Title: Sites of tension: an exploration of affective and material mechanisms of belonging
Abstract: Based on my autoethnographic work on intimacy, this article problematizes tensions
inherent to the multiplicity of belongings in everyday life. Interrogating the concept of belonging
from the perspective of cultural, queer and feminist studies, I am interested in ‘experience’ as a
site where tensions peculiar to belonging are expressed and can be analysed. I take a performative
view on belonging, understood as processes of identification (as suggested by Bell), to study in
detail its affective mechanisms through its articulation with the concepts of affective economy
(Ahmed) and investment (Winnicott). These two concepts draw attention to the circulation of
affect and to the attribution of value to some objects, varying according to and reproducing social
differences and ways of life. More precisely, I look at how: interpersonal intimacy mobilizes
collective fantasies and normative mechanisms of belonging; the self is located in relation to
various milieus; belonging becomes invested in specific objects. I focus especially on the
materialization of belonging in objects, in which it is invested, like a house, and their articulation
to forms of intimacy, like the couple, and to other social differences, like class.
Introduction: performative attachments
The last years’ public discourses on intimacy express hopes, fears, and tensions regarding its
transformations. For example, innovation in assisted human reproduction technology generates
hopes to have children as well as fears and ethical considerations; marriage is subject to
controversies; worries are expressed about the instability of relationships; friendship ‘substitute’
for family; Internet gives rise to fears about privacy and self-exposure on online social networks.
Intimate relationships are often taken for granted or seen as ‘natural,’ which encourages a
perception of some practices as helpful or harmful to those relationships. However,
conceptualizing intimacy as performed through reiterative practices (as I do, following Butler,
Kinship, and Pidduck) shifts emphasis to the daily practices that constitute intimacy and the
mechanisms that make it seem ‘natural.’ Forms of intimacy, like the couple, the family, or
friendship, are important to questions of belonging because normative practices of intimacy are
central to nations and communities (Berlant, Weeks and al).
Intimacy, in the humanities and social sciences, usually relates to ideas about couples, emotional
proximity and the communication of thoughts and feelings between partners (Weeks and al,
Illouz, Giddens). I am interested in normative feelings and thoughts, seeing intimacy as a
question of attachment between norms, feelings and thoughts. Berlant (Intimacy) is seen as the
first and one of the main thinkers to propose a queer concept of intimacy (Rambukkana). From
this point of view, lived intimacy is related to norms and ideals through (collective) fantasies that
make some lives seem more intelligible than others. Intimacy, conceived as ‘mobile processes of
attachment’ (Berlant 4) means that interpersonal attachment is intrinsically related to attachment
to ideals, to a way of life. This way of life refers to the concept of belonging in that it is
constituted by dynamics of inclusion and exclusion of specific intimate practices. In the context
of my research, in Quebec (Canada), we are familiar with narratives like ‘we fell in love, built a
family and lived happily ever after’ or even like ‘I realized that I was gay and I came out,’ but
other ways of life are less familiar, sometimes provoking expressions of surprise or disgust in
front of phenomenon like lifelong celibacy, polyamori or staying in the closet.
Berlant suggests that feelings and thoughts are associated to intimacy through normative
mechanisms. I think of those normative mechanisms as an assemblage of conventional practices
1
that put into form mobile processes of attachment, in order that they take the form of ‘family,’
‘friendship,’ ‘couple,’ etc. These forms are invested in by subjects and this investment makes
them endure and transform. The practices that put processes of attachment into form can be
institutional, cultural, commercial and/or communicational; they are conventional practices that
make possible a relationship to be recognized as friendship, as family, etc. These normative
mechanisms also have the effect to denigrate ‘minor’ intimacies while giving value to ‘major’
intimacies like long-term relationships, heterosexual relationships, etc. These mechanisms
operate through the repetition of practices, as suggested by the concept of performativity.
Bell, in her introduction to the issue of Theory, Culture and Society on belonging, reminds its
readers of the performative nature of belonging and puts emphasis on the desire to be and on
modes of affiliation. Identity makes itself present through the citation of norms shared by a
group. A performative view on belonging forces us to reflect upon the relationship between
different forms of intimacy, social differences and the position of subjects in a group, a
community, a society or a nation that advantages some of those forms to the detriment of others.
The concept of performativity designates the reiterative practice by which processes of
materialization stabilizes over time: ‘performativity must be understood not as a singular or
deliberate act, but, rather, as the reiterative and citational practice by which discourse produces
the effects that it names.’ (Butler, Bodies, 2) Materialization is accomplished through processes
of identification in which norms and ideals are assumed by subjects. Norms are constituted
through repetitive practices accomplished in relation to ideals. However, those ideals are never
perfectly accomplished; their reiteration implies some alteration.
In adopting a performative approach, positioning oneself ‘outside’ relations of power is
untenable: Butler’s conception of the subject implies that all subjects take part in relations of
power. Additionally, interrogating the concept of belonging from the perspective of cultural,
queer and feminist studies, I am interested in ‘experience’ as a site where tensions peculiar to
belonging are expressed and can be analysed. Thus, it is relevant to complement this perspective
with a ‘situated’ position in research, as argued by Adams and Jones, who take up the idea of
making the personal political through autoethnography: ‘The autoethnographic means sharing
politicized, practical, and cultural stories that resonate with others and motivating these others to
share theirs; bearing witness, together, to possibilities wrought in telling.’ (111) Taking into
account ‘lived experiences’ of subjects, including mine, and fully recognizing that we take part in
power relations, allows elaborating a complex critical study. I do not distance myself from
“questionable” practices; instead, I explore normative thoughts and feelings (often my own)
through a multiplicity of intimate practices.
In the next parts of this article, I problematize tensions inherent to the multiplicity of belongings
in everyday life. I take a performative view on belonging to study in detail its affective
mechanisms through its articulation with the concepts of affective economy (Ahmed) and
investment (Winnicott). Thus, I make a theoretical proposition, drawing on my fieldwork. More
precisely, I look at how: interpersonal intimacy mobilizes collective fantasies and normative
mechanisms of belonging; the self is located in relation to various milieus; belonging becomes
invested in specific objects.
Autoethnography: the self in relation to ‘milieus’ of belonging
2
While starting my research, I draw a map of my intimate relationships. The map is not meant to
be an ‘accurate’ or ‘fix’ representation of those relationships. For instance, some people were
difficult to fit into only one network, names in blue represent my friends’ partners with whom I
am more or less friends myself, and some people were left out. The map provides a quick glance
at my position among different groups and relationships. It includes friendship groups, my family
and a few persons to whom I am related in a dyadic relationship (who do not belong to a specific
group), plus my cat. It includes various forms of intimacy (friendship, (ex-)flat-sharing and
family) and other markers of belonging that appeared in my initial mapping: places (Sorel1),
sexualities (a ‘lesbian’ group of friends), work (university). These markers are sometimes
intersecting or in contradiction. I take them into account to understand how the specificity of
belonging varies according to each group, such that, for example, friendship will not be
accomplished in the same way with different people, because of internal dynamics and of the
combination of these markers.
As Haraway suggests in Situated Knowledges, it is not the fact that knowledge is based on
‘experience’ that makes it relevant; it is the fact that it is situated. She discusses feminist
epistemology and the legitimacy of knowledge in regard to the notion of objectivity and she
criticizes universalist understandings of objectivity. According to her, ‘situated knowledges’
signifies feminist objectivity. To be ‘situated’ relates to the social positioning of the self (or the
“moi” on my map) and fits rather well with conceptions of writing as becoming and partial truth
associated with autoethnography (Watt). Along this text, I position myself in different ways,
putting emphasis on some aspects of my identity or my relationships, for example as single or
Montrealer. The writing ‘I’ is thus an ‘I’ forged in situated experience; to position oneself
provides a specific point of view:
The moral is simple: only partial perspective promises objective vision. All Western
cultural narratives about objectivity are allegories of the ideologies governing the
relations of what we call mind and body, distance and responsibility. Feminist
objectivity is about limited location and situated knowledge, not about transcendence
1
Sorel is the small town where I come from. I currently live in Montreal (and have been for the
last 8 years), the metropolis of Quebec, in Canada.
3
and splitting of subject and object. It allows us to become answerable for what we
learn how to see. (Haraway 583)
The ‘I’ writing autoethnography puts emphasis on the power to write of the self as taking part in
social, cultural, historical processes and troubles the idea of a subject who researches an object:
‘Rather than a unique focus on participants, the researcher’s subjectivity is brought into the
study—a de/centering that troubles researcher as knower. (…) culture is not only the context in
which an unstable self operates, culture is also in the self’ (Watt 29). Ethnography traditionally
makes invisible its writing processes: ‘…traditional ethnographic practices assume that readers
can be taken into an actual world to witness for themselves cultural knowledge as it is “lived
through the subjectivities of its inhabitants” (p.229)’ (Watt 41, quoting Britzman). However, this
traditional position has been questioned:
There can be no holistic ethnographic account because of the partiality of language,
because “of what cannot be said precisely because of what is said, and of the
impossible difference within what is said, what is intended, what is signified, what is
repressed, what is taken, and what remains” (p.230) (Watt 42, quoting Britzman).
Drawing on Aoki, Clifford and Britzman, Watt suggests that ethnography can only mobilize
fictions and partial truths. She suggests this reading of the term ‘auto/ethno/graphy’: in
‘auto/ETHNO/graphy,’ an object of study exists and is awaiting to be discovered and revealed
according to a conception of language as a tool for the representation of what is already there but
hidden; in ‘auto/ethno/GRAPHY,’ ‘ethno’ becomes an effect of writing; in
‘AUTO/ethno/graphy,’ the self is constituted in relation to culture, the researcher writes about
this self/culture and reproduces them through language (through narrative techniques, style,
setting, historical and social circumstances). Writing the self and writing a culture, or writing a
‘milieu’, go hand in hand. The ‘I’ is sometimes indistinct from a group and expressed in terms of
‘we.’ The cohabiting of personal stories and theoretical or critical concepts encourages a
proliferation of genres, voices, partial truths, and takes into account the fragmentation of the self,
the multiplicity of one’s belongings, therefore recognizing one’s many voices and affiliations
(Richardson, Watt).
However, I do not think experience to be only a product of writing or discourse. I think there are
experiential processes that are lived and writing practices try to revive these moments to make
them resonate on other levels. I systematically note my observations on intimacy and belonging
in my field diary, a basic tool for autoethnography (Rondeau). This diary is not the ‘rough’
material that I would later analyse (in the way analysis often follows data collection); it is rather a
site for introspection and description of my daily life (as well as the lives of my friends and
relatives) which often connects with my research. I also interview my friends and relatives,
whether individually or in group.2
I also use (partial) fiction as a writing strategy in order to reduce risks in revealing oneself, to
protect my friends, relatives, and our relationships. A ‘dramatized’ presentation of the issues
raised during the interviews accentuates ethical considerations, asking questions like: How do I
2
Every relationship calls for slightly different methods. For example, a dyadic friendship calls
for an individual interview, whereas a group of friends lend itself to a group interview. Questions
are always modified for the specific person they are made for, and interviews include other
methods like asking participants to draw a map of their relationships.
4
attribute speech? What are people going to think of the roles attributed to them? (Richardson). I
combine or cut across my observations and the material collected during the interviews, like
concerns about buying a house, in order to turn them into a single story.
So, given that a lot of my friends bought a house recently, I made it my first topic of interview.
Maude: Sophie, I was wondering, what do you think of when you look at, I don’t know if you
still have it there, when you look at the photo of your house that you put as the background on
your phone?
Sophie: What I think about when I see the house?
Maude: Yes. Because it’s like, you put it somewhere you can always see it, on your phone.
Sophie: Yes, yyeeesss. Actually it is because it was something new when we bought it and I was
really happy. It is something positive. It shows that we are moving forward, because I had the
impression that we were not moving forward, my boyfriend and me, because we didn’t live
together. It is going to be 3 years that we are together but we never shared a home. So, for me
the house was exactly the proof that our relationship is steady, enough to go live in a house,
which is even better than an apartment. Both of us are very happy, it really is our biggest move,
yes, actually it is THE big move to do with someone iiiii… For me, it really is something
positive, so that’s why I put the picture there, to always remind myself ‘oh yes it’s true’. So, for
example, if I am having a bad day at work, I take my phone and I’m like ‘oh yes I am going to
have a house with my boyfriend’. So I’m happy.
I am a little bit envious of her, because to be in a relationship makes it possible for her to have this, a
house, even if it is in the suburbs. At the same time, I am worried for her; I think it is a big move, as
she said, to take a 25-years mortgage with someone with whom she never lived before. Especially
since, as she said, the only thing that she is going to pay for (beside her share of mortgage) is a
microwave.
Sophie: We have many things to buy, furniture and all, it’s my boyfriend who is going to buy
those things. And we are having fun talking about it:
Sophie: I will have only bought a microwave, and what’s will happen the day you are
going to have enough of me…?
Frédéric: I will put you on the street with your microwave ahahah!
Sophie: Ahah. It’s something that worries me, that he is paying for a lot of stuff and I am afraid
to feel, well I don’t think, I don’t think that I feel that this house is not really mine, only that, if
at some point our relationship is not going so well anymore, he is going to have everything and
not much will be left for me. Because I will have only bought a microwave.
Maude: Hm yes.
Sophie: But well, we talked about it and he would like us to sign documents with the help of a
notary in order to make everything clear and fair for me, so I don’t end up with nothing.
Anyway, so this is one thing I am a little worried about.
Maude: Yes of course, yes. Everything’s going to be fine.
Sophie: Everything’s going to be fine.
Belonging(s): sites of tension
Me
Jonathan, Philippe
Steve, Mathieu, Éric
gaps
feelings of uneasiness
Babies
Myriam, Anne
Alice, Jessie, Eve
Mélodie
5
I share specific markers of belonging (place, work, sexuality) with some groups and not with
others. Their varying ways of life affect my feelings of belonging with them. In Sorel, issues of
class and gender make me feel partly out of step with this group of friends. Contrary to my other
friends, my friends from Sorel fit pretty well into a model of nuclear family life, including an
important division between men and women (in the presentation of self, chores and other
activities), and into a way of life between that of working-class and middle-class. Sorel is a
region where factories are important employers, particularly for men, but where many jobs also
require some professional qualifications. Stacey criticized the class bias that informs the
perception of working classes as the last bastion of nuclear family and related gender roles. In the
case of Sorel, the gap between my friendship with them and mixed feelings of belonging comes
from the weakening of the friendship over time (that became less and less close). This
transformation is related to my social mobility (higher education, moving to a metropolis) and to
taking part in a diversity of intimate/sexual milieus.3 In the case of Sophie and her relationship
with her boyfriend, great value is given to leaving the city once one has completed his degree to
settle down in the suburbs for its ‘tranquillity,’ ‘security,’ and for slightly cheaper prices on
dwellings it has to offer. Whereas I can be critical of her settling down in the suburbs, I envy her
status as owner.
As we can see with these two examples, belonging to some groups makes difficult belonging to
other groups at the same time and positions the self partly outside these milieus. The tensions that
are felt regarding multiple belongings open the concept of belonging to notions like the desire to
belong, ambivalence and (dis)affiliation. They all relate to the idea of outside belonging
(Probyn). The multiplicity of belongings, partial belonging to a group, or desires to belong that
instil movement between identities, position one partly outside the milieus to which one belongs.
Probyn emphasizes the production of singular outside belongings by placing them along with
heterotopic spaces, where heterotopia designates the coexistence of the materiality of different
forms of modes of belonging.
In this framework, belonging is addressed through the performativity of identity. Fortier studied
the articulation of terrains of belonging, focusing on the Italian presence in Britain. Her work
brings focus on how belonging is materialized through ‘possessions’: ‘Belongings refers to both
'possessions' and appartenance. That is, practices of group identity are about manufacturing
cultural and historical belongings which mark out terrains of commonality that delineate the
politics and social dynamics of 'fitting in'.’ (Fortier 42) The idea of material ‘possessions,’
through which one cites the norms of a group, brings me to address the objects that materialize
forms of intimacy. It seems relevant to analyse the normativity of feelings and thoughts through
the psychical investments of subjects in some practices and objects in the performance of
intimacy. The concept of affective economy (Ahmed) allows to think that affects are attached to
places (like a city), objects (like a lover or a house), and forms of intimacy (like the couple) and
interpellate subjects to ‘fit in.’
The concept of affective economy connects feelings of belonging to dynamics of inclusion and
exclusion. Paying attention to emotions allows for a better understanding of how social practices
endure and preserve their importance: ‘Attention to emotions allows us to address the question of
3
Even if this is a simplification; for example, I was never really comfortable with these gender
roles.
6
how subjects become invested in particular structures such that their demise is felt as a kind of
living death.’ (Ahmed 12, original emphasis) The concept of affective economy does not consist
of a psychological approach to emotions (emotions are not personal, do not belong to
individuals). Instead, it consists of an approach in which affects and emotions4 circulate on
different levels (intersubjective and in public discourse, for example) and attach themselves to
objects. An object can be an identity, a person, a form of intimacy, a chair, a computer. Ahmed
also puts emphasis on the accumulation of affective value through the circulation of objects, their
association to one another, in order that some objects are invested with much more passion than
others. Belonging to a way of life is materialized through objects invested more or less intensely
in different milieus. I wish to expand the question of attachment between affects and material
objects related to intimacy, like the house.
The materiality of psychical investment was conceptualized by Winnicott with the notion of
transitional objects, objects possessed during childhood that occupy an intermediary area of
experience between internal and external reality. He describes a transitional object as an object
that is soft (like a cuddly blanket) and whose importance in the life of the child persists and acts
as a defence against anxiety. This object is loved with passion and progressively disinvested; it
loses its significant character over time and transitional phenomenon become diffuse, expand in
intermediary areas between internal psychic reality and the external world, which Winnicott
addresses as culture. He presupposes that the acceptation of reality is never totally achieved, that
no human subject is liberated from the tension created by the relation between internal and
external reality. He suggests that this tension is released in intermediary areas of experience that
are not contested like arts and religion.
His work does not propose a complex concept of ‘culture’ (he refers to it as arts and spirituality),
which seems nonetheless necessary in order to address transitional objects and phenomenon in
adulthood. In the field of cultural studies, the concept of culture was problematized, drawing on
anthropology, as ‘way of life’ (Williams), without distinguishing between high and low Culture
and including arts as well as any other collective practice. This field was also interested in
subcultures and power relations between dominant cultures and subcultures. The idea of culture
as ‘way of life’ comes back to ideas of subjects investing forms of intimacy and belonging
through objects or possessions. A way of life reveals itself in particular objects (like the familial
house) invested as such because they are attached to fantasies (surrounding the nuclear family,
for example).
However, culture is a problematic concept, mainly because the idea of a culture is hard to justify5
and the study of power relations or subcultures might stay caught in a non-productive opposition
of oppression/resistance. In my research, it is more relevant to address markers of belonging
(sexuality, place, work) as ‘milieus.’ The notion of a milieu allows inscribing various practices at
once in a dominant culture (heteronormative, for instance) and in subcultures (LGBT, academic,
urban, etc.). Grossberg refers to belonging through the ways people are attached and attach
themselves to an assemblage of practices and events that he calls a ‘milieu.’ Milieus are relatively
open to the transformation of practices and these practices can mobilize any object. I think that
every milieu incites to invest objects in different ways. The familial house can thus take part in
Ahmed does not distinguish between ‘affect’ and ‘emotion,’ instead understanding both as
leaving an impression on subjects.
5
Who’s culture? What are its limits?
4
7
fantasies of success in a milieu like Sorel or the suburbs (accomplishment of one’s love
relationship, or of one’s nuclear family), in fantasies of acceptance in heteronormative culture for
gay couples (gay and lesbian couples enact a ‘familial’ way of life), can be devoid of meaning or
even perceived negatively.
Belonging is embodied in specific objects, often objects that one can possess, purchase, like a
house, invested as such because they are attached to ideals, like long-standing relationships.
Sophie associates ‘positive’ feelings to their purchase. They are felt as personal feelings, but they
can only be felt because collectively, positive affects are attached to a normative sequence of
events that constitute ‘having a life,’ like buying a house. In investing the ‘couple’ form of
intimacy, it is the norm to live together, at least in her milieu. This is what was bugging her, as if
her boyfriend and she were late on the conventional path of intimacy because they did not already
live together after being in a relationship for three years. She suggests that an apartment would
have been acceptable. The house thus appears at this point as interchangeable with an apartment.
However, a house, in the context of the promotion of homeownership6, is ‘better.’ In associating
themselves to this important intimate object, they recognize themselves as a long-standing
couple. Sophie thinks it is important that she contributes to buy furniture and other objects, the
‘possessions’ that make her home; she apprehends to feel like she is not at home in their house if
she does not buy ‘stuff’ and to lose ‘everything’ if her relationship ends.
Conclusion
This article problematized belonging to various milieus (like the suburbs) through intimate
practices and tensions created by the multiplicity of belongings. It put emphasis on the
materialization of belonging through objects (belongings) in which it is invested, like the house,
and their articulation to forms of intimacy and other social differences, like class. It would be
possible to analyse in more depth questions of hetero-, or even homo-normativity and class
pointed to throughout the text, but my purpose, in this article, was to articulate a few concepts
together. Therefore, I explored the affective-material aspect of belonging, understood as
processes of identification to groups of people and attachment to a set of practices, with the help
of two other concepts: affective economy and investment. These concepts address how affect
circulate and how value is attributed to various objects according to each milieu.
The articulation of the lived experience of subjects on one hand, and the investment in material
objects and the performativity of belonging (troubling the idea of a stable subject) on the other
hand, questions the subject/object distinction in a ‘post’-human framework that takes into
account the materiality of subjects and that suggests that intimacy is done through an assemblage
of objects. This article mobilized literature on experience, which implies a quite stable human
self at its centre (in autoethnography) as well as literature on belonging and affect which implies
unstable subjects and objects (or subject-objects) assembled to form intimate relationships. This
questions how one can address experience/self in a post-human framework. Human subjects in
intimate relationships are somehow inseparable not only from other human subjects-objects but
also from a series of objects in which their intimacy is invested. Here, experience is not that of a
6
In Quebec and other Canadian provinces, like in many other places, a high proportion of the
population have high debts. Mortgage rates are low and payments are spread over many years.
(Protegez-vous and ACEF de l’Est de Montreal)
8
stable and rational self, but that of subjects-objects in relation to other subjects-objects and
objects.
Works cited
Adams, Tony E. and Stacey H. Jones. ‘Telling Stories: Reflexivity, Queer Theory, and
Autoethnography.’ Cultural Studies <=> Critical Methodologies, 11.2 (2011): 108-116.
Ahmed, Sara. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. New York: Routledge, 2004.
Bell, Vikki. ‘Performativity and Belonging. An Introduction.’ Theory, Culture & Society 16.2
(1999): 1-10.
Berlant, Lauren. ‘Intimacy: A Special Issue.’ Intimacy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2000, 1-8.
boyd, danah. ‘Friends, Friendsters, and Top 8: Writing Community into Being on Social Network
Sites.’ First Monday 11.12 (2006), online:
http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1418/1336, retrieved
on December 1, 2011.
Butler, Judith. Bodies that Matter. On the discursive limits of 'sex'. New York et London:
Routledge, 1993.
Butler, Judith. ‘Is Kinship Always Already Heterosexual?’ Differences: A Journal of Feminist
Cultural Studies 13.1 (2002): 14-44.
Fortier, Anne-Marie. ‘Re-Membering Places and the Performance of Belonging(s).’ Theory,
Culture & Society 16.2 (1999): 41-64.
Frissen, Val A. J. ‘ICTs in the Rush Hour of Life.’ The Information Society 16.1 (2000): 65-75.
Giddens, Anthony. La transformation de l'intimité. Sexualité, amour et érotisme dans les sociétés
modernes. Paris: Hachette, 1992.
Grossberg, Lawrence. ‘History, Imagination and the Politics of Belonging: Between the Death
and the Fear of History.’ Without Guarantees. In Honour of Stuart Hall. G. Gilroy, A.
McRobbie (eds.), London: Verso, 2000, 148-164.
Haraway, Donna. ‘Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of
Partial Perspective.’ Feminist Studies 14.3 (1988): 575-599.
Illouz, Eva. Les sentiments du capitalisme. Paris: Seuil, 2006.
Pidduck, Julianne. ‘Queer Kinship and Ambivalence.’ GLQ 15.3 (2009): 441-468.
Probyn, Elspeth. ‘Introduction: Approximating Belonging.’ Outside Belongings. New York:
Routledge, 1996, 1-15.
Protégez-vous and ACEF de l’Est de Montréal. ‘Est-ce le moment d’acheter une maison?’
Protégez-vous.ca. Online January 2012: http://www.protegez-vous.ca/maison-etenvironnement/guide-pratique-acheter-une-maison/est-ce-le-moment-acheter-maison.html,
retrieved on August 6, 2012.
9
Rambukkana, Nathan. Non-Monogamies and the Space of Discourse : Theorizing the
Intersections of Non/Monogamy and Intimate Priviledge in the Public Sphere. Doctoral thesis,
Communication Studies, Montreal: Concordia University, 2010.
Richardson, Lauren. ‘Writing: A Method of Inquiry ». Collecting and Interpreting Qualitative
Materials.’ N. K. Denzin and Y. S. Lincoln. Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore:
Sage, 2008, 473-499.
Rondeau, Karine. L’autoethnographie : une quête de sens réflexive et conscientisée au cœur de la
construction identitaire », Recherches qualitatives, 30.2 (2011): 48-70.
Stacey, Judith. Brave New Families: Stories of domestic upheaval in late twentieth century
America. Basic Books, 1991.
Watt, Diane P. Juxtaposing sonare and videre midst curricular spaces: Negotiating Muslim,
female identities in the discursive spaces of schooling and visual media cultures. Doctoral
thesis, Ottawa: Ottawa University, 2011.
Weeks, Jeffrey, Brian Heaphy and Catherine Donovan. Same Sex Intimacies. Families of choice
and other life experiments. London and New York: Routledge, 2001.
Williams, Richard. ‘Culture’ Keywords, New York: Oxford University Press, 1983, 87-93.
Winnicott, Donald W. De la pédiatrie à la psychanalyse. Paris: Payot, 1969.
10