Worlding Danny: Being, Becoming, and Belonging

Abstract

In this visual essay, drawing on worlding as method evokes attunement to being, becoming, and belonging through ordinary experiences and affects, where we tell multimodal stories framed by theories and practices that offer reconsiderations of the arts, pedagogy, and scholarship as praxis. Contextualized by youth subcultures, porous visual identities, materialities, body management, clothing, popular culture, and social media, conversations with Danny are offered alongside her artworks and poetry as worlding expressions of a becoming self across place, space, and time. Worlding reflects ongoing entanglements and intensities, particular moments and instances of affect through which I world myself, Danny, and art education scholarship, framed by ecologies of an always unfolding present, characterized by immanent limitations and potentialities in being, becoming, and belonging.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Dónal O’Donoghue, senior editor, and the reviewers of this article for engaging with me in the journey of worlding Danny, reframing my research-creation work through their astute and beautiful insights. I am grateful to Danny, Jeff, and their classmates for expressing so eloquently, through artworks and conversations, their situated shifting ways of being, becoming, and belonging, in the world.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ Personal email communication on April 23, 2020, with the senior editor of Studies in Art Education, Dónal O’Donoghue.

² Pseudonyms were chosen by participants.

³ Prior to the start of data collection, I received research ethics board approval from my university, and I secured permission from participating local school boards, school principals, participating teachers, and participants’ guardians.

⁴ A typical breakfast sold at street stands in Agra is bedai, a puffy fried bread served with spicy sauce, curd, and potato pieces. Jalebi, fried batter, is a sugary alternative, served with aromatic hot sweet syrup.

⁵ Over 3 weeks, I gathered data in the art room via a series of audio-recorded, in-class focus group discussions (Kamberelis & Dimitriadis, 2013) with all 17 student participants; I audio-recorded one-on-one conversations and observed ongoing artmaking in which students freely created via visual and textual media in response to our focus group conversations. Danny requested a one-on-one conversation with me, which I conducted at her request, in the presence of her close friend, Jeff. The transcript of that conversation, alongside selections from focus group conversations, as well as Danny’s art and poetry, form the basis of the data presented here.

⁶ Transcript data are presented as complete sections of unedited conversations.

⁷ The highly damaging impacts of child homelessness are well documented (Rafferty & Shinn, 1991).

⁸ In a windowed storeroom/office off of the art classroom, with the door open, Danny sat across the table from me. Her friend Jeff sat to one side, occasionally saying “yup” and nodding.

⁹ Jeff was present in the conversation and nodded at this point.

¹⁰ Our self-talk is both limited and enabled by situated conditions.

¹¹ Retrieved from www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFwYJYl5GUQ.

¹² DC refers to DC comics. Retrieved from www.dccomics.com.

¹³ For AesthetiCat, see www.aestheticat.com.

¹⁴ At this point, Danny showed me her artworks.