’Magazines make me uncomfortable’: discomforting, disruptive, and productive affects with youth in an urban after-school program

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this paper was to re-visit data from a nine-week scrapbooking project, with Black and Latinx youth, in an urban after-school programme, using an affective lens. To examine the entanglement of human and non-human bodies, I (White, woman, researcher) returned to week three of the nine-week project, during which the youth and I explore health and fitness-related magazines. I explicate how affect, using feminist new materialism, drew me into three affective moments, which took place during and after the project had officially ended. In looking at these non-linear moments, I explain the ways in which the participants, materials and, perhaps, most importantly, myself became affected by a co-constitutive entanglement of human (youth, adult) and non-human (scrapbooks, images, texts) bodies. These moments generated affects that were uncomfortable, disruptive, and productive. I end the paper by urging researchers, educators, and practitioners to continue to engage in critical scholarship with youth, particularly in the United States. While this is a modest beginning, it is also a point to pause in discomfort and disruption which can, in turn, produce possibilities for youth and adults to destabilise traditional hierarchies in research and practice and learn from each other.

KEYWORDS:

• Affect theory
• arts-based methods
• health
• fitness
• young people
• after-school

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their time, feedback, and insightful comments. I also want to thank Dillon Landi for sometimes helping me make sense of my own thoughts and the young participants who continued to shift these thoughts.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. PhEmaterialism is a combination of post-humanism, feminisms and new materialisms. It started as an international working group of educators, researchers, students, artists and activists who seek to use these theories and methods to work with/through generative, creative approaches to research and practice.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Carrie Safron

Carrie Safron recently finished her doctoral degree in Movement Sciences at Teachers College, Columbia University. As a (former) personal trainer with a background in nutrition and applied exercise physiology, she discovered a passion for qualitative research. Her research focuses on creative methods that provide young people with the chance to explore health, fitness, and physical activity in ways that they might not otherwise have been able to do. Mostly, she likes to work with young people because she learns so much from them and their interests give her a reason to binge on Netflix shows.