(Re)Cognizing the Ordinary: The Affective Potential of Things

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 53
  In Roundtable Session: Thinking Methods With/In/Against Post-Qualitative Research

Abstract

A slip in alertness from the energy encircling her, the writer had taken for granted the realities and potentialities of the every-day. Too busy waiting for something extraordinary to materialize, she was numb to the material(s) around her. Amid glue sticks/markers/cardstock/stencils/paint trays/pastels/iPhones/gummy pouches/crumbs inhabiting the tabletops, “Matter [began to] shimmer with undetermined potential” (Stewart, 2007, p. 23). By stimulating students’ emotions qua evocative photograph(ed) matter and by providing them with the vibrant materials necessary to communicate the emotions that infused their body-minds, an invitation to affect was extended to this otherwise ordinary Just Club event. Through re-attunement to the matter-realities of becoming-with this paper, the author was (re)awakened to the vibrancy of matter and the intra-active happenings surrounding her.

Author

• Briana Kidd, University of Alabama