Voice in the Agentic Assemblage
Lisa A. Mazzei, Alecia Y. Jackson · 2024
In this chapter, 1 we think with Bennett&s;s (2010b) concept of the agentic assemblage to position the discursive artifacts of qualitative inquiry as always already material and the material as an always already discursive construction. That is, we move toward positing voice in qualitative educational research as a thing that is entangled with other things in an assemblage ( Deleuze & Guattari, 1987 ) that acts with an agential force ( Bennett, 2010b ). We do this by (re)configuring voice: we refuse the primacy of voice as simply spoken words emanating from a conscious subject and instead place voice within the material and discursive knots and intensities of the assemblage. Thus, we do not “calibrate” voice to the human, nor do we attend to voice as “either pure cause or pure effect” ( Barad, 2007 , p. 136) via human intentionality. Rather, we account for voice as a material- discursive practice that is inseparable from all elements (human and non-human) in an assemblage.