Affect as future-making pedagogy: a post-qualitative inquiry in Brazilian primary schools

Abstract

ABSTRACT Educational research shows a growing interest in ‘affect as pedagogy’, a concept grounded in feminist studies. This article positions its inquiry at the crossroads of feminist scholarship and the Deleuzian-Guattarian concept of affect. It presents a post-qualitative inquiry that ”experiments with'' an agentic assemblage of 76 public schools in Brazil, 78 qualitative survey responses, 12 teachers' interviews, and fieldwork observations. The result is a collective narrative organized as a Voice without Organ (VwO), which shows interlocking elements of challenging educational scenarios and a teaching practice traversed by affect. The VwO answers the question of how affect becomes pedagogy, describing events that can be characterized as embodied history, affective labor, and the capacity to be affected. This pedagogy shows the capacity to affect, by creating affirmative desires that materialize in alternative narratives for the students’ futures. Affect as future-making pedagogy then, becomes a means of working against exclusion and social injustice.