Affective intensities: Emotion, race, gender and the push and pull of bodies
English Teaching: Practice & Critique
ISSN: 1175-8708
Article publication date: 2 November 2020
Issue publication date: 1 December 2020
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to investigate the ways affective intensities arise in the intra-actions within an assemblage (three Black girls, objects such as computers and hoodies, institutionalized discourse associated with race and successful participation in schools) as the girls create multimodal responses to literature. This paper shows how the intra-actions among the girls and material objects produce affective intensities or new ways of being and becoming through which youth reauthor themselves as central and peripheral participants.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors present an illustrative case of the ways girls’ embodied literacy identities emerge when Jillian, Isa, and Rhianna intra-act with materials in an assemblage that includes their material-discursive positionings through qualitative and multimodal interaction analysis.
Findings
The analysis describes the ways the girls agentively participate through play, composing and moments of becoming (fluid subjectivities) that include emotive acts such as acts of solidarity, loving connectedness and possible frustration that inform who counts and who can be successful in the classroom.
Research limitations/implications
This single case study gives a descriptive, in-depth analysis of the ways affective intensities emerge as three girls respond to literature to understand their embodied and discursive practices within the composing process.
Originality/value
To fully understand agency and the students’ emergent subjectivities, the authors combine embodiment and material-discursive analysis to understand affective intensities that evolve during three Black girls’ composing processes and the ways the girls’ subjectivities shift within the intra-actions.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge and thank Drs Bridget Dalton and Elizabeth Dutro who inspired and helped shape the multimodal, embodied, and critical literacies dissertation project that informs this article. They would also like to thank Ms. Friedman (pseudonym), the classroom teacher, for her generous support and partnership throughout the work as well as the students and their brilliant insights about the world, school and literature.
Citation
Schmidt, K.M. and Beucher, R. (2020), "Affective intensities: Emotion, race, gender and the push and pull of bodies", English Teaching: Practice & Critique, Vol. 19 No. 4, pp. 403-416. https://doi.org/10.1108/ETPC-11-2019-0147
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited