Chapter 11
Weird readings and little machines
Against reading engagement
Soledad Véliz | Centro de Desarrollo de Tecnologías de Inclusión (CEDETi UC) | Center for Advanced Studies on Educational Justice (CJE) PIA-ANID CIE
Reading engagement is presented as an affect that organizes the relationships between children and books. The OECD-PISA reading framework has co-opted engagement as an attentive, involved, and joyful relationship with literature. A reading assemblage is offered to explain how engagement is instrumental to producing readers as bodies with potential for human capital, that is, children. The author uses a literary encounter to propose weird readings as an affect that breaks into the reading assemblage, complicating joy and pleasure, and as the affect that precludes the possibilities of creating relationships with materialities (books) from outside a reading assemblage.
Article outline
- Affective affordances of the assemblage
- Engagement as an affect that produces children as readers
- Is it possible to be a child without being a reader?
- Picturebooks and (dis)engaged encounters
- The limits of the reading assemblage: Small openings
- Weird readings: Books as little machines
-
References
References (37)
References
Primary sources
Chimal, Alberto, Laiseca, Alberto & Arispe, Nicolás. 2015. La Madre y la Muerte/La Partida. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica.
Secondary sources
Alanen, Leena, & Mayall, Berry. 2001. Explorations in generational analysis. In Conceptualizing Child-adult Relations. Leena Alanen and Berry Mayall (eds), 11–22. London & New York: Routledge.
Bennett, Jane. 2010. Vibrant Matter. A Political Ecology of Things. Durham & London: Duke University Press.
Buchanan, Ian. 1997. The problem of the body in Deleuze y Guattari, or, what can a body do? Body & Society 3(73): 73–91.
Buchanan, Ian. 2017. Assemblage theory, or, the future of an illusion. Deleuze Studies 11(3): 457–472.
Buchanan, Ian. 2020. Assemblage Theory and Method. An Introduction and Guide. London & New York: Bloomsbury Academic.
Carpentieri, Jon, Fairfax-Cholmeley, Karen: Litster, Jim & Vorhaus, John. 2011. Family Literacy in Europe: Using Parental Support Initiatives to Enhance Early Literacy Development. London: NRDC, Institute of Education.
Clark, Christina & Rumbold, Kate. 2006. Reading for Pleasure: A Research Overview. National Literacy Trust.
Davies, Bronwyn. 2014. Listening to Children. Being and Becoming. Oxon & New York: Routledge.
Deleuze, Gilles & Guattari, Felix. 1987. A Thousand Plateaus. London: Athlone.
Department of Education/Education Standards Research Team. 2012. Research evidence on reading for pleasure. [URL].
Dolphijn, Rick & van der Tuin, Iris. 2012. New Materialism: Interviews & Cartographies. Ann Arbor: Open Humanities Press.
Errázuriz, Valentina & García-González, Macarena. 2021. More person, and, therefore, more satisfied and happy: The affective economy of reading promotion in Chile. Curriculum Inquiry 51(2):229–260.
Fisher, Mark. 2016. The Weird and the Eerie. New York: Repeater.
Fox, Nick & Alldred, Pam. 2015. New materialist social inquiry: Designs, methods and the research-assemblage. International Journal of Social Research Methodology 18(4): 399–414.
Fox, Nick & Alldred, Pam. 2018. Mixed methods, materialism and the micropolitics of the research-assemblage. International Journal of Social Research Methodology 21(2): 191–204.
García-González, Macarena & Deszcz-Tryhubczak, Justyna. 2020. New Materialist Openings to Children’s Literature Studies. International Research in Children’s Literature 13 (1).
Joy, Eileen. 2013. Weird Reading. Speculations: A Journal of Speculative Realism IV: 28–34.
Kraftl, Peter. 2020. After Childhood. Re-thinking Environment, Materiality and Media in Children’s Lives. Oxon & New York: Routledge.
Kuby, Candance, Spector, Karen & Johnson Thiel, Jaye. 2019. Posthumanism and Literacy Education. Knowing/Becoming/Doing Literacies. New York and Oxon: Routledge.
Mar, Raymond & Oatley, Keith. 2009. Exploring the link between reading fiction and empathy: Ruling out individual differences and examining outcomes. Communications 34: 407–428.
Mckenna, Michael, Kear, Dennis & Ellsworth, Randolph. 1995. Children’s attitudes toward reading: A national survey. Reading Research Quarterly, 30(4): 934–956.
Muñoz, Bernardita & Anwandter, Andrés. 2011. Manual de lectura temprana compartida: ¿Por qué es importante y cómo leer con niños y niñas de 0 a 7 años? Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes.
Nail, Thomas. 2012. Returning to Revolution: Deleuze, Guattari and Zapatismo. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
OECD. 2002. Reading for Change. Performance and engagement across countries. <[URL]> .
OECD 2013. PISA 2012 Assessment and Analytical Framework: Mathematics, Reading, Science, Problem Solving and Financial Literacy, OECD Publishing <[URL]> .
OECD. 2018. PISA for Development Reading Framework in PISA for Development Assessment and Analytical Framework: Reading, Mathematics and Science. Publishing: Paris.
Ommundsen, Åse Marie, Halland, Gunnar & Kümmerling-Meibauer, Bettina. 2022. Introduction. Exploring Challenging Picturebooks in Education. In Exploring Challenging Picturebooks in Education International Perspectives on Language and Literature Learning, Gunner Haaland, Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer & Åse Ommundsen (eds), Oxon & New York: Routledge.
Pacini-Ketchabaw, Veronica, Kind, Sylvia & Kocher, Laurie. 2017. Encounters with Materials in Early Childhood Education. New York: Routledge.
Schleicher Andreas. 2019. PISA 2018: Insights and Interpretations. <[URL]>.
St. Pierre, Elizabeth, Jackson, Alecia & Mazzei, L. 2016. New Empiricisms and New Materialisms: Conditions for New Inquiry. Cultural Studies. Critical Methodologies 16 (2): 99–110.
St. Pierre, Elizabeth. 2018. Post qualitative inquiry in an ontology of immanence. Qualitative Inquiry 00(0): 1–14.
Sullivan, Alice & Brown, Matt. 2015. Reading for Pleasure and Progress in Vocabulary and Mathematics. British Educational Research Journal 41 (6).
Truman, Sara. 2019. Inhuman literacies and affective refusals: Thinking with Sylvia Wynter and secondary school English. Curriculum Inquiry 49(1): 110–128.
UNESCO. 2006. Education for All. Literacy for Life. EFA Global Monitoring Report. France: UNESCO Publishing.
Véliz, Soledad & García-González, Macarena. 2020. Becoming abject: Testing the limits and borders of reading mediation. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education.
Whitten, Christy; Houston, Sam; Labby, Sandra & Sullivan, Sam. 2016. The impact of Pleasure Reading on Academic Success. The Journal of Multidisciplinary Graduate Research 2 (4): 48–64.
Cited by (1)
Cited by one other publication
Russumanno, Paolo
2024.
Childhood Entanglements, Artifacts, and Inheritances.
Journal of Childhood Studies ► pp. 85 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 4 august 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.