Countering aesthetic violence: Queer and endarkened youth navigate aesthetic microaggressions across two contexts

• In Event: Disrupting Heteronormativity: Digital and Transnational Literacies in Practice

Abstract

In the current historical moment, racism and queerphobia are paramount concerns to literacy educators; how oppressions operate aesthetically–through connotative and implicit meanings–has been under examined. Drawing on theories critical aesthetics, we trace aesthetic microaggressions in the literacy practices of youth of color including queer youth across two research contexts. Findings suggest that youth both were impacted by systematic patterns of aesthetic violence and that they countered this violence through their own agentive aesthetic literacy practice.

Authors

• Scott Storm, University at Albany, State University of New York

• Reka C. Barton, University of Maryland, College Park