A Thousand Stripshows: Affect as a rhizomatic amplifier in emotional, aesthetic and sexualised labour

Stripping and strippers have garnered a lot of academic interest across a range of disciplines including management, psychology, gender studies and dance theory and have been studied using a variety of research styles, with methods including participant observation, surveys, interviews, ethnographies and auto-ethnography. Within management studies, emotional labour has often been a key focus for how these workers in a stigmatised profession perform the role requirements. This particular thesis began while I was working as a stripper and was intended to focus predominately on emotional labour within strip clubs. Over the PhD process it has developed into a study of the immaterial labours of affective, emotional, aesthetic and sexualised labour and expanded into a holistic understanding for how these labours interact with one another. Over semi-structured individual interviews with 18 strippers, the understanding of these labours individually was developed into an interpretation named Affective Amplification, a comprehension of affect that it can also be present and tactically engaged with to amplify the effects of emotional, aesthetic and sexualised labour. This understanding was aided by engaging with Deleuze and Guattari’s Rhizome as a philosophical lens, as the chaotic and individualistic nature of a rhizome mirrored well with the chaotic and individualistic strategies used and experienced by strippers.