The Felt‐Force of Literacy

Abstract

In this commentary, the author brings together three articles in Reading Research Quarterly's special issue on affect theory-Nichols and Coleman; Garcia, Guggenheim, Stamatis, and Dalton; and Burnett and Merchant-under the overarching concepts of atmosphere and mobile architecture. How does one describe the felt-force of right now, of masks-ventilators-fearabundanceofcaution-distance-anxiety-Zoom-school-Ahmaud-George-Breonnafire-rage-murder-police? I wrote this commentary in the midst of the COVID-19 global pandemic and ongoing protests for Black lives. Words cannot represent the collective feeling of this moment. How do you describe the felt-force of right now? Of masks-ventilators-fearabundanceofcaution-distance-anxiety-Zoom-school-Ahmaud-George-Breonna-fire-rage-murder-police? Something presses on my body, each day, dif ferently-feeling more pronounced when I have to make a decision (should my child return to school?), when I read a headline about the murder of yet another Black man by the police (this morning: Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin), or when the president of the United States speaks ("It is what it is"). 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 (