“F**k Rape!”: Exploring Affective Intensities in a Feminist Research Assemblage

The aim of this article is to demystify what we think we are doing when we engage in qualitative analysis. We illustrate the centrality of affect in meaning making, showing how interpretation is always already entangled in complex affective ethical and political relationalities that circulate in, through, and outside empirical research. We explore research processes as “intra-acting” drawing upon Barad, and develop Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of “assemblages,” “intensities,” “territorialization,” and “lines of flight” to analyze research encounters. Taking inspiration from MacLure’s notions of data “hot spots” that “glow,” we explore methodological processes of working with “affective intensities.” In particular, we draw upon our research with teen girls, mapping out how the discursive-embodied category “slut” works as an affective intensity that propels our feminist research assemblage—from the co-creation of “data” in the field to the “data” analysis and beyond.