© 2020 National Art Education Association

Studies in Art Education: A Journal of Issues and Research

2020, 61(4), 330–348
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00393541.2020.1820831

Worlding Danny: Being, Becoming, and

“Worlding Belonging
invites us to FIONA BLAIKIE

attend and Brock University

attune to In this visual essay, drawing on worlding as method evokes attune­

ment to being, becoming, and belonging through ordinary experi­
individual and ences and affects, where we tell multimodal stories framed by
theories and practices that offer reconsiderations of the arts, peda­
collective gogy, and scholarship as praxis. Contextualized by youth subcultures,
porous visual identities, materialities, body management, clothing,
experiences.” popular culture, and social media, conversations with Danny are
offered alongside her artworks and poetry as worlding expressions
of a becoming self across place, space, and time. Worlding reflects
ongoing entanglements and intensities, particular moments and
instances of affect through which I world myself, Danny, and art
education scholarship, framed by ecologies of an always unfolding
present, characterized by immanent limitations and potentialities in
being, becoming, and belonging.

Correspondence regarding this article may be sent to the author at

[email protected]; [email protected].

330 Blaikie / Worlding Danny

 Prologue: Worlding I offer worlding as a shifting theoretical
paradigm for reorienting human sub­

L
ike Charles Garoian (2018), I offer jects through the nonhuman world of
an orienting preamble, written (other/ed) living things, materialities,
during the extraordinary times cultures, places, spaces, and histories,
of COVID-19, when it seems more calling into consideration the capacity
appropriate than ever to be attuned of the nonhuman (e.g., place) to shape
to the situated material, affective, humans, to suggest subsiding alongside
and political conditions of our lives. burgeoning worlds, creating porous
This visual essay is located in anthropol­ intermingling, and re-forming subjects,
ogist Kathleen Stewart’s (2010, 2019) objects, and environments.
worlding, invoked as a verb that is impli­
cit to theoretical framing of method, Worlding is situated in micro realms and
and worlding as method. Worlding affective reactions, like an embodied smell
refers to the felt materiality and materi­ that causes feelings of nausea; memories of
alizing of affects, ideas, events, relation­ desire and revulsion; the last words you
spoke with someone; and the felt, visual mem­
ships, spaces, and places. It is always
ory of a place, a moment in time. How might
doing, storying, and actively becoming. we express these ideas in words and images?
Worlding is implicit in making with mat­ Stephen Carpenter II and Kevin Tavin’s (2010)
ter (Garber, 2019); in the arts, peda­ dynamic and comprehensive comic-style gra­
gogy, subcultures, scholarship, and phic representation of the history of art educa­
relationships. Worlding is not static; it tion and current trends at the time features the
evokes unfolding awareness and trans­ “communicative and affective potency of
images with text”1 where images and text are
formations over time, organically and
mutually dependent. Similarly, worlding invites
unpredictably, situated in porous and us to consider individual and collective experi­
integrated ecologies of being, thinking, ences taking into account the extra/ordinary
feeling, and creating, encompassing the visual, affective, material, and spatial qualities
textures and temporalities of places, of our lives, simultaneously disrupting bound­
affects, and material cultures. Worlding aries between politics, subjects, ideas, cultures,
speaks to micro and macro worlds places, times, and events into a being-with,
which Mira Kallio-Tavin (2012) asserts, “is
inherent in new materialism (Bennett,
more significant than staying in-between”
2010; Garber, 2019); anthropology, art, (p. 345).
and architecture (Ingold, 2013); and
posthumanism (Barad, 2007; Braidotti, Introduction
2013; Haraway, 2008, 2016). Following In this visual essay, I follow the felt, materializ­
Braidotti’s (2019) Posthuman Knowledge, ing, lived experiences of Danny,2 an 11th-grade

Studies in Art Education / Volume 61, No. 4 331

 student. Through conversations, art, and poetry, and poetry. Before I introduce Danny, I offer
Danny animates and expresses her ways of theoretical framing in the field of art educa­
being, becoming, and, like all of us, seeking to tion and beyond that encompasses visual
belong. Framed by feminist politics of location culture, new materialism, embodiment, social
and situatedness (Braidotti, 2019), I draw on the­ theory on gender, sexuality and the clothed
ory, ethnographic focus group conversations, accessorized body, and the politics of visual­
one-on-one conversations, and artmaking. ity in school subcultures, including social
I engaged 11th-grade art students at two media. A particularly useful architecture for
schools3 in southern Ontario, Canada, in thinking thinking about Stewart’s (2007) worlding,
about their youth visual identity affiliations and being, belonging, and becoming is Deleuze
mixed senses of belonging. I was interested and Guattari’s (1987) conception of
especially in issues of embodiment, shifting immanence.
visual identities and associated sartorial aes­
thetics, and the ways in which intensities and Visual Culture, New Materialism,
flows of energy in situated conditions might Embodiment, and the
dis/empower the embodied self (Renold & Politics of Visuality
Mellor, 2013, p. 37). I focused on how partici­ Shifts in the field of art education from
pants navigated the difficult terrain of being 1980s discipline-based art education (Greer,
and becoming a someone, and belonging with 1984) to visual culture (Carpenter & Tavin,
others, framed by place, including virtual spaces, 2010) are evident in Kerry Freedman’s
home, high school subcultures, friends, music, (2000, 2003) influential political and socio­
and material and popular culture. logical framing of the pedagogy of visual
In our first focus group session together, culture. From Paul Duncum’s (2010) paper
before participants began artmaking, we dis­ on seven principles for visual culture, inten­
cussed extraordinary and ordinary aspects of sities have migrated to examine connec­
their everyday lives, which were signaled tions between materiality and making:
through material, popular, and visual cul­ Matter matters. And matter, materiality,
tures of belonging, including the granulari­ and materializing are key concepts in think­
ties of their clothing, celebrity influencers, ing about worlding (Dant, 1999; Stewart,
music, and accessories such as cell phones; 2019). In particular, Doug Blandy and Paul
their embodied feelings of exclusion, expec­ Bolin’s (2018) Learning Things: Material
tations, experiences of school, social media Culture in Art Education and Elizabeth
subcultures, and “opportunities lost or Garber’s (2019) seminal paper based on
found” (Stewart, 2007, p. 29). As ethno­ her 2018 Studies in Art Education lecture at
graphic data collection in the form of focus the National Art Education Association
group conversations and participant–obser­ Convention are important contextually as
ver facilitation of artmaking unfolded over they speak to the agency and affective nat­
the course of a 3-week data collection per­ ure of objects. These are considered along­
iod, one of the participants, Danny, became side Tim Ingold’s (2013) and Donal
particularly captivated by this inquiry. O’Donoghue’s (2019) work on the agency
Something about our group discussions and animacy inherent in the materiality of
stuck with Danny, and something deeply space and place, and Tim Dant’s (1999)
poignant and redolent about Danny stuck important work on material cultures.
with me (Ahmed, 2004). I feel emotionally, Tyler Denmead’s (2018) examination of
artistically, and professionally compelled to art education scholarship on youth is rele­
write about Danny, and to share her artworks vant here, given my focus on Danny, and

332 Blaikie / Worlding Danny

the idea that youth are “projected onto Ivashkevich, 2011; Keenan, 2001; Lesko, 1988;
consumers’ bodies” (p. 62), serving capitalist Lurie, 1981; Martino & Cumming-Potvin, 2017;
consumption that is always immanent. In O’Donoghue, 2007, 2019; Pomerantz, 2008; Reay,
reference to Duncum (2003), Denmead 2001; Renold, 2007; Ringrose & Renold, 2012;
reiterates the need for youth (some Ringrose & Walkerdine, 2008; Swain, 2002, 2006;
addicted to video games and social media) Vail, 2002; Wilkins, 2008; Wiseman, 2002;
to understand, via studies of visual culture, Wolfgang, Ivashkevich, & Keyes, 2017).
“how their culture is produced and commo­ A key concern of this essay follows
dified through mass media” (p. 62). Carpenter and Tavin’s (2010) suggestion that
Similarly, as Carpenter and Tavin (2010) “if we take seriously the politics of visuality, a
point out, visual culture registers “images, reconceptualized art education might attempt
artifacts, objects, instruments, and appara­ to interpret how visual experience and the
tuses, as well as (visual) experiences of net­ visualized subject is constructed within social
worked and mediated subjects in systems, practices and structures” (p. 345).
a globalized 21st century” (p. 336). They Following this idea, in a reconceptualized art
applaud “critical investigations of popular education, we might work with students to
culture through digital and hypermediated contemplate ways in which the lives of youth,
means” (p. 343). and all lives, are preinscribed and situated in
Courtnie Wolfgang and Olga Ivashkevich’s the raced, classed, gendered, affective, aes­
(2014) study of first-time juvenile offenders thetic, enculturated environments we experi­
and the ways in which their identities were ence from early childhood on (Bourdieu,
transformed and performed using props and 1984; Eagleton, 1989). Within these sites, we
accessories is highly relevant too, as well as live through shifting identities via individual
Michelle Bae-Dimitriadis and Olga Ivashkevich’s and collective imaginaries regarding agency,
(2018) work on hegemonic gender normativity, possibilities, and limitations. We find ourselves
sexualities, and girl-play with Barbie dolls. entangled in the worlds in which we move,
Other studies confirm that youth live from home to social settings to intimate rela­
lives in situated, embodied, hegemonic con­ tionships with ourselves and others, as well as
ditions defined by race, gender, sexuality, places of work, study, and recreation.
and class, expressed in and through subcul­ Recognized as particular kinds of subjects,
tures at school and online, alongside their where our ways of being and behaving are
engagements with social media, popular rewarded (or not) along with our appearances,
culture, and celebrity influencers. Clothed we are prefigured in and through the granular
bodies and accessories are policed by subculture norms of each site and its collective
youth themselves, in real and virtual spaces normative ways of thinking, interacting, and
and places, playing a key role in the ability being. We might deliberately avoid sites in
of youth individually and in collectives to which we are unrecognized and unknown. As
live lives in which they have agency or not, we move through our lives, across places, sub­
feel they are cared about or not; can grow, cultures, and times, via explicit and implicit
become a someone, and in different ways codes for belonging, externalized through
feel that they belong (Blaikie, 2013, 2018, socially un/acceptable aesthetic codes and
2019; Braziel, 2001; Butler, 1993, 1999; practices (Blaikie, 2018), we engage constantly
Connell, 2002; Correa, 2008; Cosier, 2011; in worlding ourselves and others through
Davies, 1989; Davis, 1997; Garber, 2003; storying.

Studies in Art Education / Volume 61, No. 4 333

 Worlding as Methodology drawing attention to situated and shifting
Worlding is storying. In framing worlding aesthetic, social, material, pedagogical, and
theoretically in the arts, scholarship, and political worlds, inviting questions as to
sciences, we tell situated stories framed in how these worlds are at moments in time,
theories and practices, where “it matters and how they might transform and be
what stories we tell to tell other stories transformed through our reading of images
with; it matters what knots knot knots, and texts into different forms and textures,
what thoughts think thoughts, what descrip­ beyond the limitations inherent in what
tions describe descriptions, what ties tie I conjure here, beyond observer effect
ties” (Haraway, 2016, p. 12). I use worlding implicit in my own obvious entanglement
here as a method that is ontological, epis­ with the method and with Danny, and the
temological, active, ongoing, and entangled stickiness (Ahmed, 2004) of the emotional
with particular moments, experiences, and connections Danny and I have to the topic
enactments of being, becoming, belonging, and to one another.
embodying, and being embodied in and Combining ethnographic observation,
through threaded, interwoven moments of reflexivity, narratives, creation of visual
immanence (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). images, and theorizing, worlding as a method
Worlding encircles, shifts, and facilitates and as a theoretical construct offers an
porous amalgamations of interiority, affect, encircled blend of interiority, affect, place,
place, history, ontology, meaning, and mate­ history, ontology, meaning, aesthetics, and
riality, where methodologically we might materiality. In Stewart’s (2019) “think[ing]
think in and through theory, pedagogy, from the middle” I am reminded of Mira
and art. Worldly thinking is worlding: It is Kallio-Tavin’s (2012) “being with” (p. 345),
always burgeoning, incorporating affects, which speaks to me of unpredictable, shifting
ideas, images, narratives, memories, reso­ attunement that offers “speculative poten­
nances, and distractions. It is simultaneously tial…inter-disciplinary porousness, which
nascent and disintegrating, like the scented makes ‘space for surprise’” (O’Donoghue,
memory that evokes a partially remembered 2019, p. 108) and space for visceral aesthetic
dream, where, as Stewart (2019) states, encounters, aiming for generative connec­
tions between theory, transcript data, visual
we might try to approach, emulate, and images, and narratives. Rather than intending
correspond with, rather than to, the
to realize hypothesized, predictable, conclu­
mixed-ontology oscillations and
sive judgments, in worlding Danny I aim for
waverings whose transmogrifications,
a resonant experiential reading of ideas, nar­
returns, and sediments constitute the
ratives, and images, so that, as Stewart (2008)
onto/epistemology of continuous
worldings. Constitutive differings, asserts, you “wonder where they might go,
detours, resonances, rhythms and and what potential modes of knowing, relat­
pauses, voicings, and other ing, and attending to things are already pre­
expressivities make matter and subjects sent” (p. 71). In considering how to facilitate
generative. Worldly thinking moves with an experiential reading of this article,
what’s unfolding, riding up, granulating, I embrace the instinctual, moment-to-
dissipating, shifting weight, or deflating. moment experiences of becoming aware and
(para. 1) cognizant of what is seen, felt, thought,
Through worlding as method, I attend to embodied, and lived (LeBlanc, Davidson, Ryu,
the ordinary everydayness of experiences, & Irwin, 2015; O’Donoghue, 2019; Springgay,

334 Blaikie / Worlding Danny

Irwin, & Wilson Kind, 2005), welcoming com­ time and space, infused by thoughts, feelings,
plexity; entanglements; pointing to possibili­ and immanent becoming.
ties for porous and temporal shifts and For Deleuze and Guattari (1987), in imma­
becoming through memory, experience, nence, things are as they are and as they are
thought, and affect, through situated force continually becoming. Growth, decay, and
fields of insularity alongside places and death come about without instructions, with­
spaces un/inhabited by living beings and out theory. We exist as human subjects along
material culture constructs, spaces, and places with other living things, in material encultu­
that are felt, performed, and shared. I chose rated worlds, in time, space, and place, in the
the photograph in Figure 1, a moment in porous intermingling and flattening of sub­
time, to engage in worlding as method jects, objects, and environments. Our attuning,
(Stewart, 2010, 2019), and simultaneously to noting, and recording are formative acts of
offer the idea of immanence (Deleuze & world-making (O’Donoghue, 2019, p. 67). One
Guattari, 1987) and image-text as entangled. slip, one turn, one accident; a last breath, look,
When this photograph was taken in mid-April or click of the mouse—at micro and macro
2019, I was in Agra, beside the Yamuna River. It levels—everything can change in an instant.
had rained heavily the night before. Early in the Beginnings and endings cannot be traced
morning, it was a little cooler when we went for with precision; they are continual processes.
our walk, crossing the busy road in front of the Happening upon meeting Danny in that 11th-
hotel, dodging fast cars, taxis, cows, and mopeds, grade art class was pure chance. As Stewart
and coming across this scene of resting stray (2019) states:
dogs, people, trees listing in a slight breeze,
It’s not dead matter that grounds us but
pigeons, and street vendors flipping bedai4 in
the capacity to correspond with
hot oil over flaming gas stoves, the spices and a multiplicity of continuous worldings that
oils circulating, smelled and tasted through the are both plastic and dense. We watch or
opaque wetness hanging in the air. Humans and avert our eyes as folded, indeterminate
nonhumans rested or went about their business, lines of force ripple across the
fleshy, fluctuating moments unfolding across phenomena of a field, rendering its
materiality and our thought
multidimensional, contingent, and
overdetermined.
What’s a form of critique that can
emulate this compositional process? Not
conventions of defending a proper
relation between subject, concept, and
world but, maybe, forms of detour, pause,
and a haptic description of what seems to
be unfolding. (paras. 8–9)
A Haptic Description of
What Seems to Be Unfolding
On a freezing, wind-whipped day late in fall
2018, I arrived at Danny’s working-class public
high school in Southern Ontario, Canada. As
Figure 1. Photograph taken in India by the author, I drove up to the school, I observed a mix of
April 2019. apartment buildings and brick bungalows, lace
curtains at a garage window, frozen grass, a cat

Studies in Art Education / Volume 61, No. 4 335

 balancing on a windowsill, a barking husky tied creation of her own art and poetry. In scholarship,
to a stake, flyers blowing, a black plastic gar­ the ethical requirement that we fictionalize parti­
bage bin. Walking past two police cars at the cipants immediately draws us into worlding and
main entrance to the school, I noticed several storying, particularly so when we frame worlding
students hanging about, surveying the scene, in and through theoretical constructs: Storying
while off to the side, down the path, a couple through worlding is a realm where there is both
were being spoken to by the police. Most stu­ “storytelling and fact telling; it is the patterning of
dents wore thin, unsuitable clothes—worn possible worlds and possible times, material-
Chuck Taylors, ripped jeans, thin hoodies. semiotic worlds, gone, here, and yet to come”
A couple of students lurked, frowning, heavy (Haraway, 2016, p. 31).
gray rings around their eyes.
I signed in and was taken by a secretary to the
“We Were Homeless”
art classroom, where I met the teacher who had By the time I met her, Danny had spent
agreed to work with me, along with her 11th- a significant period of her childhood
grade studio art students who were taking an homeless.7 The desperate aesthetics of poverty
elective 2D studio course. Data collection5 for are key and agentic here, reinforcing limita­
this study began with the teacher and tions and im/possibilities: I see children sleep­
I discussing our schedules, research ethics, gather­ ing roughly in bus stops and parks, on
ing signed forms, and confirming two overarching cardboard, hard benches, and the basement
research questions: How do 11th-grade art stu­ couches Danny and her mother surfed in the
dents experience their evolving youth identities low boxy 1950s brick bungalows of the town,
and visual culture constructs? How do social with their popcorn ceilings and sliding glass
media, celebrity influencers, and popular culture windows so high that one cannot easily see in
impact these students’ evolving youth and visual or out—and that was before Danny got her
culture identities? Questions are tentative and apartment 3 months ago with an older friend,
contexts shift (Lather & St. Pierre, 2013); one can­ “Uncle Dave.”
not predict responses or the journey that scholar­
ship may take. Here, I sought to “actualize Danny8: When I was little, my dad remarried
something that does not yet exist” (O’Donoghue, and left town, never to be seen again.
2019, p. 81). Finding similarities methodologically His new wife knew nothing about his
and theoretically to the work of Kimberly Powell’s drug abuse, didn’t know about my
(2016) place-based, materially grounded, multi­ dad’s alcohol abuse, didn’t know
modal ethnographic inquiry into mapmaking, about my dad abusing my mom…
I was also deeply inspired by Anna Hickey- She’s got a mental disability. I was her
Moody’s (2013) affect as method, Jessica first kid, right? She was sixteen. She was
Ringrose and Rebecca Coleman’s (2013) chapter like really hard into things that aren’t
on feminist Deleuzian mapping of bodies and good for you, like partying, drinking,
affect, and Kryssi Staikidis’s (2006) respectful, reci­ drugs. We were homeless together
procal ethnographic work with Mayan artists, and stuff. Like me and my mom have
where she engaged in cross-cultural artmaking been through like a lot. I get really
partnerships with artist-pedagogues. protective of her now. We were home­
Through images, narrative, and transcript less, and then my grandparents helped
data,6 I follow Danny’s experiences of home and my mom out. I’ve been living rough,
homelessness, dis/embodiment, and navigation with various folks, for years. Sometimes
of youth visual identities, culminating in her we ran away from wherever and lived
drive to be, become, and belong through the in bus stops and such. I survived. It’s

336 Blaikie / Worlding Danny

 cool, now… I don’t even pay the whole worlding are ongoing forms of becoming and
730 USD rent. Like my roommate, belonging, ontological, epistemological, aesthetic,
which is my uncle, like I call him and entangled with particular moments and
“uncle Dave”—he has known me instants of affect (Stewart, 2010). Nothing is neu­
since I was two. tral or stagnant. We are always in the process of
Blaikie: Is he a kind and nice man? becoming something (Haraway, 2016, p. 13),
Danny: People mistake him for my dad including when that becoming something is feel­
because of how close we are. Like, ing so emotionally desperate and untethered that
when we’re in public, they get sur­ suicide is contemplated.
prised when I call him Dave, not dad
because of how much we’re alike. Like,
“It’s Not a Good Day to Die: It’s Thursday”
we don’t look alike but we act a lot
alike. Danny: Before Uncle Dave, I was suspended
Blaikie: And he’s kind to you? from school nine times. Jeff9 says
Danny: Well, he’s never been mean to me. sometimes there was no reason. Yeah
Most he’s been saying is you shouldn’t like… I don’t know, a lot of the time.…
go out right now because you have That was before I was medicated. So,
homework, which is understandable, I don’t remember it very well. But the
right? one time is because I threatened to
(laughing) slit my friend’s throat
Poverty is faceless. Most of us reading this do because he got my shoes stuck in
not touch it, know it, see it. It is othered, out there a tree. I have a form of Tourette syn­
somewhere. Images, memories, and ideas about drome where I will twitch and say
homelessness lead me to my own imaginary of things. But I’m heavily medicated for
dirt, danger, smells, addiction, body shaming, dis­ that now because it got really bad
ordered subjectivities, failure, desperation, and when I was younger. Like, I’m also bi-
utter fragility: In early March 2020, on a mild, polar.… I’m manic if someone makes
blue-sky day, just before COVID-19 took hold, me angry or upset. They threatened
I was in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Walking along me with juvenile prison. It’s like, I go
Johnson Street toward the Georgia O’Keeffe to juvenile, or I get locked up in a psych
Museum, I encountered a truly desperate ward for six months. This was because
woman ahead of me, limping, hunched, in rags, of my sister. Me and her are really close
her sneakers falling apart, her greasy hair matted, but I guess we got into a fight and
the bench from which she arose to follow a man I backed her into the bathroom with
lightly littered with McDonald’s wrappers, cigar­ a knife and I don’t remember doing
ette butts, and a Styrofoam cup. She was engaged that at all. I was like, fourteen. And
in a loud argument with him. “Of course, I stink!” since grade eight, I’ve been in therapy
she screamed after him. “I want a shower! My leg every week. So, like the week will build
hurts. Please don’t leave me!” A woman nearby up and by Thursday, I’m like I really
was calling the police, who arrived shortly, as don’t want to be alive. And Jeff will
I waited. Her shame is my shame. look at me and say it’s not a good day
In schools and elsewhere, we need to bring to die. Like, ever since I was really little,
these issues into the open. What is neither seen my mom… my mom’s like slow when
nor contemplated is neither felt nor understood. it comes to intellectual things, but my
Contextualized by homelessness, in creating our mom’s still the most emotionally intact
mythical home that is the self, and in creating person I know. And she meets you, she
a felt place we call “home,” worlding and re- can tell how you’re feeling, and she will

Studies in Art Education / Volume 61, No. 4 337

 do everything she can to make you feel kid. But when I was 13, I stopped going
good. My mom’s a really nice lady. But to sports. I stopped going outside.
the problem is she’s so emotional that I would just eat, eat, and eat. I was
when she gets angry, she doesn’t know bored. I didn’t play games. I ended up
what she’s doing. weighing 212 pounds. I’ve always been
short. I was 4ʹ10 at the time and I’m 5ʹ1
As Danny remembers her shoes stuck in the now. And a lot of people that knew me
tree and her resulting anger, she re-worlds that then and see me now, they’re like, you
visual image, that moment, and other moments, lost a lot of weight. Now, I am 147
reinventing them and herself in conversation and pounds, I think. So, I lost a lot of weight.
in self-talk,10 in her performances and relation­ I’ll eat nothing for a whole week and
ships with others and herself. In Ordinary Affects, then I’ll eat all week. Yeah, I don’t have
Stewart (2007) attends to poignant and banal an eating schedule. Then there are
affective aspects of our extraordinary ordinary times when, you know, I’m living off
everyday lives. Ordinary affects interact and Mr. Noodles. So, the school found out
amalgamate across subjects, objects, and envir­ about this two weeks ago. And I’ve been
onments, moving through our lives and taking on my own since I’ve been really young,
imaginative flight through ideas, places, relation­ since my mom can’t do much for me.
ships, times, and subcultures. In and through Back then, when I was fatter, I used to be
ordinary affects, we find ourselves adopting bullied a lot. Because, growing up, peo­
explicit and implicit codes for belonging, exter­ ple thought I was gay. l am bisexual. But
nalized through socially un/acceptable aesthetic being gay, I was always insulted. So,
protocols and practices, including the materiality growing up, people would make jokes
and materializing of body management and that I was a lesbian because all my
clothing. In this regard, Nancy Lesko (1988) beau­ friends were dudes and I was really awk­
tifully describes dress as a curriculum (p. 69). Key ward when I talked to girls, because
signifiers include the performativity of lived, I was like, damn they’re pretty! My inter­
managed, clothed, felt bodies and material cul­ ests are not necessarily feminine. They
ture affiliations, such as music and stuff, espe­ never really have been. Like, I’m inter­
cially what can be afforded in relation to body ested in like slicing a brain to find out
management and clothing (e.g., the cost of low- what’s going on. I’m interested in video
carb diets, gym memberships, and beauty ser­ games. I’m interested in like dark litera­
vices). Performativity is also signified through ture and games and stuff. So, it’s not
material culture objects, including the materiality necessarily feminine. So, they would
of the self, home, clothing, art, and artifacts, and call me a lesbian and I remember that
accessories like jewelry, cars, and the granular it got me suspended once because I got
situated self-identifying and affiliating aesthetics in a fight over it. I was like, what the hell?
of material culture objects that are key to youth, I was in grade six. So, this was the year
like cell phone cases. Performativity within sub­ before I came out. I came out in seventh
cultures, such as families, workplaces, class­ grade and when I came out my mom’s
rooms, collectives, and teams, calls for constant just like “I knew it.” That’s really funny,
management of our performances, bodies, and but no, my mom is really supportive
clothing. of it.
“Being Gay, I Was Always Insulted”
As Danny sat with me, she was animated and
Danny: I used to be very active. I used to play engaged. I noticed her assertive black Doc
baseball and stuff, when I was a younger Martens–style combat boots, scuffed and

338 Blaikie / Worlding Danny

improperly laced; her makeup contrasted with her So Anthrax, love that band. Then
pale skin. She seemed to be embodying there’s Type O Negative, a song like
a somewhat gender-neutral, emo visual identity “Black No. 1 (Little Miss Care-All).”11
(Blaikie, 2019; Wilkins, 2008), a high school sub­ Yeah and I also still listen to like
culture of artsy, overtly emotional wearers of classic emo music like Fall Out Boy
heavy black makeup and black clothing, piercings, and My Chemical Romance, but
and tattoos, preferring rock music characterized I tend to listen to heavier metal
by strong emotional expressivity. In an early focus music. Like, “Black No. 1” is about
group conversation with Danny, Opal, and others, vampires, blood suckers. It’s heavy
it transpired that a couple of years earlier, both stuff.
Opal and Danny had made a conscious decision to
be emos. To “do” emo correctly, Danny and Opal Turning from conventional, gendered beauty
googled emo, looking for dress and makeup styles ideal incarnations, through their bodies, clothing,
typical of the emo visual aesthetic, alongside emo and accessories, emo youth, like goths (Wilkins,
music. 2008), counter principles of White adolescent
positivity by rejecting sports, by wearing white
“I Still Wear a Lot of Dark Makeup. I’ve foundation to appear paler, ill, and distressed,
Only Really Liked Heavy Metal Music” alongside sometimes menacing tattoos and mul­
tiple piercings. To be emo is to embrace, embody,
Danny: Where did you find depressing quotes
and visibly wear the interior, antisocial sadness
for your pictures? Every emo does it, like
and angst of the emo sensibility, and to identify,
“I rise and fall with the sun.”
through body management and dress, with
Opal: I will admit it. I was literally looking
a Western, White adolescent high school subcul­
on Google Images for sad quotes.
ture (Wilkins, 2008), policed internally and exter­
Danny: You were that emo?
nally (Foucault, 1975), evoking a particular
Opal: Oh my god, it was so bad. I’m crin­
situated dress code that flouts conservative het­
ging at myself because, it was so
erosexual middle-class values (Blaikie, 2019;
bad. Like you know it’s bad when
Wilkins, 2008) and Western regulatory ideals.
you search that stuff up. Like, how
Collectively, these are sign-wearing, sign-bearing
to dress emo and do makeup.
ways of scoffing at conventional Christian values
Danny: You’re doing Google, really?
of Danny’s socially conservative small-town com­
Opal: (laughing) Shut up! What?
munity, distinguishing and differentiating emos
Danny: ’Cause I know some emos would cut
from normative high school life, and from domi­
themselves on Snap.
nant, overwrought Western beauty ideal girl sub­
Opal: We were not that far into emo, okay?
cultures, such as mean girls (Blaikie, 2018) and
Danny: Yeah, for being emo, it was just like…
vegan thrift-shop-purchasing locals (Blaikie,
a lot of like black filtered photos.
2019). The term local was coined by celebrity
Blaikie: That’s interesting. (Jeff is laughing).
influencer Emma Chamberlain, as well as buxomly
So, do you still feel you’re performing
sexy, highly performative Kylie Jenner types
that identity?
(Blaikie, 2019). Danny mentioned celebrity influ­
Danny: I still wear a lot of dark stuff. I still
encers Emma Chamberlain, Justin Bieber, the
wear a lot of dark makeup. I’ve only
Kardashians, and Kylie Jenner in the conversation
really liked heavy metal music. I like
below. I asked Danny, are you still emo? She
really heavy metal music.
responded:
Blaikie: Give me an example of one band
that you like. Danny: Now, Jeff and I are becoming nerds,
Danny: ’cos we’re gamers. Like, we go see

Studies in Art Education / Volume 61, No. 4 339

 like Marvel movies and we love DC,12
depending on who’s winning the
argument that day. Yes! We’re all
very into Star Wars and I know, it’s
a classic nerd thing. That’s who I’m
becoming. With my art and all. We
also like AesthetiCat.13 It’s a cool
website. The mouse becomes
a spaceship icon. It’s humorous.
I like the ironical T-shirts they sell,
like, “homophobia is gay,” “pastel
goth,” and “Fxck off.”
Blaikie: And what about celebrity influencers?
Danny: Well there’s the obvious, like Emma
Chamberlain and Kylie Jenner, the
Kardashians and such, Justin Bieber,
with some sexy chick selling Calvin
Klein jeans. I don’t care about them.
Figure 2. Artwork by Jeff. Collage and mixed
I’m not femme. We’re into nerd gamer
media on poster paper.
stuff. That’s us really. Like, Star Wars,
Marvel, science fiction.

Considering popular culture icons like cascade down the left side of the composition.
Kylie Jenner, the Kardashians, and celebrity It is as if the figures become increasingly rea­
influencers on social media, Laurent Berlant’s lized and self-conscious, with the bottom fig­
(2011) Cruel Optimism speaks to marketing’s ure looking directly and challengingly at the
callous promise of being and becoming viewer. The piercing brown eyes are a focal
a someone, through strong insinuations that point: “What do you want?,” the figure seems
material acquisitions, services, and putative to ask. It may be significant that the progression
experiences will facilitate access to new iden­ of figures leads to the word “exile” across the
tities, social circles, wealth, fame, agency, bottom of the format, which is stabbed through
and empowerment. Rejecting the burlesque by dagger-shaped painted black triangles.
characterization of femme as pastiche encap­ The framed rectangle, a focal point of the
sulated by the Kardashians, who have composition, expresses the key storying Jeff
become spectacularly wealthy, reinforcing evoked when he stated: “To cross the street,
Berlant’s theories, Danny embraced an emo- push button, wait for walk signal, wait, wait
becoming-gamer visual identity and subcul­ some more, lose faith in bullshit button, cross
ture. Her gamer companion Jeff listened, but anyway.” For me, this narrative speaks to loss
he did not speak. He quietly offered me of faith; loss of trust in the world and its policy
a mixed-media collage (Figure 2), a result of operations as it mimics and mocks standard
his own reflections and world-making instructions for crossing a street, which is,
(O’Donoghue & Berard, 2014). metaphorically, to enter into a new state of
As I engage in worlding this image, I am being. Society instructs us to wait, but patience
drawn to the asymmetrical design that reads has limits. Hopefulness is encapsulated in the
like conventional text, left to right, starting phrase “cross anyway.” This clear message is
with anime and manga face cutouts that faced on the right by a graffiti tag,

340 Blaikie / Worlding Danny

comprehensible to other graffiti artists: To inviting others, in turn, to engage in worlding
engage in graffiti is to engage in collective, her, as I am doing in this visual essay.
public, and contested artmaking that simulta­
neously defaces, adorns, and is life-giving for
Danny: In my poetry and art, I like that I can
those who have no other means of world-mak­
manipulate how I see myself. Like,
ing (O’Donoghue & Berard, 2014). The words
for my view, on my writing and art,
selected by Jeff for this collage include beauti­
it’s like, it’s like talking to someone
ful, average, lost, explosive, wanted, shattered,
who actually understands and the
proud, kind, happiness, danger, remember, and
person who understands me is me,
destiny. The ordinary is a shifting, nomadic
right? I don’t understand myself
assemblage of things that happen and are
sometimes. So, it’s easier to write
felt, in which we encounter a multiplicity of
and make art. Doing that puts things
micro worlds (Stewart, 2007, p. 6), in which
in perspective. I can manipulate
there are forms of absence alongside presence,
what I create. My English marks are
otherness, and immanent potentialities. The
always very high but so are most of
presences and absences in Jeff’s composition
my marks. I don’t really put in an
speak of cynicism, tension, hope, and despair,
effort for marks. The way I feel
along with incompleteness and incoherence in
shouldn’t be a grade. Like even
words disappearing on the right, words that do
joining this art class was hard for
not belong, for example, futur, lo, why I lov,
me because I am not good with
betraya, and fre.
bad grades. So, my partner did
The political implications and materiality of
only three percent of the work.
the ordinary and everyday are key: In Jeff’s and
That’s one thing that always irri­
Danny’s worlding of themselves as gamers, they
tates me. I work hard. I know how
do not just play video games in virtual worlds, in
easy it is to slip back into
space and place, fingering greasy screens, their
homelessness.
minds and hearts racing; they also create and Blaikie: Do you remember being homeless?
belong to communities in and through their Danny: I have bits and pieces of memory of
affiliations with popular culture entities such that, because my mom protected me
as Star Wars, and games like Dungeons & from a lot. Like, I didn’t find out until
Dragons, operating in virtual communities last year that we went to a soup
within networks of individuals across geo­ kitchen. So, yeah, the artwork.
graphic, cultural, affective, classed, raced, gen­ Homelessness.14 The first artwork at
dered, sexed, and political boundaries. There is the back is very chaotic, I have a solid
awareness of what these collectives stand for, black background. I used a palette
and the ways in which they are world-making knife. The bottom layer is chaotic
entities. For example, Star Wars fans engage in and there’s thick paint. My favorite
worlding themselves dressed as gamers or Star colors are blue and red. If I pick one
Wars characters at conferences. When she color, it would always be purple. In
states, “I can manipulate how I see myself,” the next image, I always liked trees.
Danny is aware of her burgeoning agency, They remind me of stability and
beyond being an emo or gamer, to her poten­ growth. I’ve never really had any­
tial and vitality in worlding herself as an artist thing stable growing up. So, that’s
and poet. She is aware that in worlding herself, where the stability thing comes
she creates worlds through art and poetry, from. So, growth is my biggest goal.
I just want to become better. That’s

Studies in Art Education / Volume 61, No. 4 341

 what I figure, I might as well have You smile at me, but you pass me by,
something that is personal to me. because to be associated with me is like
So that’s the tree. I sit and write hanging yourself from the social status tree.
under the tree. The writing is there, I know the way you look at me.
under the cut out, layered over the
You dread ending up like me.
chaos.
The abandoned building.
Blaikie: So, is that you?
Just down the street.
Danny: Yeah. I do wear a lot of knee-high
socks because I just think they’re
In Danny’s artworks and poetry, she worlds her
adorable. I actually have a picture
being, becoming, and belonging, through home­
like that on my phone where this
lessness, desperation, feelings of dis/orientation,
idea of me just sitting came from.
disembodiment, not belonging, and a shifting
That cut-out is taken from a contour
sexual identity construct as both bisexual and
drawing of a tree, taken from my
gay. Similarly, the shift from emo to gamer is
notebook. If you look at the girl,
incomplete, everything is unfolding, immanent,
she’s holding a notebook, right? So,
becoming. She is finding ways to be and belong,
what it really is, what she’s writing is
which she makes implicit in stating that she can
this. It’s poetry. It’s sophisticated.
manipulate how she sees herself through art and
What she’s really feeling is different.
poetry as world-making: “It’s like talking to
When you pull back the layer, and
look at it where it came from, the
feelings underneath, it’s all chaotic,
rough, and thick. It’s indistinguishable
from what it originally was, where it
came from. You can see through to
the chaos. I perform poems competi­
tively, and I’ve won competitions.

Following is Danny’s poem about an aban­

doned building:

My vision is blurred,
My voice is shaky,
Mother, why do you hate me?
My habits, unbreakable
My sadness, un-fakeable.
My body is like an abandoned building,
Once beautiful and full of warmth.
Are my eyes like the windows of an old
building that you peer into on cold nights?
My heart once a fireplace glowing and
burning, now is just ash and ember of
Figure 3. Artwork by Danny. Poster paint on poster
forgotten yearning. paper.
I house lost souls, sins.

342 Blaikie / Worlding Danny

someone who actually understands and the per­ immanence and becoming. The tree represents
son who understands me is me, right? I don’t stability and growth, both of which are necessary
understand myself sometimes. So, it’s easier to conditions for Danny to thrive, to become, and to
write and make art. Doing that puts things in belong. She sits beneath her fantasy tree’s shady
perspective.” In Figure 3, we see the bottom embrace, with her notebook and her adorable
layer of Danny’s artwork, which references the knee-high socks, writing a better present into
hidden realm, the feelings that she identifies as existence.
chaos. This abstract artwork features strongly tex­
tured gestural topographical movement in the
Conclusion
application of paint, and intense light–dark con­ In this study, I asked “How do 11th-grade art
trasts. I am reminded of something Danny said students experience their evolving youth identi­
earlier: “I’m interested in like slicing a brain to find ties and visual culture constructs? How do celeb­
out what’s going on.” The idea of slicing is evoked rity influencers, social media, and popular culture
for me in this image in that there is a suggestion of impact these students’ evolving youth and visual
a wound, a slash, and a bright splashy daub of red, culture identities?” Following the work of Stewart
a messy carnal chaos that hides beneath the con­ (2007, 2010, 2019), I was drawn to worlding as
trolled, visible, and figurative work layered above method; worlding as storying. Worlding invites us
in Figure 4, where a hard-edged, organic, themed to attend and attune to individual and collective
stencil design evokes a silhouetted tree shape experiences, the situated lived qualities of a life,
covering a selection of prose that Danny picked disrupting boundaries between affects, subjects,
from a discarded essay in the classroom wastebas­ cultures, places, times, and events. Something
ket. The inclusion of text references Danny’s pas­ about my initial focus group discussions with an
sion for writing. The tree to the right of the 11th-grade art class focusing on these questions
composition is key. Danny states: “I always liked stuck with one of the students, Danny, and some­
trees. They remind me of stability and growth. I’ve thing about Danny stuck with me (Ahmed, 2004).
never really had anything stable growing up. So, Being and Becoming
that’s where the stability thing comes from. So, Worlding Danny is layered, multidirectional,
growth is my biggest goal.” The canopy of leaves and entangled. In our connections to and with
is shades of turquoise and sky blue; the trunk is one another, in our intersubjective being and
purple and pink. It is an imagined fantasy tree; “being with,” I was drawn to Danny’s worlding of
a nonhuman thing that cannot deliberately hurt. herself through our conversations, her art, and her
Trees are visible visual metaphors of nomadic poetry. In worlding Danny, I world myself as
a scholar. In turn, following a reviewer of this
article, theorizing about worlding and engaging
in worlding as method evokes situated worlding
within the broader field of art education scholar­
ship, where we tell stories framed in theories and
practices, framed by other stories (Haraway,
2016, p. 12).
In worlding Danny I worked porously with
interdisciplinary theoretical constructs and meth­
ods, drawing on artmaking, anthropology, art
education scholarship, and pedagogy, aiming to
evoke Stewart’s (2008) experiential reading
Figure 4. Artwork by Danny. Text, collage, and of ideas, images and narratives, and making
watercolor on poster paper.
space for surprise (O’Donoghue, 2019, p. 108).

Studies in Art Education / Volume 61, No. 4 343

 I introduced worlding (Stewart, 2010, 2019) draw­ scholarship as praxis, and engaging in narrative
ing on a photograph I took in Agra, following storying through texts and images.
Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) immanence. I nar­ While multiple potentialities and limitations
rated image-text as complementary: Nothing is are inherent in Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987)
static. Beginnings and endings cannot be traced immanence, in my entanglement with Danny
with precision; they are continual becoming pro­ there is a sense of belonging that is both gen­
cesses. Meeting Jeff and Danny in that Grade 11 erative and resistant (Braidotti, 2019), simulta­
art class was pure chance. I posit that in scholar­ neously fleshy, decaying, buoyant, inert, and
ship, the ethical requirement that we fictionalize animated. These ideas resonate, along with
participants immediately draws us into something Braidotti’s (2019) call for “an immanent–and yet
that is becoming worlding and storying, particu­ fluid–re-grounding of ourselves in the messy
larly so when we frame worlding in and through contradictions of the present” (p. 38). Danny
theoretical constructs. inspired me to world and story moments in
time in which I felt there was a being-with,
Belonging a sense of becoming, and contested senses of
In the field of art education and beyond, world­ belonging: In India, in Danny’s life, in Jeff’s life,
ing, immanence, becoming, and belonging are and in the life of a homeless woman in Santa Fe,
implicit conditions of pedagogy, scholarship, and New Mexico. As Stephen Carpenter and Kevin
art: Methods of teaching, learning, inquiry, and Tavin (2010) note, if we take seriously “the politics
artmaking evoke worlding, which is both enabled of visuality, a reconceptualized art education
and limited by individual and collective imagin­ might attempt to interpret how visual experience
aries, conditions, and dispositions. While worlding and the visualized subject is constructed within
as method (Stewart, 2007) opened up spaces for social systems, practices and structures” (p. 345).
my own new experiences and surprises in creating Through worlding, asking questions about ordin­
this visual essay, I am aware that conventions ary affects (Stewart, 2007), ideas and experiences,
abound here, in form, content, theorizing, organi­ who we are, how we feel, what we are interested
zation. Yet this approach facilitated a decolonizing in, and how we make sense of the world, its time,
of my own imaginary and sense of belonging with meanings, affects, spaces, and materialities, cre­
regard to formal conventions of the field, includ­ ates possibilities for attunements to our liminal
ing having intentions, expectations, a sense of needs and desires to be, become, and belong.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am grateful to Dónal O’Donoghue, senior editor, and the reviewers of this article for engaging
with me in the journey of worlding Danny, reframing my research-creation work through their
astute and beautiful insights. I am grateful to Danny, Jeff, and their classmates for expressing so
eloquently, through artworks and conversations, their situated shifting ways of being, becoming,
and belonging, in the world.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID
Fiona Blaikie http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3640-5192

344 Blaikie / Worlding Danny

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ENDNOTES
1
Personal email communication on April 23, 2020, with the senior editor of Studies in Art Education, Dónal
O’Donoghue.
2
Pseudonyms were chosen by participants.

Studies in Art Education / Volume 61, No. 4 347

 3
Prior to the start of data collection, I received research ethics board approval from my university, and
I secured permission from participating local school boards, school principals, participating teachers, and
participants’ guardians.
4
A typical breakfast sold at street stands in Agra is bedai, a puffy fried bread served with spicy sauce, curd,
and potato pieces. Jalebi, fried batter, is a sugary alternative, served with aromatic hot sweet syrup.
5
Over 3 weeks, I gathered data in the art room via a series of audio-recorded, in-class focus group discussions
(Kamberelis & Dimitriadis, 2013) with all 17 student participants; I audio-recorded one-on-one conversations
and observed ongoing artmaking in which students freely created via visual and textual media in response
to our focus group conversations. Danny requested a one-on-one conversation with me, which I conducted
at her request, in the presence of her close friend, Jeff. The transcript of that conversation, alongside
selections from focus group conversations, as well as Danny’s art and poetry, form the basis of the data
presented here.
6
Transcript data are presented as complete sections of unedited conversations.
7
The highly damaging impacts of child homelessness are well documented (Rafferty & Shinn, 1991).
8
In a windowed storeroom/office off of the art classroom, with the door open, Danny sat across the table
from me. Her friend Jeff sat to one side, occasionally saying “yup” and nodding.
9
Jeff was present in the conversation and nodded at this point.
10
Our self-talk is both limited and enabled by situated conditions.
11
Retrieved from www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFwYJYl5GUQ.
12
DC refers to DC comics. Retrieved from www.dccomics.com.
13
For AesthetiCat, see www.aestheticat.com.
14
At this point, Danny showed me her artworks.

348 Blaikie / Worlding Danny

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