Queering critical literacies: disidentifications and queer futurity in an afterschool storytelling and roleplaying game

• Published in: English teaching : practice and critique 2021-11, Vol.20 (4), p.534-548
• Main Authors: Storm, Scott, Jones, Karis
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Action Research; After School Programs; Children & youth; Clubs; Collaboration; Community Relations; Critical Literacy; Discourse analysis; Fantasy; Games; Gender identity; Guidebooks; High School Students; Ideology; Imagination; Language Arts; LGBTQ People; LGBTQ studies; Literacy; Literary Genres; Literature Reviews; Males; Multiple Literacies; Narratives; Researchers; Role Playing; Self Actualization; Sex Stereotypes; Sexuality; Social Bias; Social Justice; Social Theories; Stereotypes; Story Telling; Storytelling; Students; Transcripts (Written Records); Urban Schools; Verbs; Video Games
• ISSN: 1175-8708; 2059-5727; 1175-8708
• DOI: 10.1108/ETPC-10-2020-0131

Purpose This paper aims to describe the critical literacies of high school students engaged in a youth participatory action research (YPAR) project focused on a roleplaying game, Dungeons and Dragons, in a queer-led afterschool space. The paper illustrates how youth critique and resist unjust societal norms while simultaneously envisioning queer utopian futures. Using a queer theory framework, the authors consider how youth performed disidentifications and queer futurity. Design/methodology/approach This study is a discourse analysis of approximately 85 hours of audio collected over one year. Findings Youth engaged in deconstructive critique, disidentifications and queer futurity in powerful enactments of critical literacies that involved simultaneous resistance, subversion, imagination and hope as youth envisioned queer utopian world-building through their fantasy storytelling. Youth acknowledged the injustice of the present while radically envisioning a utopian future. Originality/value This study offers an empirical grounding for critical literacies centered in queer theory and explores how youth engage with critical literacies in collaboratively co-authored texts. The authors argue that queering critical literacies potentially moves beyond deconstructive critique while simultaneously opening spaces for resistance, imagination and utopian world-making through linguistic and narrative-based tools.