ABSTRACT
Nine-year old Charlene’s self-professed “obsession” with puppy videos and its incursion into the classroom is set within a four-month long case study of a multiliteracies project, in which affect came to be seen as an important aspect of literacy learning. In the chapter, I ask: How does Charlene’s erasure of the pleasure–purpose divide demonstrate the kinds of literate becomings made possible when a student pursues a differenciated path in a literacy learning assemblage? The paper maps the ways in which affective intensities associated with vibrant objects produced unexpected learning trajectories that led Charlene into an ethical relationship with a contested topic. The affective intensities of Charlene’s “obsession” with puppies, her interactions with puppy videos and her passion for animals in general, prompt important questions about educational responses to situations when a child breaches the striations of school literacy learning norms. Charlene’s case alerts us, as educators, to the affordances of viewing such breaks as differenciated learning trajectories in children’s literacy development.
