A Data Assemblage

Abstract

In this article I describe data from my study about 11 family history genealogists and the objects they use to construct their ancestors as a Deleuzoguattarian assemblage, an entity that somehow functions together. In my study, I assembled object-interview data (Nordstrom 2013b), St. Pierre's (1997) dream and response data, weather data, spectral data (Nordstrom, 2013a), books written by participants, books recommended to me by participants, popular media about genealogy, my genealogy work, theories, and perhaps data—deconstructive data that problematize phenomenological certainty. Instead of thinking these data in discrete categories, the data functioned as lines that continuously moved and shifted together, thereby rendering the categories indistinguishable. The data assemblage is a dynamic onto-epistemological entity in which the constitutive lines open up new ideas of thinking about data in a study and what that data can do and become.