Racialized subjectivities and the power of refusal in media learning settings

This theoretical article draws on more than a decade of the authors’ collective and individually published research on emotion in racially, ethnically, and linguistically diverse English classrooms and community organizations. The authors argue that students’ acts of refusal to perform their own vulnerability and to endorse the myth of racial progress are affective strategies for addressing racialized relations of power. Drawing on Ahmed’s scholarship on complaint, happiness, and the politics of good feeling, it presents two extended examples, preceded by a summary of a third to illustrate how racialized emotions shape subjectivities in multimedia learning contexts. Across these settings, critical reading and production of multimedia texts entailed moments of intense and sometimes uneasy coexistence, revealing the emotional border-crossing youth must undertake as they navigate expectations to display positive feelings within the so-called progressive democracy of schooling as an ultimately white institution. The youth navigated these tensions by engaging in acts of refusal and negotiation, adopting varied and shifting stances that drew on their resources and their resolve to imagine more agentive and liberatory futures. These refusals led to alliances, and in the end, managed to preserve the social connections they valued in each learning community.