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“It’s like lifting the power”: Powerlifting, digital gendered
subjectivities, and the politics of multiplicity
Abstract
Powerlifting, a competitive strength-based sport, offers a rich and compelling site for
investigating the digital mediation of gendered subjectivities. The substantive implications of
feminist knowledge as interventions in physical cultures are well documented. This article
seeks to extend the onto-epistemological precepts of a Feminist New Materialist framework
to further a generative analysis of women’s physically active moving bodies. The digital
lifting journeys of ten women and their lived, everyday experiences of becoming-strong
comprise the sample with the intent of understanding something different about the
micropolitics of self-world transformations entangled within moving-desiring practices.
Hence, we argue in this article that the ephemerality of digital traces embedded within
networked based platforms such as Instagram have the potential to change the ‘Face’ of
strength-based sport with significant implications for expanding the cultural imaginary
surrounding sportswomen more broadly.
Key words: Powerlifting, gendered subjectivities, Feminist New Materialism, Instagram
Introduction:
This research seeks to examine the physical-digital culture of Powerlifting, a competitive
strength-based sport. Whilst there is a significant gap in the literature directly exploring the
sport of Powerlifting, alternative-sporting femininities and emerging strength-based identity
projects are highlighted within three interconnecting categories: (1) The sportswoman’s body;
(2) “Fitspo” (a social media hashtag); and (3) Cultural geographies of fitness. The literature
review renders transparent a significant gap in research pertaining to women’s weightlifting
as a competitive sport, coupled with a need for more nuanced investigations into the
embodiment of women’s physically active and muscular bodies. The potential to think
through women’s moving bodies differently from previous studies has led to a call for more
multidimensional understandings of the body in sport and society in order to create socially
important knowledge about these relationships (Thorpe 2014). Moreover, as gendered
subjectivities are enacted amid a highly complex socio-political climate their re-presentation
demands flexible and creative theory-method designs (Ringrose et al., 2018, p. 1). Feminist
Physical Cultural studies is an emerging interdisciplinary field that explores the “disruptive
possibilities of feminist interventions into physical cultures” and “advocates creative
articulations rather than essentializing re-presentations of gender difference” (Author B et al.,
2019b, p. 2). Hence, with the intent of providing a critical understanding of situated
knowledges of becoming-strong, this project investigates processes of subjectification that
materialize through a feminist new materialist framework (hereafter FNM).
The performativity of gender within physical cultures is a central concern of this framework
and draws upon diverse methodologies to answer the call for more nuanced and “fleshy”
explorations of women’s movement lives. Therefore, a central aim of this research is to show
how sport cannot be thought of as an institution separate and above cultural conditions but
instead, as entangled with everyday (gender) normalizing practices. Hence the research
questions that attenuate our thinking are as follows: how are systems of power (re)produced
and negotiated between embodied identity projects and the physical cultural space(s) and
practice(s) of Power Lifting? And, how do we understand the changed political function of
the sporting body within digital media landscapes?
In the first section, we present and explain the conceptual framework underpinning the
project, followed by our methodology. We then analyze the experiences of becoming-strong
and the complexities entangled within the gender-sport-media nexus. Finally, the closing
discussion engages the research questions in response to the main findings and argues that
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theory-method approaches grounded in feminist new materialism offers a generative
framework to explore how gendered inequalities are “felt.”
Interdisciplinary encounters
The FNM framework attenuates the ways in which, not only discursive practices shape
worlds, but also how practices of inclusion and exclusion can occur from the relations in-
between material and affective elements (Daya, 2019, p. 361). Although there are a number
of diverse trajectories grouped under the rubric of “new materialism” they have at their core,
a key concern in reconfiguring the relationality of power and resistance towards a politics of
multiplicity, a pertinent step towards nurturing alternative possibilities to live differently
(Coffey, 2019, p. 13). Whilst shifting from qualitative to post-qualitative methodologies is
not clear cut nor without challenges, we argue in favor of the “productive uncertainties” (St.
Pierre, 2017, p. 1087) such modes of inquiry provide. Specifically, we draw on Walker
(2014, p. 47) and argue that the collaborative lines of flight between Barad’s (2003) agential
realism and the radical ontology of a Deleuze-Guattarian (1987) philosophy contribute
towards research practices that facilitate generative capacities of re-presentation.
Feminist New Materialism
The “new” of new materialism should not be read as a departure point from the legacy of
previous feminist thought (Davis, 2014, p. 62). However, what is “new” about these
conceptualizations is an ontological-epistemological shift centralizing around moving
analysis beyond neat categorizations and coherent narratives (St. Pierre, 2017). This is an
important theoretical shift and Deleuze-Guattarian inspired research projects seek to shift the
location of sexuality away from the individual body (Fox & Alldred, 2013, p. 77). That is,
that “objects” of inquiry such as the individual body are not a separate entity and cannot be
thought of as having an essential nature. Rather the subject is prism-like and permeable,
acting and acted upon by a constant processual flow of relations (Fox & Alldred, 2015a, p.
401). Braidotti (2002, p. 28) also invites us to rethink the potential contradictory material-
discursive effects by rethinking an ontology of the social and self-hood in terms of power-
relations as overlapping variables “… cut across any monolithic understanding of the
subject.” Hence, rejecting notions of a singular, unified and humanist subject, enables a more
generative analysis of complex phenomena (Fullagar et al., 2019b, p. 2). Facilitating such an
onto-epistemological shift also allows for a reconfiguration of agency beyond
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empowered/disempowered discourse, problematizing other binaristic modes of representation
used to represent subjects such as “woman” (Fox & Alldred, 2013, p. 774).
A departure point for feminist scholarship has been the critique of the “human” subject as
masculine by default and positioned at the center of meaning (Author B et al., 2018, p. 39).
Or rather as Author B et al. (2018, p. 38) state, “the ‘posts’ have informed feminist thinking
through questions that seek to reveal the assumptions (biological essentialism, social
constructionism, human exceptionalism) that have informed knowing (epistemology) and
being (ontology) ‘women’”. One of the central problematics of how women’s bodies have
been previously conceptualized is owing to the impasse of humanist qualitative methods that
constitute gender through binary oppositions, “that work through hierarchical power relations
to inferiorize the ‘other’ in relation to the privileged first term; masculine/feminine,
mind/body, reason/emotion; culture/nature” (Author B et al., 2018, p. 39). Moreover, the
edifice of Enlightenment values that have regulated theory and research, “such as belief in
reason and progress, unmediated access to truth, and the agency of the centred, humanist
self” (MacLure, 2011, p. 998) have limited our understandings of social, cultural and
personal transformation.
The conceptualization of the mind and body as two distinct and separate constructs is the
legacy of traditional political theory taking the “body, its passions, its forms and function as
virtually given” (Gatens, 1996, p. 57). Consequentially the body and emotions were relegated
to the periphery of social inquiry until only recently (Griffen, 2007, p. 2). The tide has turned
against this division between natural and social sciences, with the body being foregrounded in
social theory as the materialization of self-expression (Griffen, 2007, p. 2). The “linguistic
turn” witnessed renewed interest in the body (for example, Griffen, 2007, p. 2) , however,
broad-brush post-structuralist theoretical insights do falter when the trying to analyze the
dynamic affective activity of life worlds (Wetherell, 2012, p. 20). Whilst some of the
fundamental concepts of discourse analysis remain pivotal in analyzing affective practices,
methodological endeavors need to apprehend conceptualizations of the body as more than
merely a passive surface inscribed by “texts” (Griffen, 2007, p. 2). Or rather, as Lemmings &
Brooks (2016, p. 3) succinctly surmise, “if the linguistic turn represents our acknowledgment
that language helps to constitute reality, then an affective turn implies that emotions have a
similarly fundamental role in human experience”. The move to ground social inquiry within
experiences of embodiment is pervasive across disciplines due to the increasing recognition
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that processes of subjectivity are inextricably linked to the ways in which social identity is
experienced via the body through time and space (Francombe-Webb & Toffoletti, 2017, p.
48). As the cultural importance of the body has gained significance researchers have turned to
theorizations of affect.
The “Turn to Affect”
The “affective turn” was catalyzed by an inclination to better understand the micropolitics of
the “live surface” that is the “intensities, textures and sensations through which everyday life
is experienced” (Coleman & Ringrose, 2013, p. 2). Affect is inherently difficult to define as
there is “no pure or somehow originary state for affect” (Gregg & Seigworth, 2010, p. 1).
Whilst there are competing conceptualizations of what affect is, they have at their heart “a
desire to account for the more than symbolic aspects of the body” (Author B et al., 2018, p. 5,
italics in the original) or rather things which are not easily captured in language. However
emphasis is not so much on what affect is but what it does, that is, “the capacities to act and
be acted upon” (Author B et al., 2018, p. 1), addressing the call for more attention to the
bodily sensations and the meaningful knowledge gained, “from such a pre-discursive, feeling,
physically active body” (Gregg & Seigworth, 2009, p. 1). Therefore, it is beneficial to
facilitate research designs which orient inquiry towards what affect can “do” rather than what
it “is”.
In reconfiguring the relationship between subjectivity and embodiment as a flow of relational
forces the impasse of traditional conceptualizations of agency is superseded by affect to
represent a change (physical, emotional, psychological or social) of state of an entity and its
capacities within an assemblage of relations (Fox & Alldred, 2013, p. 773). Deleuze and
Guattari (1987, p. 259) elucidate flows of affect as either molecular, “relations which
combine in ways that mean nothing other than the desire they produce” or as molar
assemblages, which are, “stable forms, unifying, structuring and proceeding by means of
large aggregates.” Within an assemblage, affects flow “rhizomically,” “branching and
reversing flows, coalescing and rupturing” (Fox & Alldred, 2013, p. 773). Leading to more
adequate accounts of diverse bodies such as the sportswoman’s body, as well as the ability to
conceptualize social action, which not only resists but also (re)produces dominant social
structures. The capacity of the body to affect relations within molecular assemblages
“reterritorialize” by opening up “… possibilities for what bodies can do and desire” and
presents the possibility to produce a line of flight from a stable or molar identity (Fox &
Alldred, 2013, p. 773). The constraining power, which also resides in affective flows can be
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extrapolated within these molar assemblages which ‘reterritorialize’ and what bodies “can”
and “cannot do” (Fox & Alldred, 2013, p. 773). Hence extending the Deleuzian-Guattarian
concepts of “deterritorialization” and “reterritorialization” offers a compelling framework for
rethinking how gender has been made “knowable.” The goal is not a “resolution” of
contradictory experiences of difference embedded within relational flows of power but a
stance, which “can accommodate multiple, not simply dichotomously sexed bodies” (Gatens,
1996, p. 56).
The connective thread between new materialism and feminism “is the ‘doing’ of feminism as
generative knowledge practice” (Author B et al., 2019b, p. 1). For example, antidepressant
use prior to McLeod’s (2014) analysis was primarily investigated through qualitative inquiry
using humanist research practices, which conceptualized participants as agentic, rational
individuals. In an effort to move beyond a “politics of blame,” McLeod (2014) deploys the
assemblage concept throughout each stage of an empirical research project, describing the
strategy as orientating to assembling demonstrating how decentering the human as the focus
of inquiry can illuminate the ways in which the presence of nonhuman objects are enabled as
agents in the research process.
At its simplest, post-qualitative inquiry is about “… eliminating binaries, such as
theory/methods,” and “transgressing what has been normed” in qualitative research so that
methodological approaches align with post-theories (van Ingen, 2016, p. 474). Berbary and
Boles (2014) demonstrated that a mixed mode approach combining traditional and creative
methods can bring new life to research “… in ways that trouble traditional expectations” (p.
402). An exemplar of empirical research which grapples with a re-thinking of humanist
traditions central to qualitative inquiry is the study conducted by Author B and colleague
(2015) exploring affective intensities of pain and pleasure in Roller Derby. As part of a
“feminist re-imagining of the sport” the authors analysis clearly establishes a more complex
relation to pain and pleasure beyond reductionist binaristic representations of experience
(Author B and colleague, 2015, p. 483). The disruption and complication of traditional
expectations surrounding the social dynamics of pain are only made knowable through the
authors reflexive commitment, “not to present texts as sources of interpretive ‘truth’ but
instead to consider them as constituting a derby assemblage” (Author B and colleague, 2015,
p. 487). They achieve this through using a mixed-modality approach combining “online sites,
interview transcripts and auto-ethnographic writing” (Author B and colleague, 2015, p. 487).
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Analyses such as these can accommodate nuance and difference through bringing the
material-discursive-affective relations of the human and non-human into focus. By avoiding
metanarratives and facilitating a mode of representation beyond a classificatory approach,
substantive insights may be gained. Reconfiguring agential potential beyond empowered or
(dis)empowered conceptualizations enables a politics of multiplicity. As an open-ended
program for social change this way of thinking through concepts creates new imagined
possibilities and importantly lends itself towards constructive methods of engaging social-
material change (Jackson & Mazzei, 2013). One of the challenges in operationalizing FNM
crystallizes in the negotiation between postpositivist structural expectations and emphasis on
fluidity characteristic of post-qualitative inquiry (Berbary & Boles, 2014). However, as has
been demonstrated, greater reflexivity from researchers as entangled within the research
assemblage can re-think qualitative inquiry to better account for the micropolitics of the
research-assemblage and its effects on the knowledge produced.
Methods: “Lifting” Research
A departure point from other research engaging social networking texts is the move towards a
more nuanced line of inquiry through recruiting participants as “co-analysts” (Robards &
Lincoln, 2017, p. 715). Robards & Lincoln (2017) deploy a “scroll-back methodology,”
combining an interview approach with the materiality of images, through having participants
“scroll back” through the archival Facebook Timeline. They argue that such a method “brings
to life” the “digital trace” (p. 715) inscribed through the use of social media sites. Although
the authors do not explicitly align themselves within a new materialist framework, it would
be reasonable to suggest that such a method might mechanize a FNM onto-epistemology in
its capacity to generate representations of the “everyday, mundane, and critical moments
brought forth as ‘matterings’” (Robards & Lincoln, 2017, p. 716). Hence, we combine this
method with semi-structured interviews as a way of introducing the materiality of the smart
phone, as well as the moving body (archived through Instagram), into the research encounter.
Moreover, positioning the interviewees as co-analysts recruits the participants into the
process of analyzing their own digital traces and disclosure practices. Such a step may work
to decenter the privileged position of researcher/researched. This mixed-method approach
aligns with Ahmed et al’s. (2014) call towards an ethics of address and takes response-ability
for the boundaries created by the research encounter. We argue that engaging semi-structured
interviews with a scroll-back methodology is a pathway “to ‘better’ encounter others, of
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speaking and of hearing, and of responding to difference and disagreement” (Ahmed et al.,
2014, p. 3).
Powerlifting competitions involve three attempts of one repetition across the squat, bench
press and deadlift. Lifters are placed into weight classes divided by age and experience levels.
The sample selected was diverse in terms of sporting ability; experience ranged from a
minimum of twelve months to five years of training in powerlifting as a competitive sport.
Level and frequency of competition also varied, from novice to international competitors.
The ages of participants ranged from 22 to 42 years of age and all participants worked across
a variety of industries (see table 1 below). The lifters were located mainly in Brisbane
(Queensland, Australia), as well with individuals located in Melbourne (Victoria, Australia),
Wagga (NSW, Australia). One Skype interview was conducted internationally with a
participant from Bangkok (Thailand). Initial interviews went for approximately 15 minutes
before the “scroll-back” methodology was introduced after having established a rapport with
the participant to ensure they were comfortable being recruited as a co-analyst. To extend
feminist post-structural insights about the value of reflexive and embodied research beyond
the interview encounter open communication was maintained with participants through the
first author’s own personal Instagram account to foster reflexive engagement with the
participants over the course of the project should they chose to do so (Francombe, 2013, p.
258). In the spirit of the “diffractive researcher” (Barad, 2003) and in order to better attenuate
to the ways in which the specificity of the strenuous body-work involved in becoming-strong
materializes through pre-discursive and embodied knowledge the first author also engaged in
a powerlifting training program for at least once a week for one hour at varying times over
the course of the year 2019.
List here (Table 1)
Analysis
In attempting to decenter some of the representational traps within humanistic qualitative
inquiry and in order to critique the complexities entangled within the gender-sport nexus,
analysis followed Jackson & Mazzei (2013) demonstration of thinking with-through theory to
facilitate a reading of data that is “both within and against interpretivism” (Jackson &
Mazzei, 2013, p. 261). In working against conventional coding, the authors deploy “plugging
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in,” a conceptual tool drawn from Deleuze and Guattari (1987), which operationalizes
analysis as a process that positions data and theory as machines with, “potential to interrupt
and transform other machines” (2013, p. 261). Drawing on the conceptual tool of “plugging
one text into another” aligns also with MacLure’s (2013) call towards alternative modes of
engaging with data that are not bound by the strictures of coding. However, caution must be
exercised in suggesting that coding as an analytical practice be abandoned altogether, rather
that in order to move social analysis beyond representationalist paradigms requires the
recognition of another logic, the logic of assemblage, in which, “objects, utterances,
institutions, bodies and fragments relate in ‘unholy mixture’ (Lecercle, 2002, p. 53) rather
than orderly hierarchy” (MacLure, 2013, p. 165). In order to surface this mixed analysis
requires flexible and creative-critical theory-methods. Hence, MacLure (2013, p. 181) orients
coding towards…
[an] experiment with order and disorder, in which provisional and partial taxonomies
are formed, but are always subject to change and metamorphosis, as new connections
spark among words, bodies, objects and ideas.
A Deleuzo-Guattarian figuration of the assemblage also works as an apt framework to
incorporate the compilation of images provided by the participants. These images have been
assembled into a “research feed” (see image 2 below). Separate images will be also be
embedded throughout the following sections alongside theoretical concepts. Rather than rely
solely on interpretive modalities this mock ‘feed’ is incorporated to bolster the presence of
the affective realm of experience within the analysis to think through and with the images in
an attempt to come to know something different about how identities are lived, felt and
practiced (Ahmed et al., 2014, p. 15). The research feed mimics the flow of images, “likes,”
and affective intensities chosen by participants as significant in their personal feed, and hence
provides a way to read their images through and with the other participants. Rather than
analyzing images in isolation, the research feed provides a literal assemblage that is both
familiar and unfamiliar at once.
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List here (Figure 1Image 1: Research Assemblage: Becoming-Strong)
DIGITAL-PHYSICAL-SPORTING-CULTURE(S)
The sustained use of Instagram forms has been conceptualized as both private and public
archives. Pybus (2015, p. 239) considers the nature of these archives as an “important space
of interpretation and contestation that has the power to make meaning through its ability to
privilege certain discourse over others.” Cvetkovich (2003) also argues that photo sharing
practices produce a networked collective of cultural texts as repositories of feelings and
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emotions. However, Cvetkovich establishes that the emotional economy is not only encoded
into these images themselves, but which are also embedded within the practices surrounding
their production and reception. Whilst such cultural texts have agentic potential in cueing
emotional responses towards political ends (Cvetkovich 2003, p. 7), caution must be
exercised in framing these affordances as a purely utopian technology. However, as a
repository which exceeds 80 million photos daily further investigation is warranted into the
meaning-making practices underpinning the curation of user-generated content. The
opportunities of which may have particular implications for expanding the cultural imaginary
surrounding sportswomen. In relation to this research, we argue that ephemeral mobilities of
digital traces have the potential to change the “Face” of strength-based sport among other
emerging sporting femininities by attracting and sustaining a supportive virtual collective.
Networked Affect-Networked community and the training diary
“You’ve got that common interest, oh you do power lifting, I do power lifting, let’s be
friends.”
(Katie, 32)
A visible Instagram presence was an integral part of Powerlifting for the participants in this
study. All but two participants regularly engaged with the social networking site, posting
training videos, competition photos, community announcements, promotion of upcoming
competitions etc., as well as content related to their wider social lives, often in a public
profile capacity. Lucy (35) was the only participant who had a “private” profile specifically
using the site to network with other Lifters and Powerlifting related content. Although
Vanessa (37) did not use Instagram at all, she noted its significance in the increasing
popularity of the sport. The inextricable nature of the relationship between the digital and
physical spaces of Powerlifting was pervasive throughout the interviews. When the interview
turned towards exploring the main reasons for the growing popularity of Powerlifting, an
alternative sport with little to no financial incentives, the discussion centered around how it
was “seen” via social media.
Interestingly the posting practices of our participants differed from other fitness communities,
such as that noted in Reade’s recent work (2020) where “authenticity” and the “everyday”
take priority. Through engaging participants as co-analysts in extrapolating how and why they
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used Instagram it became clear that its purpose as a training diary was paramount. Not only
are dynamic and instructional videos brought forth as “matterings” during the scroll back
portion of the interviews but depictions of “failed” lifts were also notable. In contrast to the
disembodied, passive and aestheticized content characteristic of fitspo, imagery surrounding
“failure” aren’t simply missed attempts but rather spectacular in nature, such as loaded
barbells dropping under immense strain. In response to asking whether or not Katie is
opposed to posting failed lifts she states,
It’s a really important training diary. But I guess also for me. It’s a reminder of – I
don’t know – fun stuff. Because my trainer is handing out my bench for me and, you
know, bench has always been a weak spot for me. So at the end of it we’re just sort of
like meh. How good is that? It’s sort of stuff that I love watching back and just
remembering some of that fun training. Yeah. (Katie, 32)
Isabel characterizes the use of Instagram as a public training diary across the sample by
stating,
When I post stuff on Instagram it’s about other powerlifters looking at it. It’s a
training diary for me. When I post something on Facebook, that’s my friends and
family, so I get very different comments on Facebook than I do on Instagram. So
that’s been really interesting to see. (Isabel, 42)
Sustained posting practices of the performance of intense physical exertion integral to
Powerlifting differs substantially to “fitspo,” a shorten for “fitspiration” and popular hashtag
promoting healthy lifestyle and exercising on social media. The heterogenous character of
dynamic, affective visual imagery archived as a public training diary has particular
implications for increasing the visual economy of strength-based femininities. The digital
trace archived within these training diaries provide an object to think-through the relationship
between sporting and gendered performance. As the Instagram accounts often include content
surrounding their moving-desiring life worlds across multiple social sites experiences of
alternative sporting femininities differ. In narrating this dilemma of negotiating multiple
contexts the participants sought to rearticulate notions of desired femininity and reappropriate
strength-based physical acts as positive and productive performances of gendered knowledge.
The following section of this analysis explores how the participants negotiate this dilemma of
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enacting moving-desiring practices which are intelligible as “feminine” but also directly
challenge the preserve of strength-based sport as inherently “masculine.”
“The Lifting Face”: The affection-image
“It’s not real cute. I’ll give you the hot tip… That’s the face. That’s a ‘I’m going to
kill you’ [face]” (Isabel, 42).
List (FigureImage 2x here: lifting-faces)
One of our main findings emphasizes how Powerlifters use Instagram to produce or extend
offline communities around networked affects as well as a memory text to archive key
moments in their lifting journeys and wider social lives. The extension of affective intensities
specific to Powerlifting create a networked community through Instagram. A recurring and
significant instance of imagery which mobilized affective logics to cue strong emotional
responses was that of the “lifting face.” Such imagery can be explored through Deleuze’s
concept of ‘faciality’. The face for Deleuze is intensive and reflexive, and as an “organ-
carrying plate of nerves” shows its expressive becoming (Deleuze, 2005, p. 67). Utilizing the
face as an interpretive vehicle, a Deleuzian inspired approach to visual sociology centers on
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the affection-image as occupying the gap between perception and action; it is the moment in
which subject and object “coincide.” It finds expression in the “close-up” and captures the
way in which the subject “feels” itself “from the inside” (Deleuze, 2005, p. 67). Within
Powerlifting communities, the lifting face is enacted at the end range of the process of
materialization between the intra-actions of the barbell, plates and lifter. The “lifting face” as
a pre-personal and pre-conscious intensity reconciles with Hemmings’ (2012, p. 150) call
that, “… in order to know differently, we have to feel differently… feminist politics can be
characterized as that which moves us, rather than that which confirms us in what we already
know.” Sharing these kinds of images, which in other contexts may be considered “ugly,” an
excess or abjection of the heteronormative “feminine” self, is seen by participants in a range
of generative ways. Isabel (42) describes her lifting face as a “devil face” and a “psycho
lifting face.” When further prompted about this phenomenon of the lifting face she replies
that, “I do get self-conscious about the faces. I think they’re funny and I think, you know,
you’ve got to own it a little bit.” Similarly, Katie (32) celebrates imagery associated with the
“Poop Face. Lifting Face,” as a “fun thing to take the piss out of yourself,” as “… it’s not
always a glamorous sport.” Sometimes you pull crazy faces and look like shit. But… it
normalizes what you look like… after all you’re there to compete.” Hannah (26) also
discusses the intensity of feelings enacted at the end phase of a heavy lift. Interestingly she
describes a shift from consciously trying to maintain a semblance of “appropriate femininity”
towards a complete disruption of normalizing practices in attempting to engage the full force
of the moving body. She attests,
“when if I first started it was like full poker face, no noise, no nothing, and then the
other lifting face crept in somewhere last year, now it’s ugly lifting face and noise.”
(Hannah, 26)
This example also illuminates how the face as an organ-carrying plate of nerves, is an
effective interpretive vehicle occupying the gap between perception and action. Building on
Butler’s (1997, p. 147) conceptualization of “insurrectionary womanliness” defined as
“expressing conventional formulae in non-conventional ways,” the digital trace on Instagram
accounts of the participants provides an object through which to think-through the liminal
space between self-hood and social life (McNaughton, 2012, p. 2). Often the profile of the
participants is characterized by a mixture of Powerlifting content, as well as moments
captured from their wider social lives. Their experiences of strength-based gendered
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subjectivity differ between the context of the multiple worlds they inhabit and the archival
feed provides an object that demonstrates the dilemma of negotiating these various contexts.
ENGENDERING OF A NOVEL FUTURE ~ COMPLICATING LINEARITY
“While it is the individual who remembers, remembering is more than just a personal act”
(Misztal, 2003, p. 6)
Complicating Linearity: How to research the Future?
Central to disrupting normative ways of knowing and being is the potential to imagine other
possibilities for living (Author B et al., 2018, p. 3). Ontological notions surrounding futurity
are increasingly consonant in how the life worlds, particularly in a contemporary Western
context are organized, experienced and governed (Coleman, 2017, p. 525). Braidotti (2002, p.
1) argues that “… living at such times of fast changes may be exhilarating, yet the task of
representing these changes to ourselves and engaging productively with the contradictions,
paradoxes and injustices they engender is a perennial challenge.” For the participants in this
study, a key challenge centralizes around the negotiation of pressures to conform to
traditional notions of femininity. Hence, attempted escapes from pervasive neoliberal and
postfeminist logics are enacted as an everyday process rather than a complete and totalizing
escape. This is not a deterrent for participants; rather, they enact modes of resistance in order
to make positive and productive space for themselves amidst the capitalist ruins (Tsing 2015,
p. viii). In a world where change is a pervasive feature, we argue that the practices of
powerlifting particularly in its specificity, and training principles grounded in progressive-
overload and time-under-tension, are life affirming technologies of self-expression and
produce affective economies which re-imagine feminist futures. Our research shows the
instability of the boundaries between gender performance and affective memory, highlighting
how Powerlifting facilitated attempted escapes from neo-liberal agendas (van Doorn, 2011, p.
540). Or, as Deleuze states, “affects aren’t feelings, they’re becomings that spill over beyond
whoever lives through them (thereby becoming someone else)” (1994, p. 137).
Attenuating to the living present as a live present is amenable to generating concepts which
can move social knowledge surrounding physically active women beyond
empowered/disempowered binaries. A conception of non-chronological time attends to the
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co-creative relationship between meaning and materiality and the becoming of time, “a realm
of possibility to which one is accountable, but not bound” (Loewen Walker 2014, p. 58).
Other feminist projects also move towards the value of non-chronological time, “in opening
up a transformative an unknown future” (Loewen Walker 2014, p. 47). Reworking
temporality as an active component in the materialization of embodied identity, Juelskjaer
(2013) explores how the constitution of subjectivity is a complex and dynamic process. The
research investigated how students who changed schools to experience “new beginnings”
enact past and present lives as active forces in becoming as;
…one always already haunted; one not just placed in time and space, but a ‘thickened
human’ who is not a bounded entity, but a human where boundaries of what that
human might, and might not be, are set in motion so many different and specific
ways, places and temporalities. (Juelskjaer, 2013, p. 766)
Offering theoretical and empirical insights into how we might engage with forces of space,
time, materialities and bodies in shaping subjectivities Juelskjaer (2013, p. 765) argues that a
diffractive reading of space-times “makes possible a universe that gets to some of the
‘thickness’ of subjectivities”. Although it is inherently difficult to research the intangible,
exploring the ways in which the participants reconfigure temporality as dis/continuous
(Barad, 2003) offers a rich site for investigating temporality beyond linear narratives of
progress. Juelskjaer argues that the “thickened human” mechanizes an effective move out of
the realm of masculinist, teleological mastery; operationalizing a way of getting to know
something else about the struggles of subjectivity (2013, p. 766). Hence, it is necessary to
engage with the pasts embedded within processes of becoming-strong, as they are entangled
with presents and with unknown and unthought of futures (Sroda et al., 2014, p. 121). Or,
rather, as Davis (2014, p. 74) states, “inheritance of the past and anticipation of the future are
already enfolded into the now of the world’s material configurations.”
The ways in which Instagram makes past activity available for communication in the present
works to emphasize the tensions or contradictions that exist in moving the physically active
body within-through advanced capitalist conditions. Cho (2015) describes mapping the
cyclicality and repetition of the flow of affects through social media platforms as a useful
dynamic in understanding the temporal cycles of felt experience that structure the flow of
affect in digital-physical worlds (Cho 2015, p. 24). As co-analysts the participants narrated
15
past and present capacities in a dynamic and unedited way, zigzagging (Braidotti 2002)
between the archived imagery and interview questions. The performance of memory when
engaging with the imagery “reverberated” outwards from the body-media-memory
assemblage to illuminate the ways the participant disrupted normative ways of being. Hence
we argue that the role of Instagram is twofold, not only does it expand the visual economy of
power lifting identities and alternative sporting femininities more widely but its affordances
of archiving visual imagery mediate memory, which “reverberates” through the intra-actions
of temporal cycles of felt experience (Cho 2015, p. 24). Scrambling linear notions of time as
duration and affect are re-enacted through the ephemeral story telling of collective-
connective performance of shared memories (van Doorn, 2011, p. 540). Cho (2015) asserts
that attention to cyclicality and repetition is crucial to understanding the flow of affect in
situated performances of knowledge.
The programming specifics pertaining to the development of strength aligns with a
dis/continuous, cyclical view of temporality (Barad 2003). The very nature of the sport
reorients notions of success away from teleological progress narratives. Whilst a variety of
methods are used for programming, “nonlinear periodization” is a generally understood
practice which optimizes physiological strain, or “time under tension” as paramount to
strength gains (Monteiro et al., 2009, p. 1321). A constant loading of the muscles in a
progressive, linear fashion is viewed as a considerably less effective way to gain strength
(Monterio et al., 2009, p. 1321). For participants who had competed over a number of years
such cycles were brought forth as “matterings” in a zigzag fashion; demonstrative of a life-
world centered on the rhythmic ebbs and flows characteristic of optimizing peaks in physical
exertion to perform competitively. This seems to coincide with an opening up about notions
of winning/losing and success/failure beyond the sites of Powerlifting. Hence, training
principles such as “time under tension” generated a life affirming technique for participants
in that they facilitate “women’s own understanding of their experiences as both physical
sensations and metaphors for personal, confident sense of self” (Clarke 2017, p. 6).
16
Life-affirming Programs
Tracing the movements of becoming-strong to different sites such as work or wider social
settings demonstrates the ways in which space and time were active forces co-implicated in
constructing subjectivities. Tsing (2015, p. viii) describes a “third nature” beyond ecological
relations (first nature) and capitalist conditions (second nature) to emphasize that life is
affirmed in the enabling of entanglements, despite these often precarious and constraining
conditions. For example, Hannah mobilizes the incorporeal imaginary of physical control and
strength alongside bodily awareness in her everyday experiences. She describes how she
thinks it,
just makes you a lot more confident and assertive and you feel like you can do things
more, like you’ve got more confidence in your abilities...I guess even in work […] in
the last year I’ve kind of moved up a bit through my roles […] in my previous role
last year I remember going into my boss and actually asking him for a pay rise, which
is something I would never have had the confidence to do before, I was just, like, oh,
they’re not going to do that, but I just did it. (Hannah, 26)
Harriet also expresses the way that processual flows of affect generated in becoming-strong
transversed into wider social sites. When asked whether the stillness and composure central
to Powerlifting transferred across into any other aspects of her life she responds with a
revelation she had one day where,
As juvenile as it sounds, I had this revelation one day that power lifting is like –
‘Hang on, it’s like lifting the power’ And it’s like the idea of encouraging others and
showing others and being able to uplift you know the power. And I know it sounds a
bit juvenile and a bit silly but it came to me one time and I was just like ‘Oh, yeah, so
I actually have a responsibility and I have an opportunity to be able to uplift others
through what I do even my failures. (Harriet, 40)
We argue that in a world characterized by constant change and transformation, the
opportunity to work on three movement patterns re-orientates embodied identity projects
quite literally towards a position of stability. Harriet elaborates on the affective resonances
unique to Powerlifting as she compares and contrasts her experience of Crossfit, she states:
Well, it’s different because in Powerlifting you’re focusing-in on three movements, so
you’re really working towards that […] it’s really got a different mindset; it’s really
about the grind, getting under the weight and working it time and time and time again
17
because that’s how you get better just continuing to ramp-up the Kgs and getting that
time under tension, and it’s not about changing […] There’s something special about
refining yourself for a particular movement […] So, having that focus is very unique
[..]you’re staying still; you’re standing, so you don’t have interference of someone
going to tackle you ...you can stand in that moment. (Harriet, 40)
The thought of competition was often discussed among participants in terms of a hopeful and
open-ended futurity. It is not a win-at-all costs mentality but importantly it is an alternative
way of moving and being through the world. Describing a shift from outcome-based
narratives of success/failure within sports such as running, within which she had previously
been involved, Vanessa emphasizes a move…
“… towards these ones where, I guess, they really make me feel alive, so it’s
consistent in that, it’s consistent in making me feel quite strong.” (Vanessa, 37)
This aligns with a more generative understanding of failure wherein, “under certain
circumstances failing, losing, forgetting, unmaking, undoing, unbecoming, not knowing may
in fact offer more creative, more cooperative, more surprising ways of being in the world”
(Halberstam 2011, pp. 2–3). In failing at an international level Harriet discovered that there
are more generative ways of living beyond a binary of winning/losing. She expresses a re-
imagining of success in her discussion of failure;
And I failed all three times. And I went away and I thought ‘Oh I’m going to get
upset’ but I actually didn’t because I knew that I actually gave my 100 percent. So, I
was able to take that experience and help other people and tell it to other people that
experience failure at an international competition in front of people and having
people cheer that I had failed, and like “Oh my ego was fine” So that was really a
growing point and something I can help others with. (Harriet, 40)
Re-imagining the presence and visibility of the sometimes-failing sportswoman’s body within
Powerlifting, both in training and competitions emerged as a disruptive affective logic
surrounding normative ways of knowing and being (Author B et al., 2018, p. 3).
Temporality is an active force embedded within the agentic potential of matter and facilitates
access to knowledge, particularly in constituting the more than symbolic aspects of the body.
Investigating the participants experiences of spatio-temporalities or rather, the “living
present” can work to “surface” ways of understanding and attuning to the future. Instagram
offers a unique arena to investigate the politics of becoming through engaging with moving
18
imagery as an archival object which have, “specific affective and political potential and can
live in different spaces differently” (Mondin, 2017, p. 283). The zigzagging movements of
narrative, which reverberated outwards from the images archived within the participants
Instagram feed enables a performance of memory work, which demonstrates the concept of
the “thickened human” (Juelskjaer 2013). Such insights contribute to FNM theorizing of the
subject as not a bounded and rational individual, but rather a permeable entity entangled
within a nexus of human and non-human forces. This further clarifies how identity politics
are processual rather than fixed, opening up the possibility to become-otherwise, which has
significant implications for a feminist project of leisure and physical cultural studies.
Conclusion
“Smaller people have lifted bigger stuff. You watch people smaller than you lift bigger
weights. So, you know that all of this stuff is possible.”
(Isabel, 42).
In this article powerlifting emerges as a moving-desiring set of practices that demonstrates
possibilities for intervention into narrow articulations of desired femininity. In desiring to
become otherwise the participants utilize the affordances of Instagram to extend a sense of
community and support within digital-physical spaces. The participants, through
documenting their lifting journeys as a public training diary, expand the visual economy
surrounding strength-based gendered performance. The ephemeral trace existing within the
affordances of social media platforms, such as Instagram, increase visibility, communicating
in different spaces and times to past, present and future lifters. Researching temporality as an
agentic force demonstrates how relationality is a dis/continuous process of past, present and
future through which the in-betweenness of selfhood and social life is entangled.
It is important to recognize that enacting the potential of post-qualitative inquiry is not
without limitations and challenges. Tensions can materialize when facing institutional
expectations that research outputs resemble the “gold standards” of postpositivist inquiry
(Berbary, 2019, p. 2). However, there is radical potential in FNM in its ability to flexibly
accommodate differences within and between sportswomen by advocating a politics of
19
multiplicity. Difference, when understood as creative, relational and multiple increases the
critical theoretical toolkit to more closely attenuate to how subjectivities are enacted within
highly nuanced flows of power. Arguing towards a “micropolitical” conception of life-
worlds, we contribute to new understandings about the ways in which the live surface is
entangled within inextricable systems of power. Conceptualizing active embodiment as
continuously immersed within wider socio-political forces further clarifies that notions of a
unified, singular and humanist subject is an inadequate theoretical platform from which to
support any kind of social or cultural transformation. This article also problematizes the idea
that sportswomen are either disempowered subjects who unwittingly reproduce docile bodies
or are conversely, empowered agents who are able to make a complete and totalizing escape
from heteronormative gender ideals. Reorientating social inquiry towards an alternate,
positive account of difference uncouples analysis from having to reduce complex phenomena
to reductionist binaries or either/or identities towards accounting for both/and subjectivities.
Moreover, in doing so agency is reconfigured beyond constrained/liberated to better attenuate
to material-discursive-affective underpinnings of power relations. This is an important step
towards mapping how molar structures are reterritorialized in a socio-political context that
depoliticizes health, wellbeing and active embodiment practices.
As physical cultures, health and wellbeing more broadly are increasingly caught up in
postfeminist and neoliberal discourse, feminist theories of affect offer generative frameworks
to explore how gendered inequalities are “felt.” We argue that it is imperative to re-imagine
feminist futures which nurture spaces and practices to engender alternative ways of being
outside of narrow, closed and often unobtainable and for many untenable gender ideals. The
salience of FNM social inquiry resides in its potential for illuminating ways of being that
nurture alternative possibilities or rather as St. Pierre states, “the new is immanent, but it must
be created” (2017, p. 1087). Put another way, in the spirit of rhizomatic thought, we will let
Isabel (42) have the last words, “So, what you can’t see on my belt, is around the inside, and
I’ve had the word ‘possible’ engraved on there.”
20
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