Multimodal Composing as a Means of Preservation: A Self-Study of Embodied Literacies, Legislation, and Bodily Autonomy

• In Event: Toward Critical Multimodal Methodologies: Analytical Tools for Disrupting Hegemonic Structures in Educational Research

Abstract

Objectives, Theoretical Grounding, Methods.
Teacher educators develop intersectional personal/professional identities. Some identities develop as means of protection and preservation. From one perspective, the development of intellectual, emotional, spiritual, and physical sanctuary with/in conflicted professional education spaces is understandable given the increasingly public politicization and policing of teachers’ instructional decision-making (i.e., their words, actions in classrooms). Simultaneously, educators must investigate acts of self-protection, like self-censorship, fear-based decision-making, and biases serving to protect one/some, also cause harm to others (Picower, 2009). Critical self-study (Denzin, 2005; Tondreau et al., 2022) can be a space to interrogate preservation, asking: When do we feel we need to protect ourselves, and from whom or what? How do these feelings manifest in our professional lives, and what shifts disrupt us so that we engage in self-critique? What itches us so much that we cannot quit picking the scab?

Itching constantly after the United States Supreme Court decision of June 24, 2022, I began photographing trees. The 6-3 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization eliminated a person’s constitutional right to an abortion in the United States. My scratching grew into concerns over bodily autonomy – what it meant and who might have it - creating a multi-faceted preservationist response. These collections of photographs served as texts for “diffractive reading” (Müller & Kruger, 2022) in which I sought to understand my experiences, and to catalog the discordant feelings and conflicting beliefs that itched my mind (Figures 2, 3). I continued to collect and compose, creating a method of self-interrogation. I took up arts-based research methods (Cahnmann-Taylor & Siegesmund, 2017) connected to poetic inquiry (Faulkner, 2009) and embodied literacies exploration through textual analysis (Enriques et al., 2016) as theoretical and methodological grounding for exploring body autonomy through multimodal composition.

The central research question is: You can’t erase my body in the world, Can you? The project included individual inquiry and compositions co-created in collaborative spaces. The investigation resulted in multimodal visual, poetic, and sculptural compositions. IRB approval was gained to discuss the nested community/classroom context of this project.

Findings and Significance.
Race arose consistently, as questions of bodily autonomy are racialized, inequitable experiences in the United States. Investigation into embodied literacies (Enriques et al., 2016) via young adult and new adult fictions pushed me to think into race and bodies, and our history of a dehumanizing chattel slavery system.

Aspects of carcerality - control, power, and restriction -, dis/ability, and aesthetics (Figure 4) were also made visible. For example, different bodies are positioned as more and less able to acquire rights towards autonomy and as more or less “beautiful.”

In addition to constructions/limitations of human rights to body autonomy within neoliberal, raciocapitalist, heteronormative perspectives, this work pushes against White supremacy culture features (Okun, n.d.) of objectivity, binaries, individualism, preeminence of the written word, and belief in one right way. Compositions also radiate influences of paternalism and power hoarding (Figure 5).

Author

• Julianna E. Lopez Kershen, University of Oklahoma