Translocal assemblage and the practice of alternative media toward racial justice: a pedagogical perspective

There is a growing cultural and social movement among youth who draw on spoken word poetry and documentary style videos to participate in the new media landscape. Many multimedia poems have appeared on social media sites such as YouTube and Vimeo as a form of participatory politics. In this article, the author takes up a discussion of translocal practices and ‘translocal assemblage’ wherein individuals and groups engage in the exchange of ideas across space and time. One example is a multimedia poem about the underrepresentation and invisibility of racialized minority students at a major American university. This viral multimedia poem remixed elsewhere based on students’ experiences at another university demonstrates not only the potential of translocal assemblage in participatory politics but also the practice of alternative media in the movement toward racial justice. That is, young people are finding civic resources and building on each other’s work to challenge the social order. Pedagogically, the author built on the theoretical underpinning of translocal assemblage to shape work with students in the college classroom who, in turn, produced other genres of alternative media. The resultant video documentaries about locally unjust social arrangements make evident the subtle nature of cultural flows that have direct consequences for critical studies in education.