The literacies of things: Reconfiguring the material-discursive production of race and class in an informal learning centre

Abstract

Drawing on our documentation of transforming an informal learning centre (the Playhouse) in a multilingual, working-class neighbourhood, this paper presents significant and deliberate material-discursive changes at the Playhouse that produced unpredictable shifts in belongings among young children. More specifically, this paper entwines our place-making experiences with theories of feminist new materialism, to explore the object as a material-discursive apparatus in the production of literacies, particularly literacies of race and class. Implications for careful analysis of the racialized and classed literacies produced through the materiality of educational spaces suggest that when we entangle ourselves with material-discursive apparatuses, through play and otherwise, we acquire such literacies and that issues of accessibility always involve the more than human.

Keywords

Feminist new materialisms out-of-school literacies place-making thingpower race social class

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