ABSTRACT
One of the chief arguments of the affective turn is that the body is porous, constantly signaling and being signaled to. Tapping into an assemblage of data–media reports, interviews, images, political rhetoric, legal documents, fictionalizations and sketchings–this chapter works to dwell in the “virtual remainders” (Massumi, 2002, p. 25) that result when books are removed from classrooms and bodies (here humans, books, institutions, laws and an assemblage of texts) encounter and move each other. The chapter explores how affect theory may help researchers feel out how literacies act on bodies in ways that don’t privilege individualized bodies, contained texts, or single sources and how affect is the body reading the world.
