ABSTRACT
As literacy researchers we will always struggle to know feeling, and when we feel what we know, these feelings easily dissipate as we frame, sort and categorize our data. In this chapter I consider the losses and fissures produced by the erasure of affect in literacy research by telling three stories that articulate with notions of affect and movement in different ways. By considering how these three stories fold into and interrupt one another, I explore different ways in which bodies and movement do or do not dance across each and raise questions about the significance of elusive, affective dimensions of meaning-making to literacy research and in the potentialities generated through these intensities. I also argue for being alert to what research becomes and what it generates as it comes into relation with other people and things, from fieldwork through to dissemination. I propose that focusing on (or feeling) affect in research processes can sensitize us to how research does and might work to interface with or disrupt educational practices in ways that are empowering.
