Literacy as a Body Without Organs: Democratic Assemblages, Multiplicities, and Intensities of Multimodal Practices

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This symposium draws on Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) metaphor of the “body without organs” to open democratic dialogue about the assemblages, democratic multiplicities, and intensities of multimodal literacy practices that are often augmented and metamorphosed by digital technologies. Enacting this vision, we position our work to “experiment with the opportunities it offers, find an advantageous place on it, [and] find potential movements of deterritorialization” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, p. 161). The session brings together literacy theorists in the digital times to produce both flows and conjunctions of ideas. We address one challenge: to “try out continuums of intensities segment by segment…” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, p. 161).

Sub Unit

• SIG-Writing and Literacies

Chair

• Kathy Ann Mills, Queensland University of Technology

Papers

• Literacy, Becoming, and a Corporeal Confederacy - Kevin M. Leander, Vanderbilt University

• Dismantling the Organism: Race and Power in a First Nations Music Video - Kathy Ann Mills, Queensland University of Technology

• Assemblages of Self Across Time: Adam at Ages 6 and 12 - Catherine F. Compton-Lilly, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Assembling Critical Literacy for English Language Learners: Exploring Power in the Territory Beyond Reason - Jennifer Alford, Queensland University of Technology

• Complicating the Digital Romance - Peter Smagorinsky, University of Georgia

Discussant

• Arnetha F. Ball, Stanford University