Thinking Affective Pedagogies at the Intersection of Popular Media, Digital Technology, and Gurokawaii

Abstract

In this article, I propose an affect approach to learning events concerning relations between children, popular media, and digital technology. Affect conceives learning as an aesthetic event in which particles of the world pass into bodies and transform their capacities to feel, perceive, and think. A conceptual discussion on affect and affective pedagogy is developed. This discussion is extended through an ethnographic narrative connected to a small study constructed from a layered perspective as mother/scholar/art educator and centered on the creative activity of a 10-year-old girl with digital technology and a passionate attachment to manga and anime. Implications from this study are drawn for an affective pedagogy that orients toward learning’s immanence and recognizes the emergent ways in which bodies, things, and forces enter into composition, augmenting or depressing the potentials in pedagogical events.