Terror(ism) in the classroom: censorship,affect and uncivil bodies

This paper examines an event in a US secondary classroom where a Muslim student was disciplined for reading lesbian erotica in class. While many students read and exchanged erotica in the school, this student in particular was targeted for a disciplinary hearing. I explore this as an affective event, a moment of sensation and excess, to think about how the taken-for-granted dramas of the classroom might be manifestations of larger scale events and geopolitical forces. Here post-9/11 practices of surveilling and managing Muslim bodies and ambivalent affects around Muslim women coalesced to escalate an ‘event.’ As mainstream media increasingly report incidents of Islamophobia in schools, educational research needs pay heed to the experiences and voices of Muslim students. Here a student’s outspokenness, agency, and animated affect were positioned as insubordinate and deemed threatening to the sanctity of the school. Incivility and dissent, rather than insubordinate, are important affects to make space for in secondary schools, particularly for students of color. This paper also explores several concepts in relation to qualitative research including data as affect, affective pedagogies, and glitch methodologies.