focused on the relationship between bodies and

1.1 Key research questions

− How are experiential geographies communicated over time and space?

Spaces of effort: geographies of a kinaesthetic assemblage 7

This review situates rowing in the context of geographical discourse, focusing on

2.1 Discipline of Effort

Effective team rowing demands a symmetry of forms and a coalescence of forces.

Figure 1 - The Athlit ram on display at the National

Rowing as a competitive sport follows a different historical trajectory to that of

Spaces of effort: geographies of a kinaesthetic assemblage 10

The control and discipline of one's body is an integral feature of geographies of

Figure 2 - The Concept2 ergonometer has become the

McCormack (1999) focuses on the ontological purity bound up in geographies of

Geographies of fitness are bound up in notions of self-discipline (Chapman,

Spaces of effort: geographies of a kinaesthetic assemblage 12

There has been a wealth of work demonstrating the role of biopolitics in

2.3 Geographies of emotion and affect

Spaces of effort: geographies of a kinaesthetic assemblage 13

Affectivity is a sensual ontology informed by embodied encounters and is

2.4 Spaces of affective embodiment

Affective experience is informed by the immediacy of bodily sensation. Research

Spaces of effort: geographies of a kinaesthetic assemblage 14

2.4.1 Totally technical?

The concept of technology is set apart in popular discourse from human

Rowing as a hybrid assemblage has always involved a balance between the

Spaces of effort: geographies of a kinaesthetic assemblage 15

More recently, research has shown that technicity can be understood as a

Socio-technical kinaesthetic practices experienced by embodied actors are

Spaces of effort: geographies of a kinaesthetic assemblage 16

2.4.2 Collective Embodiment

Embodiment is largely understood as bounded to the individual body, and the

Collective embodiment may be best understood in relation to affectivity. Hansen

Spaces of effort: geographies of a kinaesthetic assemblage 17

Transindividual affectivity takes on significance in the context of an assemblage.

2.4.3 Virtual Embodiment

Indoor rowing is largely practised by the solitary individual in a gym or at home,

Spaces of effort: geographies of a kinaesthetic assemblage 18

Figure 4 - A screenshot from RowPro, a computer program designed for

'RowPro' (Figure 4) is a computer programme which provides another platform

2.5 The role of representations

Non-representational theory is an inaptly-named concept which has gained

Representations are the primary means by which experiential geographies are

Spaces of effort: geographies of a kinaesthetic assemblage 20

“How does one give a word to a wordless movement without stifling

“There is nothing natural at all about writing, even if its supremacy in

Investigating the experiential geographies of hybrid spaces of effort demands a

Interviews, videotape, participation and journal entries provide the dominant

Spaces of effort are ‘more-than-representational’ in the sense that language or

Acknowledging the agency of representation leads to the conventional distinction