Ulrike Schultze
email: uschultz@smu.edu

Performing Cyborgian Identity: Enacting Agential Cuts in Second Life 1

Keywords: Performative identity, material-discursive practice, virtuality, actuality, cyborg, avatar, Second Life

As people live their lives online more and more, they increasingly rely on digital bodies to extend their senses and to perform identities. With this hybridization of physical and digital embodiments, they become cyborgs and are compelled to negotiate the dualistic space defined by the binary opposition of actual and virtual reality. Whereas actuality typically connotes concrete existence, virtuality signifies phenomena that are ideal, essential and unrealized but that have actual effects. This paper seeks to understand how individuals negotiate the liminal space that combines virtual and actual reality, especially as it relates to their sense of self, in their performance of cyborgian identities. Drawing on Boland's [1] Engine of Inquiry and Barad's [2] agential cuts as a conceptual infrastructure, this paper analyzes one identity performance of a single Second Life user in order to answer the following research question: How are cyborgian identities enacted in virtual worlds?

Research Motivation

In a society marked by globalization, virtual work and the use of social media, individuals are increasingly experiencing their lives in a liminal space that combines virtual and actual reality [START_REF] Connor | Mothers in the Making? Exploring Liminality in Cyber/Space[END_REF]. By posting blogs, images, tweets, profiles and films that materialize them in multiple settings, technology users create digital bodies that extend their physically embodied senses and turn them into cyborgs [START_REF] Borer | The Cyborgian Self: Toward a Critical Social Theory of Cyberspace[END_REF], that is, a dialectic synthesis between physical and digital bodies [START_REF] Nyberg | Computers, Customer Service Operatives and Cyborgs: Intra-actions in Call Centres[END_REF]. In light of these multiple embodiments the production of self-identity, that is, "the self as reflexively understood by the person" [START_REF] Giddens | Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age[END_REF] (p. 52), becomes an increasingly complex project that involves the ongoing negotiation of what identity performances count as "real".

Despite the recognition that reality and virtuality are inextricably intertwined and mutually constitutive, the virtual is nevertheless frequently separated from the material conditions of daily life [START_REF] Connor | Mothers in the Making? Exploring Liminality in Cyber/Space[END_REF]. Indeed, the virtual is often conflated with digital environments [START_REF] Van Doorn | Digital Spaces, Material Traces: How Matter Comes to Matter in Online Performances of Gender, Sexuality and Embodiment[END_REF], such that the computer screen becomes the stable boundary between the real and the virtual. However, adopting a definition of virtuality as "that, which is so in essence but not actually so" [START_REF] Shields | The Virtual[END_REF] (p. 2), this paper regards virtuality as a potential reality that stands in opposition to the actual rather than the real.

In order to better understand the dynamics of how identities are produced in the liminality of cyberspace and the dialectic synthesis of people's physical and digital bodies, this study seeks to answer the following research question: How are cyborgian identities enacted in virtual worlds? Adopting a performative lens, identity is defined as an ongoing becoming generated by the repeated enactment of material-discursive practices [START_REF] Barad | Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning[END_REF]. Given the hybridity of the identity performances in virtual worlds, this paper focuses particularly on one set of identity practices, namely agential cutting. It is through this practice that virtual and actual aspects of cyborgian identity are cut together/apart.

To answer the research question, this paper draws on empirical material from a study of the avatar-self relationship in the virtual world, Second Life (SL); specifically, the case of Rene, a 33-year-old woman who enacted an avatar named Angela. In addition to Barad's [START_REF] Barad | Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning[END_REF] notion of agential cuts, Boland's [START_REF] Boland | The Engine of Inquiry, or "Why Say Anything at All?[END_REF] [START_REF] Boland | Metaphor and the Embodied Mind: An Engine of Organizational Inquiry[END_REF] Engine of Inquiry will be used as the theoretical infrastructure to outline the dialectic space of the virtual and the actual within which Rene's cyborgian identity emerged.

The paper proceeds as follows: prior research on identity performance in virtual settings is briefly reviewed. This is followed by an overview of actual and virtual reality, the Engine of Inquiry and agential cuts, which collectively constitute this paper's interpretive scaffold. The data collection and analysis method is described next. The presentation of the data analysis will be followed by a discussion of the paper's contributions and implications.

Cyborgian Identity Performance

As the literature on identity performance in computer-mediated settings is vast, illustrative examples of different conceptualizations of cyborgian identity will be presented along the following lines: identity as multiple vs. fixed, and identity as representational vs. performative.

Identity as Multiple vs. Fixed

Turkle's [START_REF] Turkle | Life on the Screen: Identity in the Life of the Internet[END_REF] research on multi-user dungeons (MUDs) demonstrated how MUDers used different windows to simultaneously role-play multiple online identities that were unavailable to them in their real lives. The virtual bodies that emerged in these performances were seen as a product of mind, distinct from the user's body [START_REF] Whitley | In Cyberspace All They See Is Your Words: A Review of the Relationship Between Body, Behavior and Identity Drawn from the Sociology of Knowledge[END_REF]. While this conceptualization of cyborgian identity re-produced the Cartesian cut be-tween mind and body, it also highlighted the fragmented and distributed nature of self-identity. However, Turkle's research was criticized for presenting the self as disembodied [START_REF] Whitley | In Cyberspace All They See Is Your Words: A Review of the Relationship Between Body, Behavior and Identity Drawn from the Sociology of Knowledge[END_REF], overly fragmented [START_REF] Robinson | The Cyberself: The Self-ing Project Goes Online, Symbolic Interaction in the Digital Age[END_REF], and insufficiently concerned with sociality [START_REF] Kendall | Hanging Out at the Virtual Pub: Masculinities and Relationships Online[END_REF]. For instance, Shiano [START_REF] Shiano | Lessons from LambdaMOO: A Social, Text-Based Virtual Environment[END_REF] reported that most LambdaMOO participants tended to have only one, at most two, avatars and that they strove towards a stable self-presentation to produce long-term social cohesion.

In contrast to depictions of cyborgian identity as multiple and fragmented, other research on virtual worlds has treated the self in more essentialist ways, conceptualizing it in terms of a true, an actual, an ideal and a virtual component [e.g. 15]. For instance, Bessiere et al.'s [START_REF] Bessiere | The Ideal Elf: Identity Exploration in World of Warcraft[END_REF] research on identity exploration in World of Warcraft revealed that the discrepancy between players' virtual and ideal selves was smaller than that between their actual and ideal selves, suggesting that avatars represent not only stable, aspirational identities, but that users have defined identities prior to taking action. This research thus reflects a representational perspective on identity.

Representational vs. Performative Identities

Identity performance can be approached from either a representational or a performative perspective. Representational identity implies that a core essential self not only pre-exists an individual's identity performance, but that it is also the source of such self-presentations [START_REF] Hickey-Moody | Virtually Sustainable: Deleuze and Desiring Differenciation in Second Life[END_REF]. From a representational perspective, virtual bodies are conceptualized as more or less passive signifiers that refer to -and are separated fromthe user's original (physically embodied) identity. Research concerned with virtual identities' correspondence to the actual self [e.g. 18] is indicative of representational theorizing.

From a performative perspective, in contrast, the self is regarded as the outcome of identity performances, which in turn are the result of unconsciously citing discursively defined practices [START_REF] Butler | Bodies that Matter[END_REF]. Butler [START_REF] Butler | Bodies that Matter[END_REF] argues that, rather than being born female, one becomes a woman by performing such normative practices as putting on make-up and shaving one's legs, which are classified as feminine. In short, an individual is being performed through the enactment of materially and socially constrained practices rather than presenting his/her sense of self. Schultze [START_REF] Schultze | Performing Embodied Identity in Virtual Worlds[END_REF] offers empirical illustrations of performative identity, highlighting that users of a virtual world found themselves becoming who their avatars had performed through mundane everyday practices of the body, such as dressing and gesturing.

Theoretical Framework

In much of the research on immersive environments, virtuality is defined in materialist terms, drawing the boundary between virtual and actual reality at the interface of the digital environment [START_REF] Van Doorn | Digital Spaces, Material Traces: How Matter Comes to Matter in Online Performances of Gender, Sexuality and Embodiment[END_REF]. Upon donning a head-mounted display in a virtual reality setting or logging in as a 3D avatar, the user is deemed to transition into the realm of the virtual [START_REF] Lee | Presence, Explicated[END_REF], which is frequently regarded as an alternative to the real [START_REF] Shields | The Virtual[END_REF] (p. 46).

However, these fixed distinctions belie the complex interaction between the virtual and physical reality in everyday life. The increasing entanglement of people and technology calls for a more dynamic conceptualization of the liminal space in which individuals perform identities these days [START_REF] Kreps | My Social Networking Profile: Copy, Resemblance or Simulacrum? A Poststructuralist Interpretation of Social Information Systems[END_REF]. To this end, a conceptual framework that makes this dynamic and liminal space accessible is developed.

Virtual vs. Actual Reality

Even though the virtual is frequently framed as the opposite of the real, this is a false dichotomy in that "virtual" means "almost" and "as if", implying that the virtual is "that, which is so in essence but not actually so" [START_REF] Shields | The Virtual[END_REF] (p. 2). What qualifies the virtual as reality is that it produces an effect that has physical existence without becoming material itself. For example, an analytical model reflects a virtuality in that its conceptualization of the phenomenon (e.g. the US housing market) represents the phenomenon in essence but not in its "concrete present" form [START_REF] Shields | The Virtual[END_REF] (p. 29). However, such virtual representations are used to make decisions that affect -in real life -the phenomena they model [START_REF]Do Economicsts Make Markets? On the Performativity of Economics[END_REF]. Such analytical models also reflect an idealized version of an empirical situation; they serve as maps, plans or simulations of phenomena, outcomes and effects as they should materialize [START_REF] Strathern | Abstraction and Decontextualization: An Anthropological Comment[END_REF]. Capturing the "virtue" roots of virtuality's etymology, such models highlight that the virtual represents the "ideally real" [START_REF] Shields | The Virtual[END_REF] (p. 29). Rather than being a mere abstraction, the virtual represents the potentially real [START_REF] Strathern | Abstraction and Decontextualization: An Anthropological Comment[END_REF].

The actual, in contrast, is associated with manifest existence and concreteness [START_REF] Shields | The Virtual[END_REF]. It also connotes objectivity (i.e. existence independent of an individual's attitudes, beliefs and perceptions), authenticity and permanence. As such, the actual is easily conflated with a definition of the reality that refers to the manifest, experienced world [START_REF] Brandt | Reality": What Does it Mean?[END_REF]. However, in this paper, an experiential view of reality is adopted, which maintains that realness is a matter of degree: objects, actions, thoughts and feelings are experienced as more or less real [START_REF] Brandt | Reality": What Does it Mean?[END_REF].

While the virtual and the actual are binary opposites, prior research on identity performances in virtual settings highlights a contradiction between them. Users maintain that in virtual settings they are able to enact their true self [START_REF] Taylor | Play Between Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture[END_REF], which remains inaccessible to them in their actual lives. This suggests that the virtual is experienced as more "real" than the actual. The dialectic between the actual and the virtual thus creates tensions that are not only generative but that also render each pole's meaning dynamic.

The Engine of Inquiry

Boland's Engine of Inquiry seeks to explain why conversations [START_REF] Boland | The Engine of Inquiry, or "Why Say Anything at All?[END_REF] and organizational debates [START_REF] Boland | Metaphor and the Embodied Mind: An Engine of Organizational Inquiry[END_REF] -such as those between rational and normative organizational control structures [START_REF] Barley | Design and Devotion: Surges of Rational and Normative Ideologies of Control in Organizational Discourse[END_REF] -are never settled but keep revisiting familiar topics in wave-like oscillations. The objective of the framework is to uncover the mechanism through which this dialectic dynamic is produced and sustained.

The Engine of Inquiry suggests that the structure of language -especially the binary oppositions it creates and its metaphorical nature -produces a perpetual motion machine. Drawing on Lakoff and Johnson's [START_REF] Lakoff | Metaphors We Live By[END_REF] experiential view of language, which argues that metaphors are a way of mapping embodied experiences (e.g. moving up or down) to utterances (e.g. climbing the corporate ladder) to make language meaningful (i.e. up is good, down is bad), the framework constructs an oppositional meaning space. Thus, despite its focus on discursive practices, the Engine of Inquiry fundamentally rests on an embodied -and therefore material -understanding of language.

Lakoff and Johnson [START_REF] Lakoff | Metaphors We Live By[END_REF] note that four schemas underlie the metaphorical structure of everyday language. The four schemas -here illustrated by examples taken from Quinn's [START_REF] Quinn | The Cultural Basis of Metaphor[END_REF] research on the ways in which American couples talk about and make sense of marriage -are: ENTITY (marriage as an "indestructible natural object"), CONTAINER (marriage as "being in the same boat"), TRAJECTORY (marriage as an "ongoing journey") and RELATION (marriage as an "unbreakable bond"). Importantly, multiple schemas may be applied to any given phenomenon at the same time.

The Engine of Inquiry suggests that, when multiple metaphor schemas are applied to understanding the binary opposition that informs a phenomenon, tensions arise between them, thus giving rise to the wave-like oscillations that keep boundaries and meanings unsettled. Below, the framework will be described using the virtualityactuality opposition as it relates to gaining self-knowledge through identity performances in virtual worlds (Figure 1). Based on the language used to describe virtual worlds (abbreviated as VW in Fig. 1), the metaphorical schemas of CONTAINER and RELATION seem central to structuring the users' production of what is actual versus virtual. For instance, expressions like "logging in", being "in-world" and having an "immersive" experience, indicate that the simulated world is a container that we can enter or leave (like a building). Virtual worlds are also described as "social networks" in which people form "groups", "friend" each other and become "partnered", thus highlighting the relational nature of virtual worlds.

How the distinction between the real and the virtual pole is expressed depends on each schema's entailments in a given context. As a spatial metaphor, the CONTAINER's entailments for performing identity have to do with locating oneself in space. For instance, going deep (i.e. into the center) implies a movement towards the true self associated with actuality (e.g. getting in touch with one's core values; the heart of the matter). In contrast, staying on the surface or periphery signals virtuality in that it implies pretense and superficiality (e.g. putting up a front; faking).

With regard to the RELATION schema, being together with others in meaningful ways is associated with individuals feeling real (e.g. having a sense of belonging). According to Goffman [START_REF] Goffman | The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life[END_REF], the self depends on interaction to exist socially, implying that social beings need to both present the self to others and to have this performance validated by others in order to materialize as a social being.

In contrast, being separate and isolated (e.g. thinking only of oneself) is indicative of being virtual. Giddens' [START_REF] Giddens | The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Society[END_REF] notion of a "pure relationship" is illustrative of virtuality as defined by the relations metaphor. Entered into for the intrinsic satisfaction they offer and maintained only as long as they deliver enough gratification, participants draw clear personal boundaries rather than become absorbed in and committed to each other in pure relationships. The advancement of the self rather than the development of the couple characterizes this liaison. Being "alone together" [START_REF] Turkle | Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other[END_REF], i.e. having the assurance of potential connections to virtual others without actualizing relationships, provides another conceptualization of the self as virtual as entailed by the relation metaphor.

Having outlined the structural elements of the framework, we now turn to its motion. Arrow 1 in Figure 1 indicates the natural trajectory of reflexive self-discovery, where idealized avatar-based identity performances that may be 'as-if' (virtual) nevertheless generate insights into the user's true emotions, deep desires and core values (actual). Similarly, arrow 2 signifies a natural search for meaningful social connections as one's sense of self depends on it. This suggests a progression from an identity performance that is self-absorbed (virtual), to one that recognizes its interdependence with others (actual).

What turns this framework into a perpetual motion machine, however, are arrows 3 and 4, which represent a switch in the schema used to organize one's experiences. Importantly, switching metaphorical schema instantiates a reversal of meaning. For instance, while being in touch with one's deep-seated emotions and core values is indicative of being true to one's actual self within the CONTAINER schema, from a relational perspective such behavior may be self-indulgent and inconsiderate of others' needs. Thus, what is deemed actual in the CONTAINER schema, is virtual on the RELATION register.

Similarly, while the actual pole in the RELATION schema is characterized by being dependent on and socio-emotionally entangled with others, it also implies a loss of self as individuals subjugate some of their uniqueness for the sake of social harmony. The high degree of social agreement that signifies the actual in the RELATION schema thus simultaneously implies virtualness in the CONTAINER schema. The reversal of meaning associated with a switch in metaphorical schema ensures that individuals' questions about who they are and who they might be as cyborgs is never settled. As such, the Engine of Inquiry represents a performative view of language in which utterances do not only represent phenomena, but also produce them [START_REF] Austin | How to Do Things with Words[END_REF].

Since Boland [START_REF] Boland | The Engine of Inquiry, or "Why Say Anything at All?[END_REF] [9] argues that schema switches occur when a metaphor has been saturated or pushed too far, the Engine of Inquiry offers us a theoretical framework for understanding when and why users of virtual worlds segment their fluid and ongoing experience as a cyborg into more or less "real" aspects as they make sense of their identity performances and of their emergent self-identity. Barad's [START_REF] Barad | Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning[END_REF] concept of agential cuts as material-discursive practices provides a conceptual infrastructure for theorizing this process of identity enactment.

Agential Cuts

Barad's [START_REF] Barad | Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning[END_REF] agential realism advances a fully relational ontology in which entities only exist in relation to others. Phenomena (e.g. selves, technologies) have no existence independent of each other; rather they are brought into being in practice. Instead of a world made up of discrete entities that are brought together through interaction, Barad [START_REF] Barad | Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning[END_REF] conceptualizes a world made up of fluid entanglements that are separated through agential cuts.

Nyberg [START_REF] Nyberg | Computers, Customer Service Operatives and Cyborgs: Intra-actions in Call Centres[END_REF] offers the following example of agential cutting: call center customers experience the components that constitute service delivery (i.e. the telephone system, the computer systems, the customer service representative, etc.) as an entangled whole until customer service representatives distance themselves from the (failing) technology with such utterances as "the computer has a mind of its own". Enacting such cuts between technological and human actors, the elements in a sociomaterial assemblage are given identity, properties and agency.

However, Barad highlights that agential "cuts are enacted not by willful individuals but by the larger material arrangements of which 'we' are a 'part'" [START_REF] Barad | Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning[END_REF] (p. 178). In other words, agential cutting is not merely a discursive act performed by an agential individual, but the performance of everyday material-discursive practices that draw on the sociomaterial infrastructure in which an individual is entangled. Furthermore, "cuts cut 'things' together and apart. Cuts are not enacted from the outside, nor are they ever enacted once and for all" [START_REF] Boland | The Engine of Inquiry, or "Why Say Anything at All?[END_REF] (p. 179).

Combining Boland's Engine of Inquiry with Barad's agential cuts, we note that schema switches are indicative of agential cuts as the diagonal arrows indicate a severing of the cyborgian entanglement between the user's self-identity and his/her identity performance in avatar form. Our empirical data analysis demonstrates how this conceptual framework provides us with insight into how cyborgian identity is enacted in virtual worlds.

Method

To explore cyborgian identities in their constant state of becoming through the ongoing negotiation of what counts as real in the intertwining of actual and virtual reality, this paper relies on a single case of a female resident of Second Life, who was interviewed as part of larger study of US-based SL users that spent at least 10 hours a week in-world. Given the need for a micro-level analysis of the material-discursive practices of agential cutting that this paper seeks to explore, a single case offers the requisite empirical richness.

The case was chosen for its potential for generating insights into the dynamic nature of cyborgian identity performance. The participant, Rene,2 had considerable experience in virtual worlds, having spent 10 months in SL and a number of years in MUDs. She was also very introspective and articulate. Moreover, she used her avatar, Angela, for highly personal and profound identity work. As such, Rene might be classified as an extreme case [START_REF] Eisenhardt | Building Theories from Case Study Research[END_REF], in that her use of SL demonstrated cyborgian identity performance naturally and intensively, thus enabling comprehensive theorizing.

Rene was 33 years old, single and a minority: part African American, part Native American. She had attended a highly competitive magnet high school for the talented and gifted, and subsequently earned an undergraduate degree in Management Information Systems, as well as a Masters in Business Administration. At the time of the interview, she was working in a small insurance office, where she dealt with accounts payables, receivables, newsletters, and client relations.

Rene had initially entered SL to learn more about Gorean role-play, which enacted unconventional intimate relationships. Instead of joining an established role-play community though, she developed her own character and role-play scenarios with close friends. Angela played both dominant and submissive roles. As a dominant, Angela had three male submissives; as a submissive, she had a master (Ira), with whom she was also "partnered" (i.e. married) in SL. Together, these four men made up her "SL family".

Data were collected in two phases during Fall 2008:

• A 2-hour, face-to-face interview: After meeting briefly in a coffee shop, this interview was conducted in the author's office, which offered privacy and Internet access so that Rene could log onto SL and provide the researcher with an overview of her life there. A key objective of this in-person meeting was to build the rapport and trust needed for the longitudinal data collection that followed. • Three 1-hour phone interviews about Rene's weekly photo-diary: Diary methods approximate observational research, but rely on research participants to serve as adjunct ethnographers, capturing naturally occurring events, as well as their meaning and significance. Following Latham [START_REF] Latham | Research, Performance and Doing Human Geography: Some Reflections on the Diary-Photograph, Diary-Interview Method[END_REF], Rene was asked to proceed with their SL activities as normal, but to take a snapshot of events that were in some way meaningful, significant or important to her. Each snapshot was then annotated by answering when, what, why, who and how questions. Each photodiary included five snapshots and was submitted to the author ahead of the scheduled phone interview.

Given the considerable time commitment required, Rene was paid $150. With her permission, all interviews were tape-recoded. Data analysis proceeded as follows:

1. extracting excerpts from interviews and photodiaries related to identity performances and the production of self-identity; 2. evolving the metaphorical schema outlined in Figure 1; even though the Engine of Inquiry was presented in the theory section, Figure 1 represents an empirically grounded adaptation of the framework; 3. developing situated meanings of virtual and actual reality; the meanings Rene associated with the positions that made up the dialectic space (surface, deep, separate, together) were identified (i.e. Table 1); and 4. tracing the dialectic movements of specific identities; to demonstrate the pendulum-like motion of performing cyborgian identity, various identity performances were traced through the framework. Agential cuts were also identified. One of these identity performances, i.e. Ira's partner, will be presented below.

Empirical Analysis

Dialectic Space: Virtual vs Actual

Table 1 summarizes the dialectic space through which Rene defined the various meanings of virtual and actual reality. Importantly, the empirical examples used to develop this meaning space demonstrate the intertwined nature of meaning/discourse and matter/technology.

Surface

Rene's principal use of SL was as a diversion and an "escape" from her "real life" (RL), which she described as "out of control" and "unfulfilling". Discursive practices of distinguishing "Second Life" for "first" or "real life" enacted the virtual as a distinct space separate from actual reality:

When Creating an avatar with a different name and an appearance that did not mirror Rene's physical embodiment -Angela had a light complexion and waist-long, yellow-blond hair and wore "edgy" outfits that Rene would never wear -produced Angela as a character that was not only distinct from Rene's self-identity, but also independent of her player:

Suddenly she [Angela] is her own person. I mean, she's me, but she's has her own persona; she has her own style.

Deep

Paradoxically, the separation between the virtual and the actual that such materialdiscursive practices as anonymity, role-playing and world-building produced, also created the conditions for identity work. Self-reflection and experimentation with alternate ways of being made it possible to gain deep self-knowledge, implying a profound entanglement between users' avatar-embodied identity performances and their sense of self. Rene thus acknowledged that SL not only had an effect on RL, but that events in virtuality were likely to be more consequential to the self (i.e. injuries are "a lot more personal") than actual events. Given that online identity performances were seen as an expression of the user's creativity, and supposedly less encumbered by actual constraints such as the user's physical embodiment, for example, insults in SL struck Rene in her core.

Separate

Misrepresentation, lies and morally questionable behavior were ways in which SL relationships (re)produced virtuality. For example, Rene had role-played with Carl who claimed to be unmarried in RL. After she had allowed herself to fall in love with him, she learned that he was actually married. She concluded that "[SL]'s a fantasy world, and you do come to realize that a lot of people don't take it so seriously". Subsequently, she classified all interactions with Carl as "strictly SL", thereby changing her "perspective on the time that we spent together and what it means when we are together". Even though she had struggled to deal with Carl's deceit, she vigorously defended her right to present herself in non-representational ways:

There's this guy I was becoming friends with. ... He asked for a photo of me [in RL]. And the moment he saw it, he said, "Hmm, different". And then he took me off his Friends List and put me on mute [i.e. blocking all her messages to him]. Because I didn't look like Angela. Nobody in SL looks like their avatar! It's always an exaggerated perversion of who they are. And who's to say that I have to be some half Native American, half black chic. … It doesn't make sense. It is a fantasy world after all.

Together

Even though Rene engaged in role-play most of the time, she maintained that she performed an identity that was in line with her self-identity: And there's some people that are so extreme into their fantasy world that you'll never see who they really are and what they're really like. Whereas, I try to be as true to myself as possible.

She resented when people treated SL like a "game", with which she associated a lack of consideration for the feelings of the actual person behind the avatar: I don't approach it [SL] as a game like some people do and that's probably my biggest pet peeve because it's a simulation of life. It's not an actual game. … You're dealing with real people, real feelings. So even though the environment is fake and the avatar is fake, the person behind it -the personality, the emotions -everything is real.

The home that Rene built for her SL "family" (i.e. her "master" and three submissives) made these relationships "real", "solid" and permanent, implying that they persisted outside of SL also:

You know the family was already established, it's just now [with my SL home completed] it feels real and solid and you know, unbreakable. … It's not like I'm just floundering. I have a real home, I have, you know, definite family … it's not going away.

Perpetual Motion: Performing Cyborgian Identity

Having outlined the meanings Rene gave to the four positions in the dialectic space marked by the virtual-actual opposition, her movement through this space will now be traced using one of her identity performances. Figure 2 summarizes her ongoing becoming as a partner to her "master" and "husband", Ira. Nevertheless, she decided to role-play the submissive (1: surface): Angela's role from the moment that she met Ira was always a submissive. … if I'm being a submissive with Ira in SL that's more Angela than Rene.

"Being a submissive with Ira" was enacted through such material-discursive practices as wearing "his collar" and "silks" (i.e. bikini top with skirt slit up both sides), performing acquiescent poses (e.g. kneeling) and addressing Ira as "Master". Even though playing this role was "more Angela than Rene", it made an inaccessible, "hidden side" of Rene available to her, highlighting a deeply held desire to be taken care of (2: deep):

She [the submissive Angela] is a hidden side of me that I don't think I could ever express in real life. ... I love the feeling of being safe and protected and cherished, like you're their number one jewel in the whole world.

Indicative of the lack of separability between her sense of self and her role as Ira's submissive partner, Rene found it difficult to maintain a subservient attitude. She noted that she rarely performed submissiveness when she was with Ira, which raised questions about the status of their relationship ( This interview quote illustrates Rene's realization that her identity performance entangled too much of her actual, dominant self at the expense of Ira's needs. It thus highlights not only a switch in metaphorical schemas (from self as CONTAINER to self as RELATION), but also an agential cut as Rene recognizes that she needed to be "who I am in my SL avatar" whenever she is interacting with Ira in SL. She enacted this cut by performing such material-discursive practices as wearing silks and calling him "Master". These practices helped her "relate to [Ira]" and "behave around him" in the way that she "should". Rene's desire to perform her role as a submission more credibly in order to fulfill Ira's emotional needs, paradoxically also produced a "real relationship" that involved the people behind the avatar (4: together). This meant that Ira and Rene talked about RL issues more and more while in-world. Rene, however, became increasingly frustrated as conversations about their actual lives dominated their interactions in SL: And that's not bad [to talk about RL] like once a week, but when every time I talk to him it's the same thing, it starts to get a little annoying to me. And it starts to depress me. It really stresses me out, because then I start worrying about what's going on with him [in RL]. … And it's just like, "can we just forget about it all for a bit while we're on SL and just try to be happy and not think about the problems for just a little bit?" Because that's kind of the whole point of SL.

The interview quote suggests that her identity performance as Ira's partner had become too "real" in that it was no longer submissive-dominant role-play; instead Rene was "worrying about what's going on with him [in RL]"). The "stress" this caused Rene suggested that their SL liaison had gone too far and had lost its playfulness and promise of escape.

One particular incident highlighted the challenge associated with their relationship becoming too real (i.e. "crossing the line"); Rene had become "really mad" at Ira for failing to take her side on an issue: I should not have gotten that upset with him. And that's probably one of the problems with having real life relationships and SL relationships, because sometimes you forget your role, your place on SL and [by getting mad with Ira] I definitely crossed the line there.

To restore her identity as Ira's submissive partner, Rene relied on her avatar's animations, especially the kneeling pose, to enact an agential cut that separated her sense of self from her identity performance as Ira's partner (5: Even though the movement through the dialectic space continued in Rene's ongoing cyborgian identity performance, the length restrictions of this article prevent any further illustrations here.

Discussion and Conclusion

The objective of this paper is to gain insight into the ongoing becoming as a cyborg. Key assumptions underlying this research include that: (i) identity is performative, implying that it is the result of enacting everyday material-discursive practices, (ii) cyborgian identity performances occur within a dialectic space defined by opposing poles of virtual and actual reality, (iii) based on the oppositional and metaphorical structure of language, the dialectical interplay between virtuality and actuality functions like a perpetual motion machine (i.e. Engine of Inquiry), such that neither cy-borgian identity nor the meanings of the actual and the virtual will ever be settled, and (iv) agential cutting that cuts together/apart online identity performances and selfidentities represents a key practice by which individuals keep a given cyborgian identity performance going. Into the research question "How are cyborgian identities enacted in virtual worlds?" the paper's empirical analysis provides the following insights:

• The material conditions of the technology (e.g. making oneself present in a virtual body distinct from physical embodiment) compel users to confront questions of how the multiple, situated identities they perform as an avatar relate to their more permanent sense of self. At times, they experience their performances online as inseparable from who they are; at other times, their avatars seem to be independent entities. Rene's discursive practices, which continuously switched between "I" and "she" to describe her actions as Angela in SL, suggest that the configuration of cyborgian identity as an entanglement of avatar and physically embodied user is fluid and remains unsettled. • In making sense of these different experiences with being a cyborg, users distinguish between their personal relationship with their avatar and their relationship with others as avatars. These two dimensions of cyborgian identity are reflected in the framing of the self as container and as a set of social relations respectively. In Rene's case, questions about her avatar-self relationship revolved around the extent to which her creativity, thoughts and feelings were entangled with Angela, and the kind of identity they produced (e.g. someone tougher than the wimp she was in RL). In contrast, her self-other relationship as a cyborg was more concerned with questions of authenticity and moral obligations, i.e. the extent to which she participated in validating others -and therefore her own -actual existence despite the fakeness of the setting. • Even though there are many agential cuts that are enacted continuously and in ways that individuals do not consciously perceive -e.g. apparatuses like the technological configuration of SL and the material-discursive practices of separating this virtual from the actual by enacting fantasy role-play scenarios -there are nevertheless situations in which cutting is agentially performed by individuals [see also 5]. For example, when she got a sense that her performance as Angela was no longer sufficiently distinct from her dominant self (i.e. when it had become too real), Rene relied on her avatar's embodied practices (e.g. wearing a collar, kneeling) to restore Angela's identity as Ira's submissive partner. This practice of agential cutting produced Angela as a somewhat independent being with her own identity and agency. Angela's embodied actions (e.g. wearing silks, referring to Ira as "Master" in text chat) were performative in that they affected Rene's physically embodied emotions and reminded her to limit the degree to which she allowed herself to be entangled with Angela.

This research makes two key of contributions:

• Given recent calls to develop more performative and processual theories of identity work in the liminality of cyberspace [e.g. 22], this paper outlines a theoretical scaf-fold for how people (re)produce the dialectical space that constitutes the virtual and the actual. Boland's Engine of Inquiry [START_REF] Boland | The Engine of Inquiry, or "Why Say Anything at All?[END_REF], a framework that was developed to theorize the performativity of language, is expanded to help explain the performativity of the material-discursive practices of cyborgian identity performance. Even though this paper has demonstrated the Engine of Inquiry on a rather limited -albeit rich -empirical data set, the framework appears to hold much promise with regard to theorizing how people produce their identities in the face of the increasing entanglement of physical and digital embodiments. • The notion of agential cuts has become part of the agenda of sociomaterial theorizing in IS research. This paper provides not only an empirical illustration of how agential cuts are enacted unconsciously through everyday material-discursive acts in virtual worlds, but it also highlights the potentially agential nature of cutting practices. As such, this paper provides empirical insight into when and -to some extent -why they are made. In particular, our empirical analysis suggests that users seek to sever their entanglement with their avatar when the identity performance becomes too real. While this insight has been developed using an extreme case [START_REF] Eisenhardt | Building Theories from Case Study Research[END_REF], future research is needed to assess whether this key finding will hold in technological settings other than Second Life, e.g. social media such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, and other virtual worlds, e.g. Minecraft, World of Warcraft.

Fig. 1 .

 1 Fig. 1. Dialectic Process of Performing Cyborgian Identity

Fig. 2 .

 2 Fig. 2. Performing Ira's Partner

Table 1 .

 1 The Dialectic Space of Cyborgian Identity Performance

		VIRTUAL	ACTUAL
	Self in virtual	Surface	Deep
	world is
	CONTAINER	• escape; endless possibilities	• quest to recover true self and
		through playfulness and cre-	uncover hidden facets of self
		ativity	• avatar as extension of user's
		• avatar as character distinct	self-identity
		from user's self-identity
	Self in virtual	Separate	Together
	world is
	RELATION	• game: inconsiderate of oth-	• simulation of real life: moral
		ers' feelings; no morals, ly-	obligation to person behind
		ing, misrepresentation	avatar
		• self-centered: acting in own	• family: commitment to others
		self-interest

  I go in Second Life most of the time, it helps me just not think about [my RL worries]. It helps me regain some control over my happiness and I just don't even think about [RL]. Engaging primarily in role-playing and building, both of which represented playful, creative expression rather than a quest for self-knowledge for Rene, she enacted the virtual as a place of endless possibility: And I think that's what I like the most about role-playing online because you don't have any boundaries. It can be whatever you want it to be.

  3: separate):We've had conversations before where he wasn't sure if it was what I still wanted to be partnered. And it's important for me to kinda reassure him that it is what I want. Because I don't want him to feel uncomfortable or for him to feel like he's not as important to me in my life anymore. So when we're on SL, we try to role-play … sometimes when we are talking about real life things, I have to remember who I am in my SL avatar and how I should really relate to him and how I should behave around him.

  surface): Probably the conversation initially was more Rene with Ira's player and then [once in a kneeling pose], it's more, "okay, I'm going to be Angela, I'm going to be subservient and my master is right or it doesn't' matter who's right, I just need to respect him and get his forgiveness etc." It was like me switching from Rene to full Angela at one point.By placing her avatar in a kneeling pose and thereby "switching from Rene to full Angela", Rene also switched from the RELATION schema to the CONTAINER schema, moving from a focus of self in relation to Ira, to one of self in relation to her avatar. The kneeling pose was also performative in that it enacted an ideal submissive.

This not only enabled Rene to "respect her master" in her identity performance on SL, but it also affected her actual emotions (6: deep):

In this moment [where she is kneeling], it calmed me down in real life too. Because I was pretty huffy.

[Laughs] … I can be very stubborn and prideful and whenever I kneel [as Angela], it's kind of like it's giving me permission to let go and just do the right thing even if it affects my pride.

Furthermore, the incident made Rene reflect on how destructive her pride and her tendency to hold grudges was both in SL and in RL: Probably [in RL I learned] the same thing. Don't hold grudges and don't focus and complain on a matter to the point where you've crossed the line … up to a certain point it's justified but once you get past that certain point, it's just painful for everybody.

Funding from the National Science Foundation, Grant IIS-0848692, made this research possible. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

All names are pseudonyms.


Alexandra Toll

Melissa Mazmanian
email: m.mazmanian@uci.edu

Inscribing Individuals into a Formalized System: The "Labour" Performed by Affective Spaces

Keywords: ethnography, practice, sociomateriality, affect, formalization, process, inscription

A substantial amount of ongoing work in organizations can be characterized as processes of formalization in which unique circumstances are rendered legible to organizational frameworks and inscribed into institutionalized ways of knowing and doing. Embedded in these processes is the need to manage, distance, and condition the affective and physical experience of the players involved. Using twelve months of ethnographic data gathered in the Family Law unit of the courts in a large county of California, we explore how formalization happens. We find that a dynamic combination of actants (technologies of formalization) engender affective spaces that serve as passage points in the process of formalization. These affective spaces condition the bodies and emotions of customers in a manner that generally mitigates unstable intensity and renders the customer ready to focus on the "facts" of the case. We suggest that by attending to the multiple actants in an environment we are able to interrogate both the origin and effects of "affect" as well as better understand how key passage points work in the service of formalization processes. In so doing we expand the conversation about the challenges of public service delivery and put forth the beginning of a theory of how affective spaces serve organizational and institutional goals.

Introduction

Processes of formalization occur in numerous organizational and public contexts. Despite longstanding attention to the design and outcomes of formalization in organizations literature, little is known about the enacted and situated process through which formalization is made to happen on an ongoing basis. Beyond the creation of roles, rules, and procedures, maintaining relatively stable formalized processes requires ongoing and effortful attention to the translation and inscription of its inputs. Formalization1 creates distance between an account and its inscribed form; it serves as a point of transition from a complex state to a streamlined mold. Embedded in this process is the work involved in managing, distancing, and conditioning the emotional and physical experience of the players involved. Thus, this research asks how formalized systems are made to happen in ongoing organizational practice.

The courts provide a rich context in which to study the ways in which formalized processes are enacted and re-enacted in everyday work. In Family Law, court employees and litigants interact in periods of complex family crises -divorce proceedings, child custody arrangements, and domestic violence disputes. 2 Moving such activities towards resolution requires that a complex and messy personal issue be rendered into a form legible to the courts and amenable to formalization. Thus, it is an ideal environment to examine the multiple social, spatial, and material ways in which the individual experience is modified, tamed, and brought into line with codified organizational practices of translation and inscription in a particularly charged environment. In so doing we shed light on the layers of affective, emotional, and physiological experience that condition and are conditioned by dynamics of formalization.

Through data gathered from a twelve-month ethnographic project in the Family Law unit of the courts in a large county of California, we highlight the ways in which the spaces of service encounters engender a particularly potent affective environment that conditions the process of formalization. We propose that such affective spaces form key passage points through a process of rendering messy inputs amenable to formalization. Further, the technologies of formalization employed during these passage points condition the bodies and emotions of customers 3 in a manner that generally mitigates unstable intensity, easing a process of formalization and rendering a negatively charged environment into a seeming rationalized and controllable space.

Literature

Formalization processes have been a topic of considerable inquiry in organizations literature and play a central role in Weber's conceptualization of the bureaucratic organizational form. Formalization involves "the extent of written rules, procedures, and instructions" for the accomplishment of work tasks [START_REF] Adler | Two Types of Bureaucracy: Enabling and Coercive[END_REF][START_REF] Battilana | Harnessing Productive Tensions in Hybrid Organizations: The Case of Work Integration Social Enterprises[END_REF]. Existing literature on formalization highlights its importance to the effectiveness of organizational work, ensuring role and task clarity [START_REF] Adler | Two Types of Bureaucracy: Enabling and Coercive[END_REF], enabling coordination [START_REF] Battilana | Harnessing Productive Tensions in Hybrid Organizations: The Case of Work Integration Social Enterprises[END_REF][START_REF] Canales | Weaving Straw into Gold: Managing Organizational Tensions between Standardization and Flexibility in Microfinance[END_REF], and providing a "common language" through the codification of tacit knowledge [START_REF] Grimaldi | Codified-Tacit and General-Specific Knowledge in the Division of Labour Among Firms: A Study of the Software Industry[END_REF]. Given the positive outcomes related to effective formalization systems, current work has begun to postulate about how to design enabling formalization systems for employee fulfillment and organizational performance and flexibility under complex and uncertain conditions [START_REF] Adler | Two Types of Bureaucracy: Enabling and Coercive[END_REF], [START_REF] Wouters | Developing Performance-Measurement Systems as Enabling Formalization: A Longitudinal Field Study of a Logistics Department[END_REF]. In examining the precursors and the effects of formalization systems, however, current scholarship has tended to overlook the ongoing, enacted and situated processes of rendering formalization systems viable once they are put in place in organizations.

As Vlaar et al. highlight, formalization is more than just an output (i.e. rules, procedures, contracts), but also "the process of codifying and enforcing outputs and behaviors" [START_REF] Vlaar | Towards a Dialectic Perspective on Formalization in Interorganizational Relationships: How Alliance Managers Capitalize on the Duality Inherent in Contracts, Rules and Procedures[END_REF] (p. 439), [START_REF] Ouchi | A Conceptual Framework for the Design of Organizational Control Mechanisms[END_REF]. A substantial amount of work in organizations can be characterized as ongoing processes of formalization achieved under unique circumstances involving inputs from external actors. In such cases, unique accounts of individuals are rendered legible to organizational frameworks and inscribed into stable, institutionalized formal procedures. The critical tasks of translating and inscribing individual accounts into a formalized system require ongoing work from organizational employees to manage, distance, and condition the emotional and physical experience of the actors so as to facilitate the process of formalization. However, scholars acknowledge that such behavioural aspects of formalization have been mostly overlooked [START_REF] Morand | The Role of Behavioral Formality and Informality in the Enactment of Bureaucratic versus Organic Organizations[END_REF][START_REF] Martin | An Alternative to Bureaucratic Impersonality and Emotional Labor: Bounded Emotionality at The Body Shop[END_REF]. While Weber's [START_REF] Weber | The Theory of Economic and Social Organization[END_REF] conception of the bureaucratic form highlights "formalistic impersonality" as a critical attribute that serves to eliminate or mitigate irrationality, emotionality, and friction [START_REF] Gerth | From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology[END_REF], the role of affect in processes of formalization remains undertheorized [START_REF] Morand | The Role of Behavioral Formality and Informality in the Enactment of Bureaucratic versus Organic Organizations[END_REF]. A growing literature on emotional labour, "the silent work of evoking and suppressing feeling" [START_REF] Hochschild | The Managed Heart[END_REF] (p. 7), provides a starting point for this exploration, highlighting the invisible labour required of employees to provide "good service". In this research, however, we emphasize the affective elements of this process rather than focusing on the emotional labour required of organizational employees in order to account for the spatial and material elements that comprise the spaces in which this process is performed.

In so doing we build on the affective turn of the last few decades in the humanities and social sciences. Such scholars have taken the focus in the study of affect away from the realm of the cognitive and subjective to consider the realm of bodily capacities. Clough conceptualizes affect as "bodily capacities to affect and be affected", and suggests that such a conceptualization allows affect to be considered "in relation to the technologies that are allowing us both to 'see' affect and to produce affective bodily capacities" [START_REF]The Affective Turn: Theorizing the Social[END_REF] (p. 2). This perspective opens the door for more holistic and comprehensive accounts of "affective labour" that go beyond the experience of one actor -traditionally the employee -in a complex system of labour. A focus on affect allows us to look beyond the "world of interiority of the human subject" [START_REF] Navaro-Yashin | Affective Spaces, Melancholic Objects: Ruination and the Production of Anthropological Knowledge[END_REF] (p. 12) in order to focus on the ways in which the affective environment is designed, managed, and rendered productive.

Space is not a mere container for interpersonal exchanges; affective labour is conducted in active spaces. Reckwitz suggests that attention to the interplay between affect, artifacts, and spaces can be achieved through the study of practices enacted in "affective spaces", bringing attention to the idea that "affects are often directed at artefacts and objects and are structured by the spaces these artefacts and objects form" [START_REF] Reckwitz | Affective Spaces: A Praxeological Outlook[END_REF] (p. 254). Affective labour, therefore, involves the enrolment of the layout of a space, the physical artifacts within it, the social norms that colour and shape assumptions, and the highly charged psychological and physiological bodies who interact in an affective space.

In this paper we interrogate how people, objects, and elements of physical space come together in two key affective spaces of the Family Courts. We employ an actor-network theoretical (ANT) perspective [START_REF] Callon | Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation[END_REF][START_REF] Latour | Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society[END_REF] in order to give equal consideration to the human and material actors, or actants, involved in this process. We find that ANT terminology provides a lens and a language with which to explore formalization as comprised of processes of translation, "the mechanism by which the social and the natural worlds progressively take form" [START_REF] Callon | Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation[END_REF] (p. [START_REF] Akrich | The De-Scription of Technical Objects[END_REF]) and inscription, "the result of translating one's interest into the material form" [START_REF] Callon | Techno-Economic Networks and Irreversibility[END_REF] (p. 143), [START_REF] Akrich | The De-Scription of Technical Objects[END_REF]. We suggest that formalization is made up of points of transition, obligatory passage points that serve to move actors "smoothly between different specificities and their materialities" [START_REF] Moser | Good Passages, Bad Passages[END_REF] (p. 205). Such passage points make court employees critical to the network and enable them to enrol customers and technologies of formalization to enact, legitimize, and stabilize the formalization process in support of organizational goals [START_REF] Callon | Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation[END_REF], [START_REF] Latour | Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory[END_REF].

We argue that by taking this perspective we are able to shed light on how the emotionally laden process of translating and inscribing personal family issues (e.g. divorce, domestic violence, child custody arrangements, etc.) into a formalized system works in practice. After reviewing our methods, we describe spaces that serve as key passage points in the formalizing process (i.e. the Self Help corridor and Clerks' office). We then present a suite of technologies of formalization such as physical layout, dress, information systems, and office supplies, and discuss how each works to prepare individuals and shepherd them through the practice of inscription. Finally, we examine how the threat of breakdown (or unwanted explosion of emotion) infuses ongoing practices and pervades the environment of each space. We conclude with a discussion of the role of passage points in maintaining and enabling formalized processes.

Data and Methods

This project is part of an ongoing ethnographic study in which we are investigating the work practices of the court in light of a new content management system's implementation. Thus far, we have collected twelve months of data from various departments within the Family Law unit of the court. Data include field notes from over 100 hours of observations, interviews with 50 court employees, and observations during various executive and operational meetings. In this paper we use a subset of these data to examine the practices and interactions that occurred within the Self Help and Clerks' offices. Specifically, the first author's observations of the Self Help office and the Clerks' office conducted during court visits ranging four to eight hours in length once or twice a week over approximately 70 hours were used. These observations were recorded in journals and then transcribed into copious field notes describing the layout of the spaces and interactions between employees and customers. In the course of observations, the first author engaged in numerous conversations with court employees. Such informal interviews were also recorded in daily field notes and transcribed as comprehensively as possible immediately after each visit. The first author took the stance of interested observer, combining at a distance observation and note taking with brief questions to court employees during breaks and transition times. The researcher dressed much like the court employees and was relatively unobtrusive. We have no reason to believe that she was obvious to customers of the court and she did not interact directly with this population.

Data were analysed using an inductive approach to theory building, reviewing field notes, transcripts, codes, and themes. In the course of this analysis, the assumptions and key concepts of actor-network theory resonated with us in two key ways: ANT provided a flat ontology with which to give equal consideration to people, objects, and spaces and provided a rich language with which to describe these actants and theoretical frames such as "translation", "inscription", and "passage points" that provided theoretical inroads towards making sense of these data.

Using a grounded theory approach [START_REF] Corbin | Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory[END_REF][START_REF] Charmaz | Constructing Grounded Theory: A Practical Guide Through Qualitative Research[END_REF] we first noticed the importance of the Self Help and Clerks' offices in getting people "through" the system and making progress on resolving whatever issue brought them into court. Thus, we first coded these data with an eye towards the individual experience of moving through the process of resolving an issue. In theorizing how the individual was affected by the material, physical, and social environment of these particular spaces we then conducted a second round of theoretical coding examining how bodies, objects, and elements of the physical space played into this process. These insights helped us see the Self Help and Clerks' offices as affective spaces that acted as key passage points through a highly codified bureaucratic system. Throughout the process of coding, the first author wrote theoretical memos that were shared and debated between authors.

Findings

The Self Help and Clerks' offices are tasked with dealing with difficult situations and getting to moments of temporary resolution, whether it be the next step in case processing or managing an emotional outburst. These steps delineate and propel movement through a process of transforming complex situations into inputs amenable to the existing formalized system. These offices provide multiple forms of "passage": legal transition from no file to an official case file; physical movement of information from the outside to the inside of the court's offices; symbolic movement from a private matter to public matter and from problem to resolution. They provide a passage from the uniquely personal and emotional experiences of customers into streamlined and rationalized legal accounts of a case. In order to gain traction on how these passages happen, we examine the spaces in which these transitions take place. After providing an empirical description of two key passage points, we examine how organizational and institutional goals are accomplished in these affective spaces through various technologies of formalization.

Empirical Description of Passage Points

Self Help. The Self Help office is located on the first floor of the court building. The line outside of Self Help often extends along the perimeter of the first floor, making its way around the boxed hallway that surrounds an open staircase at the centre of the room. Customers queue up in the lobby of the court before entering the Self Help corridor (which sits outside the main Self Help office). Bright, fluorescent light permeates the hallway into the Self Help corridor. At any point in time, the line for Self Help services usually has ten to fifty customers. On average, customers wait between twenty minutes to an hour before they make it to the threshold of the Self Help corridor. There are no chairs in the first floor hallway, but a wide ledge surrounds the centre staircase and customers who are waiting for help or filling out paperwork sit on it. Customers waiting to gain entry into the Self Help corridor must stand in order to secure their spot in the line.

Only a handful of customers are allowed to enter the corridor that precedes the service windows. Once a customer makes it inside the corridor, they are able to see the service windows. Upon reaching the entryway, customers typically wait an additional ten to twenty minutes to be called to a window.

Four service windows help customers. A clear sheet of plastic separates the employee from the customer at each window. A slate at the bottom of the plastic sheet is intended to allow customers and employees to move paper from one side to the other. A circular opening strategically placed at the centre of the plastic sheet is meant to allow conversation between customer and employee. The four windows are partially enclosed, and employees and customers can hear each other's conversations. The windows are housed in a tight rectangular office space. There is just enough room for the employees' workstations that accommodate their office supplies and computers, where they log customer tickets in an online tracking system or use the case management system to look up case information.

The workstations set up at the first three windows are standing stations. Employees either stand or sit at tall bar stools as they help customers. The fourth window is for disabled patrons, so the employee is seated behind the desk in a regular chair. The design is intended to mimic the height at which customers will be standing or sitting when they come to the windows and to allow customers and employees to engage at eye level. Two printers are placed between workstations. At the far end of the windows, a door leads to the Sheriff's break room.

The space in the corridor is cramped and people are constantly moving in and out. Only the customer requesting help may approach the window. The constant flow of people, the bright lighting, the hum of conversations between employees and customers, and the constant buzz of printers creates a loud environment.

After obtaining information at a service window, customers are asked to complete necessary paperwork and return for a document review consultation. Many customers complete their paperwork inside the court building and return for document review on the same day. Customers who request document review wait in the first floor lobby of the court building (the same area where the line for help at the windows is formed) and are called into the main office by one of the paralegals.

A large room next to the Self Help windows houses employee cubicles where paralegals provide document review consultations. A large centre table provides a makeshift consultation area. Often document review takes place at the centre table, and paralegals go back and forth to their desks to look up information on their computer. Self Help employees typically end customer interactions by directing them to the seventh floor where the Clerks' office is located and handing them a yellow post-it note with the office's location in order to file the paperwork that has just been completed.

Clerks' Office. The Clerks' office houses public filing windows where customers submit paperwork and obtain appointments for court hearings. The line to enter the Clerks' office windows extends into the hallway and wait time ranges from ten minutes to an hour. There is a check-in window on the right hand side of the room and eight filing windows line the left side.

The check-in window is enclosed with clear plastic like a fish bowl. Once customers check in to the Clerks' office, they obtain a number that will be used to call them when a clerk is ready to process their request. A waiting area is located across from the filing windows. Guests may accompany customers to the waiting area but cannot approach the windows. Once inside the waiting area, customers typically wait an additional ten minutes to an hour and a half to be called.

Waiting customers face the filing windows like an audience at a theatre; chairs are set up in four rows of twelve seats each. The seating area is dimly lit; occasionally customers bring their own books or magazines to squint over and pass the time. Often people are playing with their smart phones. A sign at the entrance asks people to silence their phones while in the office. The room is relatively quiet, although it can get loud depending on the time of day and the number of people who are waiting; a few people nod off as they wait for their turn. To the far right of the filing windows is a separate area that houses kiosks for electronic file review. Customers sit at computer workstations where they can review information from their case file.

The filing windows are set up in a similar fashion to the Self Help windows, but the space is larger and customers have more privacy when addressing the filing clerk. Since there is more room between each window, it is hard to hear other conversations, but not impossible. Each window has a pane of clear plastic in front of it that separates the employee from the customer with slots that allow employees and customers to hear one another and to pass information from one side to the other. An opaque sliding partition allows employees to close off their space from customers' view. Clerks may ask customers to take a seat while they process their request and then proceed to close the sliding partition until they are ready to call the customer back to complete the service transaction.

The main office space for case processing is located behind the filing windows. Cubicles line the back side of the room and employees who are not interacting with customers sit at their cubicles and process paperwork into the case management system. The office space is lined with shelves that contain paperwork yet to be processed as well as forms that must be sent to Records for digital scanning. The constant buzz of printers and continual stamping of paperwork is difficult to ignore.

Technologies of Formalization

By framing the Self Help and Clerk's offices as affective spaces that serve as passage points we are able to gain traction on how the practices of translation and inscription into legible court case files is performed and how these practices serve to animate the system of formalization in the courts. These technology-mediated work practices involve the coming together of physical spaces and workplace norms in service of organizational and institutional goals. We refer to this dynamic combination of actants as technologies of formalization, as they serve to engender affective spaces and to manage an inherently unstable environment.

Examples of technologies of formalization include space (the physical and sensory space in which these interactions take place), style (as evinced by material elements such as dress as well as communication practices and organizational norms), and objects (the artifacts that participate in the service transaction).

Next, we explore the ways in which these various technologies constitute and serve the ongoing processes of formalization. We highlight how they serve, occasionally undermine, and render possible the processes of translation and inscription that underlie formalization.

Space. We find that the physical and sensory spaces in which customers obtain help and file their paperwork configure the body in specific ways. Customers wait in line for lengthy periods without chairs or entertainment to minimize or distract from their bodily discomfort. The lighting is either too bright or too dim. Noise abounds. Customers are expected to endure this embodied experience without complaint and, in so doing, we assert they become physically disciplined into an emotional and physical state that eases the process of inscribing their experiences into the formalized system.

In addition to the physical/sensory spaces of waiting, the material experience of interacting with a court employee serves to manipulate the customer in ways that enable formalization. The plastic panes and partitions that enclose the windows serve to create distance between employees and customers by forcing bodies to strain and bend in order to effectively communicate. Partitions both stifle and carry sound and hinder visibility. Court employees are aware that interactions with customers are strained based on the embodied difficulties. During a tour of the Self Help office, David, 4 the supervisor, acknowledged the limitations of the space.

Whoever designed these offices didn't know what they were doing. See the partitions? Sure, they are there to protect the employees but they make it hard to hear. The room gets so loud. And the fact that they are partial makes it so that the conversations blur together. I am one of the loudest employees in the unit, and when I am helping someone, it is hard for the others to hear. And, look at the openings for the customers to talk to the employees. They are too high for most of our customers. So they end up bending over and using the slots for paper to communicate. They press their ears against the plastic in order to hear better. And the space is so cramped.

A close examination of these spaces reveals that the embodied experience they engender mirrors the nature of the tasks performed within them. The formalization process requires an active effort to delineate the boundary between private crisis and public record. Court employees are expected to translate customers' stories and mold the narrative of the case into "rational facts" that are intelligible to the case file template. Similarly, the physical spaces of service interactions create barriers that separate customers from court employees, break up their experience into different lines and rooms, and generate bodily discomfort that forces customers to contort and to mould themselves for the encounter. We argue that the affective and embodied experience of becoming ready to fill out and submit the necessary forms matters. This experience serves to prime the customer to accept a modularized and condensed version of a highly personal and often emotional narrative. The uncomfortable and overloaded body is a body prepared to give binary answers to difficult questions and strip details from a story that are not necessary to the formalized system.

Style. In addition to spatiality, a focus on affective spaces draws attention to the socio normative environment where interactions take place. The style, demeanour, and approach of court employees are critical to creating a passage point from private to public. Court employees dress in professional attire, a stark contrast to the casual garb of customers. The employees' speech and demeanour also highlight their institutional knowledge -in contrast to the lack of knowledge carried by the many self-represented litigants in Family Court who are interacting with the courts for the first time. The customers' transition into an institutional realm is punctuated by these forms of disparity that bring into relief the customers' need to find guidance in these passage points.

Further, the assumed formality in speech and dress of the employees creates a barrier between them and those they are serving. This barrier legitimates a particular form of interaction -kind, but businesslike. The employees' otherness can serve to jolt a customer out of the emotionally laden complexity of a situation and narrow in on the need to know the facts. When discussing his approach to engaging customers at the Self Help window, David highlights the importance of narrowing in on the facts with pointed questions. "After greeting them", David notes, "I immediately ask for their zip code and turn to my screen to type it in. I need the zip code anyway for my stats and this forces them to snap into the moment and to focus on giving me the information that I need in order to help them".

By asking a simple question David creates a neutral starting point with which to engage customers and move them through this key passage point. Like David, Sam, a lead clerk at the Clerks' office, engages customers in a friendly manner but opens with a question that highlights her position in the exchange as the professional who needs information in order to lend her expertise to the situation: I am always friendly and professional with the customers. But I get a feel for what they are trying to share with me. Are they giving me information that I need? If they are venting, I feel for them, but I have to focus the conversation. I'll politely stop them and tell them that I need to focus on processing their paperwork in order to get it right. Sometimes, I'll tell them to take a seat while I process their paperwork and that I will call them back to the window when I am done. I then turn to my computer and start typing or searching the system. If it is loud or if they keep approaching me to talk, I politely close the window so that I can focus on what I am doing. When I call them back, I explain everything I've done in detail and what they have to do next.

Sam's ability to distance herself from the potentially emotionally charged nature of the exchange serves multiple functions. Her continual work to bring the focus of the interaction back to its practical and "productive" elements (e.g. case filing, calendaring of hearings, etc.), while remaining professional and courteous serves to both guide and control the customer. Sam's formal dress, polite demeanour and professional persona work in strange alignment with the embodied experience of waiting prior to reaching her. Sam guides the storytelling while implicitly managing the possibility for emotional spillover by the customer. This process is made easier because the customer has been rendered ready through the waiting process.

While not every customer will respond to the affective environment in the same manner, we witnessed the effects of these affective spaces on drawn faces, docile bodies, and a willingness to answer questions about complex scenarios with short and truncated responses. Thus, we argue that the sensory, physical, and socio normative aspects of these affective spaces work together to guide the customer forward in the processes of translation and inscription that constitute formalization.

Objects. In addition to managing the affective spaces in which service takes place, a variety of tools and objects perform the work of inscribing case files throughout the service encounter. These tools include the computers and embedded case management system in which records are ultimately codified, the paper forms in which information is captured and streamlined, and the office supplies that are used to direct, highlight, erase, and organize customer information into the form that is required for processing.

David, for example, literally wears his tools around his waist. An actual belt contains a stapler and staple remover, highlighters, ballpoint pens, whiteout pens, and post-it notes. The office supplies in his tool belt serve to manage the interaction and direct the flow of information through the passage point. Similarly, the following encounter between Sylvia, a paralegal in the Self Help office, and Mary, a customer involved in a document review consultation, exemplifies the use of office supplies to direct attention to and guide the process of translation and inscription.

In Sylvia strives to complete the document review session, attend to Mary's questions while eliciting information required to complete the form, and Mary in completing the form accurately without giving her legal advice. 5 Familiar office tools enable Sylvia to guide Mary through document review and focus on the information required by the system. By simply highlighting the section of the form that requires attention, Sylvia's actions lead Mary to suspend her emotional response to her husband's act of abandonment and to simplify the decision to the selection of a check box.

In some cases, however, tools undermine the practices of codification and inscription necessary for the formalization process. The electronic case management system, for example, contains a record of every interaction between the customer and the legal system so as to facilitate case processing within the court. However, a computer screen that displays all case records, when visible by the customer, threatens to expose the complex links between multiple elements and, in so doing, complicate the practice of inscription (in which information needs to be presented as linear and distinct). As Sylvia describes:

The main reason that I use the centre table for consultations is that I don't want customers looking over my shoulder at the computer screen. If they are here for document review, I want us to focus on the document that they are getting ready to submit. If we sit at my desk and they look at their case online, they start asking questions about other documents and the status of the case and the consultation gets out of control. This way, every time we need to consult something in the system, I have to stop and walk over to my desk. It forces them to think through what they want to ask and what they tell me about their case.

Table 1 summarizes the various technologies of formalization, highlighting their functions and various roles they play in the process. They inform, constitute, and shape the process of formalization by enabling practices that limit, control, and bottle the potential intensity of the emotional exchange. As such we find these key passage points serve as affective spaces that anesthetize potentially negatively charged environments into seemingly regularized and controlled environments oriented around the practical elements of case processing. Office supplies (highlighter, whiteout pen, stapler, filing stamp, etc.)

Focus attention on the practical elements of the case

Help to streamline and simplify the complex narrative of a case

Preparing for Breakdowns

Various forms of breakdown threaten the environment and stability of these affective spaces, thereby compromising their viability as anesthetizing and effective passage points. Breakdowns can occur at various levels of the organizational chain; examples include communication and material failures during the service encounter (e.g. emotional outbursts, lost or missing paperwork, etc.) and organizational process changes or disruptions (e.g. the implementation of new technological systems, backlogs, etc.). Next, we examine examples of breakdowns and the ongoing efforts in anticipation and reaction.

Communication failures.

A customer who arrives at the courtroom in an angry and anxious state may find him or herself increasingly frustrated about the wait as he/she makes their way through a line. Such an accumulation of anger, anxiety, and frustration may not always dissipate over the course of accommodating the body to the embodied experience of waiting and travelling through lines and inuring the senses to this particular environment. In fact, such an environment might foment an angry outburst when a customer is confronted with an upsetting fact or confusing instruction. In these moments, court employees are confronted with an unruly situation. David, the Self Help supervisor, explains the ways in which he and his staff respond to emotional outbursts at the service window.

When someone comes in here and starts yelling and making a scene, we do the best we can to calm them down, help them, and get them going. Then, it is all hands on deck. We all go to the other side of the windows with clipboards and pens in hand. We try to serve the customers who were in the office at the time of the outburst quickly and get them going. We smile and get them help quickly. We wait to bring other people in. We clear the air. We need to clear the air. We can't have these kinds of outbursts affecting the mood of the room. People come in here with problems and if the air is tense, they feel it and it affects them. It is all hands on deck and we clear the room as quickly as possible. Once we've cleared the room, we can go back to normal. We get behind the windows and then bring in a new batch. But, we've cleared the air and manage to get the negative energy out.

When negative emotions surface and disrupt the order that is negotiated by the formalization process, employees find ways to break the distance between themselves and customers and to increase the pace of service delivery. As David's approach suggests, technologies of formalization are temporarily set aside. Court employees remove themselves from the plastic enclosures that create a physical distance from customers; they move away from the computer screens that take their gaze away from customers; they increase smiles to break the demeanour of professional experts. New tools are enlisted to regain stability. In these cases, clipboards serve a special purpose. They call into being temporary surfaces that facilitate inscription while allowing employees to stand next to their customers. This enrolment of new tools and strategies suggests that employees actively foster the emergence of a new, if temporary, affective environment -one through which the "negative energy" is cleared out.

Process Changes and Disruptions. Breakdowns also occur within the organization. Changes in organizational process have a direct effect on the affective spaces of work. For example, the recent introduction of a new case management system caused a great deal of anxiety and frustration among employees. Managers launched an internal campaign to ease tension; their slogan was "Keep Calm and Odyssey On". Signs were posted throughout the building for customers to see and read, "Please be Patient. Information Loading". In addition, during the first week of implementation, back office employees were asked to work the lines of waiting customers, carrying clipboards and checking on customers. Throughout this week, employees were asked/allowed to wear casual clothing. Tina, the manager of the Family Law Unit, explains that the reasons behind this procedural change were twofold:

During [system] go live, we had employees here wearing T-shirts and jeans. It was casual day every day. We knew they were hurting and we wanted them to be comfortable. We also wanted to let customers know that something was going on, that we were going through something; we were not at our best. So, we dressed casually. We were one of them [the customer] for the week. We were walking around and talking to them, calming them down and sharing in their frustration. It humanized us. They saw we were human; we were one of them, and we were trying our best.

Such change challenges the institutional authority and expert status of court employees. The same style and demeanour of court employees that once facilitated passage into a particular institutional sphere now create dissonance, as they lose status as a marker of expertise. In order to manage this tension between a formal, structured environment and a new, unstable, and evolving practice, managers actively dismantle technologies of formalization into more intimate and human elements. Such an approach to the crisis has the potential to create a different kind of bond between employees and customers, one that will engage both of them in a relationship of co-creation of the case through mutual questioning and learning.

Table 2 summarizes the forms of breakdown that emerged in our data collection. We witnessed a transformation of the sociomaterial and affective space that emerges in response to breakdown. However, there are costs involved in such a transformation. It involves fundamental changes to the practices, pacing, and embodied experience of work. Away from their computer and armed with only paper and clipboards, employees must find time to complete the work of creating and modifying electronic case files after a service encounter rather than alongside it. Furthermore, fostering a qualitatively different affective environment through more intimate customer encounters and a heightened awareness of negative emotions (in both customers and employees) involves new tactics and practices that may increase emotional strain. Understanding the preparations involved in dealing with the threat of breakdowns in key passage points highlights the ways in which technologies of formalization are effortful elements of a process that is generally experienced as, stable, effective, and normalized to those within it.

Discussion

In the courts, the Self Help and Clerks' offices provide points of transition from private family crisis to public record, from messy stories to formalized inputs. Our analysis provides a deeper understanding into how these messy and unstable practices of translation and inscription happen. The two key passage points involved in this process are critical to the successful enrolment of customers into the system. They embody the transition from discomfort to relief, mimicking the transition from problem to resolution that customers seek. As Callon articulates, "the notion of translation emphasizes the continuity of displacements and transformations which occur in [a] story" [START_REF] Callon | Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation[END_REF] (p. 18). In this process, displacements occur along and within each passage; displacements of negative emotion and personal crisis into physical discomfort followed by displacements of physical relief into an affective environment that renders the inscription of customer accounts into the system possible. Customers must wait in long lines, stand for extended periods, and endure affective discomfort before they make their way into these offices. Upon reaching their destination, they find moments of relief and attention to their needs. In these moments, translation and transformation into the formal system are possible with the active enrolment of technologies of formalization that displace individual interests into mutual accommodation in service of the formalization process. Technologies of formalization enable displacements of physical relief and emotional exhaustion into affective neutrality, enabling the process of translation and inscription into the legal system.

The passages that are afforded within these spaces may not be pleasant but they are productive in so far as they enable movement along the system [START_REF] Moser | Good Passages, Bad Passages[END_REF]. Without bowing to questions of organizational design or human intentionality, we argue that the affective flows called into being through the various technologies of formalization in these key passage points serve organizational and institutional goals. In sum, these spaces condition the bodies and emotions of customers in a manner that generally mitigates unstable intensity and renders the customer ready to focus on the "facts" of the case, as delineated by the legal system.

This effect appears to be in line with theories of bureaucratic structure and its ability to elicit affective neutrality [START_REF] Weber | The Theory of Economic and Social Organization[END_REF], [START_REF] Parsons | The Social System[END_REF]. However, the lens of affective spaces suggests that achieving an agentic engagement with an organization does not emerge in a vacuum. Rather, the anesthetizing quality of the bureaucratic interaction is a product of the affective spaces that bring into possibility certain processes of formalization. Such spaces serve to stabilize the formalization process in support of individual, organizational, and institutional goals. It is in the interest of individual customers to successfully translate and inscribe his/her unique situation into the formalized system in order to realize a desired goal (e.g. divorce, custody arrangement, restraining order, etc.). It is in the interest of the organization that the formalized system "works" such that influx of inputs are made codifiable and actionable and effective outcomes are achieved. And it is in the interest of the institution that legal service appears stable, consistent, and legitimate. Thus, we argue that affective spaces are a critical aspect of both specific formalizing practices and the maintenance of bureaucracies more generally.

On a different note, a move towards virtualizing service encounters through information systems poses new challenges. In establishing how affective flows in key spaces foster formalization processes, this work calls into question the assumption that customers would be better "served" by a virtual process that removes physical discomfort and interpersonal interaction when establishing cases in Family Law. Having outlined the importance of space, people, and materials in the enactment of effective inscription, the removal of these very elements requires a new way of thinking about how organizational and institutional goals may be achieved through new media and in the absence of spatial and affective management.

Conclusion

In this paper we examine the ways in which physical space, objects, and flows of affect serve the organizational and institutional goals of translation, inscription, and formalization. Making the personal public and legible to a formal institution is a precarious endeavour. We argue that translating volatile personal issues into an institutionalized system and moving a case and its parties to a legally recognized "resolution" is an ongoing and effortful accomplishment brought into being by numerous actants. By embracing how

Table 1 .

 1 Technologies of Formalization

			Comment [AT1]: Table should not break between pages
	Technologies of Formalization Examples	Role (inform, constitute, and shape the process
			of formalization)
	Space	Physical layout (rooms, service windows,	Materialize and constitute the formalization
		consultation table, etc.)	process through modularization and delineation
		Lines	Draw attention to the physical and material
		Plastic partitions	through bodily discomfort
		Sensory elements (lighting, noise, etc.)

Table 2 .

 2 Breakdowns

	Types of	Examples	Threat to	New	Role & Implications
	Breakdown		Formalization Process	Objects/Practices that
				Emerge
	Communication	Emotional outbursts	Threaten the negotiated	Clipboards	Role served:
	Failures	Lost/missing paperwork	environment	Signage & slogans	Remove physical distance
	Organizational Process Changes & Disruptions	Errors/inaccuracies in the case management systems New system implementation Backlog Internet service interruptions	Heighten the negative affective state of the court's customers Undermine the professional otherness and expertise of court employees	along office walls Physical mirroring Collapsed space of employee-customer interaction Casual dress	Transition from muted exchange of facts to intimate co-creation of case Implications: Change the pacing and timing of work
		Personnel changes			Change the affective environment of the spaces
					and interactions
					Transform/increase
					affective labour that goes
					into managing inscription.

Formalization, as defined in Dictionary.com, involves "giv[ing] a definite form or shape [in order] to state or restate in symbolic form".

The majority of Family Law cases are self-represented. Under such circumstances, the need to create effective formalization processes becomes all the more pronounced, as parties lack familiarity and preparation with court proceedings. This creates challenges for all aspects of the formalization process.

"Customer" is an emic term used by administrative employees of the courts for all people they serve and interact with -litigants, family members, etc.

Pseudonyms were used in place of the names of court employees in order to preserve anonymity.

Court employees must limit their interactions to the provision of legal information. Providing legal advice without being the attorney of record on a case is punishable with a fine. Family Law Facilitator Act, Family Code Sections 10000-10015.

bodily experience and emotions are conditioned in this sociomaterial space, we are able to shed light on how this process of formalization is made to happen. In so doing, we look beyond human intentionality to explore the multidimensional forms of "labour" that go into taming the individual experience and act in service of organizational and institutional goals.

In sum, this paper proposes an ontological shift in understanding "affective labour" and the affective practice of translation, inscription, and formalization. We suggest that by attending to the multiple actants in an environment that, consciously or otherwise, produces and reproduces "effective" affective spaces, we are able to interrogate both the origin and effects of "affect" as well as better understand how key passage points work in the service of formalization processes. In so doing we expand the conversation about the challenges of public service delivery and put forth the beginning of a theory of how affective spaces serve organizational and institutional goals.