Feeling Worlds: Affective Imaginaries and the Making of Democratic Literacy Classrooms

Abstract

The authors examined how the spaces and structures of literacy classrooms were organized, inhabited, and felt by teachers and students in a new projectbased high school. The authors attended specifically to the political valence of these feelings: how educators characterized certain spatial arrangements (modular furniture and flexible seating) and curricular structures (asynchronous learning) as feeling democratic, in contrast to an authoritarianism that they associated with other instructional orders. The authors recognized that these descriptors, more than mere metaphors, were expressions of affective attachments that conditioned the classrooms that literacy educators worked to build-what the authors call affective imaginaries. These imaginaries, the authors argue, have material consequences both for how educators shape the world of the literacy classroom and for what practices are sanctioned, celebrated, and undermined therein. The authors drew from a three-year immersive ethnography in an urban public school to explore how educators imagined and shaped democratic literacy classrooms, how students worked within and against these imaginaries, and how resulting frictions impacted literacy learning in these classroom-worlds. Findings center on two interrelated tensions: (1) how infrastructures associated with democratic classrooms, at times, worked against other infrastructures on which students depended for literacy practice; and (2) how these incongruities led to new ways of surveilling students' autonomy in their literacy learning. The authors conclude by considering how these findings might guide literacy educators not only in attending to the ostensive, normative, and performative dimensions of affective imaginaries in classrooms but also in opening alternate imaginaries, better attuned to the equitable flourishing of all students. It is the middle of August, two weeks before students will return from summer vacation. I [Phil] am seated with teachers from the Innovation School [all names are pseudonyms] in the science lab, one of the few rooms in the building with reliable air conditioning. Over the last week, educators have refined curricular units in preparation for the year ahead. Now, in the final days of summer professional planning, they are translating this work in the design of their physical classroom environments. The principal, Ben, pacing the room, asks teachers to list qualities of their "visionary space, " their ideal setting for teaching and learning. "Temperature-controlled, " one teacher says, fanning herself with a notebook. The group laughs and begins adding other suggestions. Some name material features: modular furniture and open space. Others give abstract descriptions: student-centered, interactive, and participatory. Together, the teachers determine that the thread that holds their vision together is that the classroom should feel "democratic. " Writing the term on a whiteboard, Ben proposes that teachers use this imagined ideal as a guide for the day's planning. "You're not just arra...

The Felt‐Force of Literacy

“…into whatever world takes form in the future. Nichols and Coleman (2020), for instance, draw directly on the concept of affective atmosphere to inform their notion of affective imaginaries. Affective imaginaries, they argue, were "expressions of affective attachments that conditioned the classrooms that literacy educators worked to build. "…”

“…Although these two seismic events cannot be untangled, I have come to know them, in part, through the concept of affective atmosphere, which Nichols and Coleman (2020), Garcia, Guggenheim, Stamatis, and Dalton (2020), and Burnett and Merchant (2020) elegantly account for, in various ways, in this special issue of Reading Research Quarterly . The literacy spaces described by these authors are filled with an energy, with what human geographers, predominantly, refer to as an affective atmosphere (Anderson, 2009; Ash, 2013; Bissell, 2010; McCormack, 2008).…”

“…Although the three articles discussed here were written in a different space‐time, months before COVID‐19 would disproportionally ravage communities (Wortham, 2020), they offer accounts of atmospheres that can serve literacy and learning scholars as we, collectively, move forward into whatever world takes form in the future. Nichols and Coleman (2020), for instance, draw directly on the concept of affective atmosphere to inform their notion of affective imaginaries. Affective imaginaries, they argue, were “expressions of affective attachments that conditioned the classrooms that literacy educators worked to build.” Affective imaginaries signal “aspirational worlds” that teachers and students collaboratively animate and shape.…”

“…Together, these articles point toward literacy learning that is, in itself, haunting. Nichols and Coleman (2020), for instance, eschew literacy classrooms that are premade, prestructured, predetermined, instead calling for worldmaking—a kind of collective, affectively charged production that “can transform even the most fastidiously held imaginary.” Only through this kind of worldmaking can learners and teachers, together, continue to be haunted, continue to create resonances that propel further learning together.…”

“…Having entered the spaces presented by Nichols and Coleman (2020), Garcia and colleagues (2020), and Burnett and Merchant (2020), I still have to return to the current moment from which I write and the question I offered to begin this commentary: How do you describe the felt‐force of right now? Although it was an escape to enter the literacy worlds of 2019, I return to 2020.…”