from sarah ahmed’s “orientations: toward a queer phenomenology” - “i have always been struck by the phrase ‘a path well trodden’ a path is made by repeatedly passing over ground. we can see the path as a trace of past journeys, made out of footprints, traces of feet that tread and in treading create a line on the ground. when we see the line of the ground before us, we tend to walk on it, as a path clears the way. so we walk on the path as it is before us but it is only before us as an effect of being walked upon. the lines that direct us, as lines of thought as well as lines of motion, are in this way performative: they depend on the repetition of norms and conventions, of routes and paths taken, but they are also created as an effect of this repetition. to say that lines are performative is to say that we find our way, we know which direction we face, only as an effect of work, which is often hidden from view. so in following the directions, i arrive, as if by magic.”