ABSTRACT
This chapter is based on three basic assumptions: Firstly, all research revolves around the researcher, until it reaches the reader. Secondly, what we can see is determined by the questions that guide us. Thirdly, the articulation of literacy research is a project, in part, of persuasion, within the complex systems of academia and education. Beginning with a playful exploration of these premises, this chapter positions affect and movement in relation to the social, historical and discursive forces always at play in research. Affect is positioned in the context of the research question, which leads to the research context, which leads to the institutional and the political context. The author invites readers to attend to the affects and the impulses caused by examples of certain types of research (that take up movement in very different ways) and position these possible affects in relation to the wider systems in which they were created. Finally, this chapter proposes that what we seek, as researchers and educators, is not to reinsert movement where it wasn’t or to express affect where it wasn’t, but rather, to instill in our readers and students the awareness of affect and, from here, extend its possibilities of impact.
