When Girls Walk: Mobilities of and Resistance to Affective Atmospheres of Unwelcome

Abstract

Developing a framework of “affective atmospheres of unwelcome” from the work of Locatora Radio and Anderson (2009), Stewart (2008), and Thompson (2017), I examine how affective build-up and circulation suffuse a space in an atmosphere, as the atmosphere is taken up and felt in the bodies of street harassed individuals. I engage women’s narratives, the 2014 film A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, and practices of resistance and “response-ability” (Rentschler, 2014) in headphone listening practices and an online antiharassment photojournalism series to assert that women’s and gender nonconforming individuals’ experiences of “affective atmospheres of unwelcome” disclose street harassment as a persistent and ordinary patriarchal structure that intrudes on women, gender nonconforming, and queer bodies in public space. This article makes known commonplace acts of resistance that street harassed individuals utilize to move through and transform atmospheres of unwelcome and demonstrates how affects are political and contingent implementations of a place and culture.