Vibrating materialities: Mobility-body-technology relations

Abstract

This paper contributes to debates that consider the corporeal experience of mobilities. Drawing on some experiences of railway travel in Britain, it explores the experience of movement through the event of vibration. Vibration opens up ways of thinking about the uncertain and provisional connections between bodies, their travelling environments and the experience of movement that do not rely on dualistic or causal renderings of materiality. As such, this paper explores the generative possibilities that vibration opens up by considering how vibration change the shape of body-technology assemblages; challenge us to think about different assemblages in terms of their capacity for absorption, diffusion and transmission; and generate particular collectives. The paper concludes by considering how these vibrations sit within contemporary sensory economies of smoothness and turbulence. © 2010 The Author. Area © 2010 Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers).