{"id":7551,"date":"2025-06-10T20:25:47","date_gmt":"2025-06-10T20:25:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mamm.cfdh.ca\/?page_id=7551"},"modified":"2025-06-10T20:29:25","modified_gmt":"2025-06-10T20:29:25","slug":"reading-womens-friendships-in-ann-marie-macdonalds-faynethe-interplay-of-human-and-machine-level-data-processing","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/mamm.cfdh.ca\/fr\/reading-womens-friendships-in-ann-marie-macdonalds-faynethe-interplay-of-human-and-machine-level-data-processing\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading Women\u2019s Friendships in Ann-Marie MacDonald\u2019s Fayne:The interplay of human- and machine-level data processing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Network<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Reading Women\u2019s Friendships in Ann-Marie MacDonald\u2019s Fayne: The interplay of human- and machine-level data processing In Part Six of Ann-Marie MacDonald\u2019s 2022 novel, Fayne, teen-aged protagonist Charlotte Bell \u2013 overwhelmed with the realization that they were born with intersex traits and have been lied to for years by family members \u2013 decides to make the trek, on foot,
alone, from Edinburgh to the family\u2019s estate, which is located on the border of Scotland and England. Charlotte \u2013 or as our research group refers to them, given their increasingly non-binary subjectivity, Charlie \u2013 calls themselves a \u201cmigratory bird,\u201d
guided home by the \u201cmemory\u201d of their mother who sank into a bog, not to mention a spirit version of the family\u2019s cow (MacDonald, 590-96). In a novel full of descriptions of travel and attempts to possess a home, Charlie\u2019s otherworldly walk is perhaps the most conspicuous example of an affective mapping. Scholars in the field of human
geography distinguish maps themselves from the operation of mapping, which is \u201cthe spatial practices enacted to solve relational problems\u201d (Kitchin & Dodge, 335). Such problems might include navigating from one location to another or tracking all the
movements described in a literary text, and practices might be cognitive and tool-oriented, while also being sited in the contingent and relational needs and desires of the body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


In her chapter on \u201cAffective Mapping\u201d in the Encyclopedia of Human Geography, Clancy Willmott provides an overview, not only of approaches to the \u201cmore-than-representational mapping of affect and sensation,\u201d but to \u201cthe emotional, felt, bodily and
haunting aspects of mapping practice\u201d (Willmott, 53). Notable in Willmott\u2019s overview \u2013and especially relevant to a novel like Fayne, and our work with it – is that affectivemapping emerges out of a feminist materialist approach to consider multiple \u201cways of knowing,\u201d often highlighting the philosophical, social, and political \u201cgovernance of emotions, bodies and space\u201d (53-54). Also significant for our discussion today is Willmott\u2019s closing note that – despite the centrality of the body in affect theory – \u201cit is
generally accepted that the hybridity between humans and machines are entirely capable of affective exchange . . . [and that] maps are constantly brought into being through the combination of the cartographic and the bodily\u201d (60).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The work presented today is associated with the Mapping Ann-Marie MacDonald<\/a> (MAMM) project, homed in the Departments of Digital Humanities and English at Brock University. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As we noted last year, the first year of MAMM was taken up by developing a data collection model with several prerequisites:<\/p>\n\n\n\n