Introduction

The purpose of the affective turn in literacy education is directly related to issues of equity, functioning as a critique of narrowly defined outcomes that have intensified educational inequities. Language and literacy are among the most humane of all practices; speaking, writing, reading and imaging are the ways we tell our human stories, forge relationships and make sense of our identities as humans. Sociocultural theory, in various ways, posits a tight interweaving of learning and identity processes, wherein learning is sometimes itself defined as the transformation of persons. The coming-together of an assemblage saturated with affective energies is suggestive of an additional dimension of affect theory that raises new questions: the idea of emergence. Anti-humanly charged discursive–material concepts like neoliberalism affect human bodies toward capitalistic outcomes that are not always real and certainly not in favor of the many. The chapter also presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book.