Mourning The Chrysalids: Currere, affect, and letting go

Abstract

This paper revisits the well-known and often-taught novel The Chrysalids toward a reconsideration of the novel’s place within curriculum and the pedagogies it may offer. Framed as a mourning ceremony, a way of revisioning what the novel could mean in the present by saying goodbye to what it has meant in the past, the paper progresses in two major moments. The first looks at the novel in the author’s lived experience and discusses personal mourning. The second engages affect theory toward a (re)reading of the material resistances and erasures within one copy of the text. The author concludes by expressing the need for a (re)visioning of what curricular fixtures such as The Chrysalids could mean today.

Keywords:

• The Chrysalids
• affect theory
• curriculum theory
• currere
• mourning

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.