af Jette Kofoed

Paper presented at Thomas Coram Research Unit, Institute of Education, University of London, March 17, 2009

Abstract

This paper takes it point of departure in a particular incident that involves a number of human and non-human actors. A number of teenage girls are by their teacher pointed out as involved in a serious case of cyber bullying.

As the case is uncovered in interviews, it becomes more and more difficult to confirm the starting point, the red threat or even some kind of agreement as to the content of the case, the development of it, the number of actors involved, the distribution of positions etc.

The actors involved in this case are interacting in multiple ways. They are blaming each other, insulting each other, embracing each other, crying their hearts out, cutting themselves, making up and breaking up. They are all in pain, alternating with joy.

Different pains, different joys, but none of them seem to come down to hierarchies of pain or grief. No pattern of one bullier, one victim and a number of bystanders would reveal itself to the researcher. It seems as if a number of desires and anti-desires are participating in the ongoing positioning of an infinite number of subjects.

In this paper I reflect upon how these findings thus challenge the hypothesis that positions in cases of cyberbullying are unambiguously distributed among human bodies, and that these distributions are steady.

It does so by following the tales of tangled cases, of messy spaces, of threads that ramify across identifiable cases and reveal themselves as circulations of emotions, of positions of dignity, of enacting technologies and of subjects and bodies such as Sandra who might be bullied today, yet might be the bullier next week. And as David who might be witnessing the bullying of Sandra, and yet might be the one receiving death threats next week.

The particular case presented here is drawn from a substantive qualitative empirical set of data from the research project Cyber@bullying, which is part of the Danish research project eXbus (Exploring Bullying in Schools www.exbus.dk ). The data consist of drawings, written essays, observations and interviews with 10-16 year olds in five different Danish primary schools.