Affective Encounters and Spatial Engagements

Pedagogies of Desire in e-Learning

Abstract

How do students engage in e-learning environments? What are the affective encounters and spatial engagements of students in these environments? These questions are considered by viewing affectivity and spatial engagements in terms of hybridity of the subject-object (human- material) embrace to consider not only people but also the vitality of objects and their materiality. Two poststructuralist transdisciplinary practice-focused frameworks are used: 1) the material semiotic lens of Actor-Network Theory (ANT) (Latour, 2005; Law, 2008a, 2008b) which accents material agency, and 2) Non-Representational Theory (Thrift 2008) which draws on Deleuzean notions (Deleuze & Guattari 1988) to consider affectivity as "charged" (Navaro-Yashin, 2009) intensities. This paper draws on student data from a larger ethnographic study of four fully online postgraduate subjects at an Australian university to trace participant e-learning experiences. By exploring the salience of student affective encounters and spatial engagements through three contrasting vignettes, I open up questions to address 'pedagogies of desire' (Zembylas, 2007a, 2007b, 2007c) to explore how subjectivities and desires are (per)formed in a 'more than human way' and how places of (e-)learning are "affectively charged" (Leander, Phillips & Taylor, 2010, p. 336, original emphasis). These insights can open up new ways to (re)think e-learning design and pedagogy, in theory and in practice.