Doll Clothes on a String: “Don’t Touch!”: Folding Force, Will and Desire

Cecilie Ottersland Myhre

doi:10.7577/rerm.5983

Authors

Cecilie Ottersland Myhre Oslo Metropolitan University https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5383-287X

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7577/rerm.5983

Keywords:

Hauntology, Will to power, Doll clothes, Tact/touch

Abstract

In this article, I re-turn (to) a doll clothes event that takes place in a toddler classroom in kindergarten. The event, as data, entangles past, present, and future, diffracting and re-diffracting in multiple directions. Although this event is anchored in a specific place-space-time, it simultaneously exists as something that could occur anywhere and nowhere – like ghostly doll clothes affections lingering in bodies through history. To unpack the doll clothes event, I explore the vitality of the colourful, soft textiles through Nietzsche’s concept of will to power, understood as both ‘a complement of force and something internal to it’ (Deleuze, 2013, p. 46). Additionally, I draw on the Deleuzian concept of desire and Manning’s (2007) notions of touch and tact to further unfold the event. These theoretical concepts serve as productive vectors for elaborating on thing-power (Bennett, 2004), understood as an affirmative, vital force that diffracts through materialization and will.

This article is situated within a posthuman paradigm that values more-than-human agencies (while not abandoning the human) as active, agentic forces that co-constitute the world. The aim is to explore the potentials, will, and values embedded within kindergarten pedagogies – becoming with the entanglements of doll clothes and the vibrant materiality of the toddler classroom.

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