Empowerment as affective encounter: Navigating the emotional edges of difficult knowledge texts in senior English

Submitted by: Allayne Horton
Abstract: Revised: “What am I supposed to feel?” Neoliberalism, disembodiment & an economy of affect in Senior Secondary English


Mandated texts and practices of reading in English classrooms have always been underwritten by broader political and ideological agendas (see for example, Green & Cormack, 2008; Hunter, 1988). In this contemporary curriculum moment in Senior Secondary English in Australia, entrenched neoliberal policies compel disembodiment, standardisation and the overarching pursuit of marketable skills (Bjerke, 2023; McKnight, 2016; McLean Davies, Doecke & Mead, 2013). The capacious and unpredictable agency of the literary text to affect its reader (Ahern, 2019; Grosz, 2001; Vallelly, 2019) and precipitate dynamic reader response (Hickey-Moody, 2009; Rosenblatt, 1969, 1982; Sutherland, 2019; Vernay, 2016), is seemingly incongruent with this rigid and rational neoliberal paradigm. Mobilising theories of affect and a feminist politics of emotion (Ahmed, 2004; Boler, 1999; Cvetkovich, 2003; Dernikos, 2018), this paper asks, what becomes of the affective dimensions of the literary encounter, intended and experienced, in Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) English?


Reading ethnographic data from VCE English classes alongside curriculum and policy documents for the language or resonances of affect (Berg et al., 2019; Horton & McLean Davies, 2022), this paper finds an intended curriculum diffused with ‘productive’ or ‘entrepreneurial’ affects, and an experienced curriculum that can be characterised by ‘anaesthetised literary encounters’ that are largely teleological or performative. These findings call attention to the need for teachers and curriculum designers to think differently about how to mediate literary encounters when texts are entangled with high-stakes assessments.


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