Draft of Chapter 3

The Space of With

“It may be the recovery of imagination that lessens the social paralysis we see around us and restores the sense that something can be done in the name of what is decent and humane.”

Maxine Greene, 2000, p. 35

Introduction

At the beginning of this study I did not know, but might have guessed, the great

importance that space – our space, in between so many other lived realities – would come

to have for the story of our group and this dissertation. I conceptualize our space as one

layer of our multilayered counterstory to the schooled discourses on literacies in the lives

of African American boys. In this chapter I look at how the five boys and I became a

group and co-constructed our space in which to story the world around us, a focus that

reflects the shift in this study from being an inquiry about resistance to project of

possibilities. I initially describe the methodological implications of this shift in the

previous chapter in order to illuminate the ways in which my hybrid researcher and

practitioner identities found a place in this work; here I respond to Greene’s (2000) hope,

noted above, that our work as educators and researchers not fall prey to prevalent “social

paralysis” by articulating a stance of with that moves toward the “recovery of

imagination” and possibilities in collaboration with adolescents through the construction

of a hybrid third space.

1

Our space as a “third space”

Spatial hybridity, what Bhabha refers to as “neither One nor the Other, but

something else besides, in-between” (Bhabha, 1994, p. 224), is a particularly appropriate

lens to bring to bear in making sense of how our group came to life, once we initially

came to be. We were in-between the more identifiable contexts of home, school, or

community; we were in-between discernable roles of participants and researcher. I use

Bhabha’s concept of hybridity – of in-betweenness, and implied decentering of power

through explicit diversity – to frame our group as a “thirdspace,” that is, a space of

hybridity.

In addition to salience of space in my analysis of fieldnotes and a variety of visual

documentation, I was also aware of the ways in which we enacted our group across space

and time. Within the particular context of this study, I conceptualized our space as a way

of being that was negotiated by an adult and adolescents boys, and that was enacted

across the three dimensions: multiple locations, multiple modalities, and multiple selves.

Thus, as I looked for how and why our space was generative of multiple literate identities

and engagements with literacies, I was also aware of where, how, and by whom our space

was being “lived,” as Soja (1997) discusses. Thus, when I talk in this chapter about our

group, made up of the boys and me, as a third space, I am suggesting that our group was

more than a site for research, or an example of pedagogy to be studied; I argue that we

co-constructed a space that afforded us a range of possibilities for where, in what ways,

and about what and whom we constructed multimodal texts in the form of stories and

counterstories.

2

I engaged the theoretical lenses of spatial hybridity – of geographic, discursive,

and identity hybridity – to frame my analysis of the dimensions of our third space –

locations, modalities, and selves – and to illuminate the ways we lived our space across

the dimensions; therefore I explore the locations we traversed, modalities we engaged,

and selves we authored. I also found that our enactment across these dimensions were

enmeshed, and ultimately took on new forms and purposes that characterized the hybrid

nature of our space. I map the three dimensions of our space map onto and, in so doing,

extend these theoretical lenses of hybridity. I understood this process – the co-

construction of our group space – to be recursive (illustrated by Figure 3.1) and

multimodal.

Figure 3.1

3

storytelling

storytelling

Traversing multiple locations

Engaging multiple modalities

Authoring multiple selves

(our) Third Space

Discursive hybridity Identity hybridity

Geographic hybridity

As I explicated in the previous chapter, the context in which a study of literacy

takes place significantly impacts what is learned in that space; embedded in an inquiry

such as this is the ever-present and ever-shifting conclusions drawn about the

relationships between literacy and race in the lives of urban adolescent African American

boys. For that reason, before I describe the layers of knowing (in Chapter 4) and play (in

Chapter 5) in our space, I first extend the description of our research context though an

illustrative analysis of the ways in which the context for this study – our space – was

made/lived/enacted. I include excerpts from fieldnotes and group conversations and

selected photographs to render the dimensions of our space, and to make explicit our

spatial hybridity. I initially highlight each of the three dimensions separately using

examples from the data. When I talk about the multiple locations we traversed, I will

present examples that illustrate the range and variation of our geography and indicate the

moments of spatial hybridity across location and stories; I consider the question of where

literate engagements can be enacted, and how locations can be traversed in a hybrid

literate space. Similarly, I include instances that demonstrate the ways in which we

engaged multiple modalities to enact discursive hybridity in our space; I consider the

question of what literate engagement looks like, and how modalities can be engaged for

literate purposes. And I present an analysis of the multiple selves we authored by

presenting two examples that exemplify identity hybridity of our space; I take up the

question of who enacts literate identities, and how selves can be authored in a hybrid

literate space. These examples represent larger patterns in the data that collectively

represent the interconnectedness of our spatial hybridity with our ongoing storytelling.

4

I acknowledge that in the data presented in these sections we were never engaged

in only one way of being, but that we were always enacting our space in hybrid ways;

these ways of being – as individuals, as a group, as individuals within and constitutive of

a group – include the three dimensions I focus on, but also undoubtedly reflect a range of

other ways of being and interacting that I do not explicitly focus on here. Therefore, as I

foreground one dimension, the other dimensions of our space are also at play. I conclude

this chapter by connecting the possibilities that were opened up by our space with the

arguments made by current literacy research for supporting adolescents’ literacy learning

using a multimodal vignette that brings together the multiple dimensions of our group

space. Finally, I argue that a hybrid space affords what Soja (1997) identifies as “new

social possibilities” that, in this study, complicated the expectations for a context of

literate engagements. Enmeshed in this analysis is active disruption of traditional power

relations of a literacy research space, that I will address further in the conclusion of this

chapter.

Recovery of imagination

The following vignette is based on my fieldnotes from the first summer that the

boys and I met, and illustrates the moment at which the aforementioned shift from a

primary focus on resistance to an understanding of possibilities occurred for me in this

study. Prior to this moment we had spent nearly three hours in park filming scenes for

our horror movie STAB!, and after stopping into the library to get a drink from the water

fountain, were proceeding north to complete our filming for the day (8/26/02).

5

We are on our way to shoot the last scene of the day in McDonald’s. Timothy and Cedric, who are sitting on the steps, are squinting as they look up. As I approach them, Cedric tilts his head to one side and looking up at me asks, in a serious tone, “Ms. Lalitha, have you ever thought of being a teacher?” Intrigued, I respond that I used to teach a few years ago. As if to clarify Cedric’s point, Timothy follows up by saying, “No, our teacher.” Antwine and James don’t say anything but appear engaged in the interaction and look on as Timothy and Cedric continue. “You’re nice to us,” they tell me and with a smile Cedric taps me on my elbow as if to reinforce this point. Timothy suggests that we could set up a home school situation where we would continue to shoot the movie, and we would have access to the library. As he talks, his uses his hands to gesture to the library and in the direction of the park from where we have just walked. I agree that it would be a wonderful idea and before I can say more Timothy takes up the thread that Cedric started with his comment that I am nice to them. He begins talking about his teachers in general within the conversational frame of how they are “not nice”. Timothy then goes on to describe an incident – representative of others, I gather – where a teacher of his left a message for his mother on the answering machine. He then wishes aloud that he could play the tapes back to his teachers and point out the differences in how they talk to him (in class, I presume?) and how they talk “on the tape.” As Timothy finishes his account Cedric stands up and we begin moving toward McDonald’s to begin shooting the next scene. I make a mental note to ask the boys more about some of the opinions they offered today, especially about schooling and their relationships with teachers.

I was struck that day by the conflicting thoughts going on inside me. On the one

hand, I wondered how all this “in-school” talk found its way into our intentionally out-of-

school space; and on the other, I began to recognize the group that the boys and I had

been co-constructing as space to not only talk back and resist institutional “stories”, but

in which to explore discursive possibilities as well. As my analysis of the data was

ongoing, I turned my gaze inward and began to think critically about how we were living

6

and enacting our space; I wondered what the dimensions of our space were, and how we

engaged our context and modalities in the process. These are the questions I address in

this chapter in order to explicate the ways in which this group of urban, African

American adolescent boys and I traversed multiple locations, engaged with multiple

modalities, and authored multiple selves as we made our group space.

Geographic hybridity in a co-constructed third space:

Traversing multiple locations

With the city as our canvas, the boys and I made our way through parks, streets,

buildings, parking lots, and came into contact with a range of people, rules, expectations,

and surveillance. As we walked, rode the train or the bus, or (rarely) drove around West

Philadelphia, we often shared stories that turned otherwise forgettable structures into

landmarks for our memories and experiences. Our stories breathed life into the city’s

sometimes fatigued demeanor and verbally recognized the meanings that different places,

ways of living and being had for our lives and for literacies in our space. Without being

tied to any particular location, the boys and I had the luxury to not only locate ourselves

in different places, but to bring into our space the geographies that held meaning for us.

We did this through the sharing, imagining, and construction of stories and counterstories

that at once shaped and were shaped by our group. Once again, I use the concept of

counterstory/ies as both a text and a discourse, such that as we “talked back” to the

dominant ideologies of schooling we produced multimodal texts as well as disrupted

traditional adult-youth power dynamics (e.g. Gutierrez, et. al., 1995) by the practices we

enacted; our “lived space” was co-constructed in part through these counterstories. In

7

this section, I will use the theoretical lens of geographic hybridity to discuss how we

enacted our group as a space across multiple locations.

Although we were not bound by physical space, there were a few sites that

continued to be present throughout the time we spent together as a group. The local

branch of the library, the McDonald’s, and Malcolm X Park, were all located along the

corridor that we traversed most regularly; in this section, I call these “old locations.”

Over the fifteen months these three sites were consistently suggested as places to meet,

have conversations, film, make recordings, play. Equally important was our movement

across these and other locations. New locations that we ventured into were outside of our

usual repertoire, that I call “new locations,” and that we frequented less than five times.

On these walks the boys would point to people on the street, shout out to schoolmates,

comment about the myriad shops and wares being sold, and mess around with each other.

Our movement was, to an extent, driven by our stories, and reflexively our stories moved

us, literally. In this sections I will look at how we made new meanings for literate

engagements in old locations as well as in new locations. The hybridity of our shifting

geography is reflected in the resulting relationships, between meanings and locations, and

contributes to the making of our group as a third space.

Making new meaning in old locations

About a month following the vignette that opens this chapter, the boys and I had a

conversation that built on the evolving counterstory of school. Here, I explore a

conversation that took place at McDonald’s during which the boys imagine this out-of-

school site as a site for literate engagement. This is an “old” location that the boys and I

8

had become quite familiar with, that gains new meaning through the enactment of our

space. It is this relationship – old location, new meaning – that offers one way of

thinking about geographic hybridity.

In between sips of orange soda and bites of a hamburger Timothy states, “This is

what school should be like.” It was a warm day in September and Timothy, Cedric,

James, Antwine and I were having lunch at McDonald’s, a few steps from the library

where we’d met an hour earlier. It was a fairly typical meeting during which we moved

across different locations – the 52nd Street library, McDonald’s, the YMCA – used

different technologies – the digital voice recorder and the video camera – and covered a

range of topics in our conversation. Timothy’s remark brought up a thread of

conversation that had been present since our earliest meetings: a critique of their school

as a learning space. Anecdotes about school rules and feelings of discontent with the

curriculum often followed an opening like Timothy’s statement. Antwine, usually

reticent during conversations about school, even stated once that his dislike of school and

disinterest in doing homework was tied to, what he understood as, “teachers just giving

us something to do” (AT, 4/26/03). Beneath the commonly recognized adolescent

resistance to homework and school-mandated work lay social commentary and action in

response to school practices that wasn’t to be taken lightly. And in this space, Antwine’s

comments about school had a place just as much as his questions about “making a

movie” (FN, 4/16/03) or thoughts about his “corny” neighborhood basketball team.

However, on that day the talk focused on us. Cedric pointed to the street behind

us and commented that “we could be learning from all around us” (FN, 9/20/02). This

was not the first time he had expressed disdain with school being a primarily indoor

9

enterprise, with the exception of “two minutes of recess that they take away from you if

you’re bad” (FN, 10/26/02). Picking up the voice recorder, Cedric stood up and offered a

suggestion for “an assignment…that could be for us to take tape recorders and interview

people, like if a funeral’s going by and see how they’re feeling.” I agreed

enthusiastically, thinking that he was suggesting an idea for us to pursue as a group. We

were nearly done with our horror movie and would be ready to work on another project

soon. But Cedric sat down, put the voice recorder back down on the table and resumed

drinking his soda. After a few seconds, Antwine, who, along with James, has been eating

and listening quietly, kicks off his shoes, pokes Cedric, and disappears like lightning into

the colorful playland structure. Cedric takes another big gulp of his soda and looks at me

eagerly and asks, “Ms. Lalitha, can I—can I have the camera?” I hand him the video

camera and, cradling it in his right arm, Cedric climbs through the structure until he

reaches the top. Antwine has already slid down one of the slides, screaming as he arrives

and looking behind him to make sure Cedric isn’t following him. He isn’t. Cedric is at

the top of the structure taping a “threat”1 to Antwine that he plays for him when he

emerges from another slide a minute later. Timothy and James gather around Cedric who

is holding the camera and shielding the sun so that they all can see. I take a few a notes,

but mostly respond to their questions about zooming and panning with the video camera

and laugh with them at Cedric’s audacious remarks in response to Antwine’s earlier

threats.

1 “Threat” messages came about as a way to become fluent with using the video camera. An example of this multimodal text genre is included below; I also further discuss these messages within the frame of multimodal discourses in Chapter 5.

10

I read the juxtaposition of Cedric’s observation about our location – as a site for

the literate engagement that funeral interviews would afford – and the following threat

messages as an instantiation of the geographic hybridity of our space. The five of us were

situated in a public place with stories teeming all around us, a point that Cedric makes

explicit. We were eating lunch, sitting together in a moment of reflection, defined by

Timothy’s remark that reconnects our out-of-school, group space with School. His

comment sparks conversation about this ongoing topic of debate which, fed by the day’s

activities and Cedric’s observations, further counterstories School; a multimodal

counterstorying discursive moment when Cedric’s oral literacy practices are followed up

by his and Antwine’s antics that not only embody play, but that instantiate a use of the

video camera that reoccurs several more times during the year.

Furthermore, following the moment of Cedric’s exasperated utterance about the

nature of schooling, I began to further focus my attention as a researcher inward and onto

our group. My earlier intent to understand how the boys would resist “majoritarian

stories” (Delgado, 1995) using multimodal literacy practices evolved into an inquiry

about the space we were co-constructing and its affordances for a range of storytelling

and counterstorytelling possibilities. As I did so, the questions about place became

subsumed by questions about space; and more specifically I became increasingly aware

of the relationships across the boys’ discursive constructions and the terrain we traversed.

For example, whereas McDonald’s was initially a place to meet, eat, and counterstory

school, it was also a filming site for our horror movie. Thus, stories and counterstories

shared a dialogic relationship with a place – in this case, a fast food restaurant – such that

they not only shaped the other but, in effect, remade each other. For our group, the

11

function and purpose of McDonald’s changed from a branch of a multinational fast food

chain that was a place to eat and meet into a site for social commentary, for challenging

school discourses, and for staging several scenes from STAB! In particular, the ways in

which we engaged technologies and remained aware of ourselves as group that learned

and played together (discussed in more detail below) contributed to how we enacted

ourselves as a third space within a place.

This evolution happened for several reasons: first, there were no limits placed on

McDonald’s by any of us as far as what could happen there; second, our relationships and

the availability of multiple modalities (discussed below) were engaged in different ways

and were generative of multiple spaces for storying and representation. That is, the

geographic hybridity of our space was reflected in not only the multiple locations we

traversed but also the ways that our enactment in these locations suggested new meanings

for literate engagements.

Additionally, Through comments like Cedric’s and Timothy’s, and in the ways

that they actively engaged with and in our space like Antwine, each of the boys

contributed to identifying where we made a space for our multimodal storytelling, and

making meaning about our space with, against, and beyond broader dominant discourses,

e.g. School. Through their ongoing practice of storying – with, against, and beyond – the

boys moved me to consider the discursive possibilities that emerge when a group of boys

are engaged in co-constructing a space within which knowledge the role that literacy and

race play in their lives is centralized in their discursive practices. Shaping the decision

about where to we went as a group is a part of that story.

12

Making new meaning in new locations

Weis and Fine (2000) remind us that youth are already engaged with the world

around them in different ways and for a variety of purposes, in out-of-school spaces that

are often unsanctioned havens crafted by youth in response to an often hostile public

Spaces (e.g. Aitken, 1994). The cases in their volume, Construction Sites, broach the

question of what spaces are for and of youth, and, perhaps more importantly, what

happens in the borderlands of youth spaces? As I moved across a range of locations with

the boys, I was saddened to see the point about hostility ring true; as a group we were

regularly reprimanded or asked to leave for being too loud, disruptive, or behaving

inappropriately in locations where the rules of engagement were heavily regulated,

among them was the Art Museum. In the context of geographic hybridity of our third

space of literate engagement and discursive possibilities, we also confronted the question

of how these “hostile public spaces” affected our space; in the midst of these

confrontations were also questions of literate appropriateness. These rules of engagement

further complicated this study that was centered on the literacies of adolescents by

bringing to light the conflicts between an adolescent directed space and adult directed

locations. I take up this conflict in this sub-section about geographic hybridity in order to

ask what it looks like for a location to be traversed from within a space that recognizes

that discourse is multiple, hybrid, and shifting.

In a journal entry written alongside fieldnotes from a summer (2002) meeting, I

wonder the following about appropriateness:

“The are too old for the children’s section, too young for the adult section.

When/where are the boys appropriate?” (Journal, 8/29/02)

13

On the day I wrote this entry, we had been reprimanded by the librarian at the local

branch of the Free Library for being “disruptive,” and during which Antwine was

individually chastised when he hesitated to write in his birthday on the computer sign-in

sheet; he hesitated because he was unsure of the rules. As a group we had been

reviewing some film from a previous meeting. We were clustered around the video

camera that James held and operated as we all struggled to see. Within minutes the

librarian, an older white woman, walked over to us and told us that we were disturbing

the other library patrons. I apologized to her, and as she walked away Timothy gritted his

teeth and asked me why I was apologizing to her. He didn’t think we had done anything

wrong, and neither did I. I shared that opinion with him and wondered about my own

power, and responsibility in this space and the ways that our literacies – our personal and

collective ways making meaning in our space – did and did not fit with the expectations

of the locations we traversed.

Such a rule-based social reality raised a significant conflict about our group space:

to what extent could we engage in a counterdiscourse when we continued to make use of

places with established institutional rules that often adhered to more traditional notions of

behavior, interaction, and literate engagement. On a trip to the Art Museum this moment

of discord was made public, as reflected in my journal entry from later that day:

As we headed out of the museum an African-American man dressed in a guard’s uniform addressed the group and asked them to “stop running” down the steps. He then turned to me and said, “Ma’am, could you please maintain your group!” My response in that encounter was to nod in acknowledgement in the direction of the guard and to escort the group outside. In my mind, however, I was overwhelmed with the (re)realization that I was once again seen as the adult who is responsible for the group of kids I was with. Conflict arises for me in such a circumstance when I wonder about the extent to which I do not fully assume my role as an adult in their lives and perhaps engage with them the elements of the

14

existing “culture of power”; how do I do so without breaching the integrity of a relationship that is growing based in part on my hesitation to “reprimand?” How does this role of “adult”, in the context of research with adolescent boys, intersect with the other roles that I am more willing to inhabit – i.e. co-researcher, questioner, ally, mentor (perhaps unwittingly).

(Journal, 10/5/02)

As we entered and exited multiple locations as a group of three, four, or seven people –

depending on who was present, and whether any of the boys had siblings, cousins, or

friends with them – institutional expectations of who we were (adult and children, or

teacher and students) preceded our entry and made it challenging to co-construct a new

kind of space within these constraints; these expectations often diverged with how we

had come to traverse old locations as a group. In new locations we had a heightened

awareness of where we – our discursive practices – did not fit; and, by extension, where

our literacies were unwelcome. However, it was often against these expectations and

following these experiences that we made our space in-between these places, and through

storytelling.

For example, our journey to the Art Museum is also telling of how the boys used

this excursion to further make our space through story, in particular to story against

school through school language. Of the six hour outing, we spent under an hour inside

the in the museum itself. We spent most of our time trying to get to the museum (two

buses and short walk), in the café (where Timothy noted that based on the food, replete

with chilled vegetables and salads and devoid of extensive meat options, “this [the café]

is for white people!”), and outside climbing the art museum steps and the statue across

the street in Eakins Oval. The shifting geography is central to the boys’ collective

recollection of the excursion. My questions about appropriateness are redirected in the

15

retelling and replaced the more tactile nature of the group’s memory, as evidenced in the

conversation that followed this visit, about two and half weeks after our trip (GC,

10/26/02). When this conversation took place, the six of us were seated around a table in

the library of the boys’ school. We met during the recess time allotted after lunch for

approximately 25 minutes, extending 10 minutes into their post-lunch class time. Ms.

Klein, the librarian, welcomed us into the library, as she would several more times during

the year; and the boys would just as often comment on my niceness towards Ms. Klein at

what I felt was her generosity, and what Timothy read as her obligation (to let us meet

there).

The excerpt below begins after Antwine asking me if we can go back to the Art

Museum. I reply by asking him to tell me what he liked about our visit, and the others

contribute to shaping this oral text as not only having a reflective function but also a

planning purpose; the boys connect our visit to the horror movie that we had been

filming, and imagine multiple modalities for continue this conversation. Following the

conversation, I discuss the connections between this conversation that focuses on our

visit to a new location and the discursive making of our space:

1 Lalitha what do you guys like about it, though?

2 James the big phone (?)3 ? the pictures n |stuff|4 Lalitha the big |phones^|5 ? |yeah|6 Timothy the rock climbing7 Several yeah!

8 Lalitha oh the rock climbing – that was so much fun

16

9 James it not |rock climbing|10 ? [unintel]

11 James it just a rock

12 Lalitha statue climbing? <laughs>

13 Timothy

I know, you said we were gon’ go rock climbing and then the killer could come, knock somebody off—|they be like|

14 Cedric |that woulda been decent| to have |

the camera|15 Lalitha |I’ve actually been looking| for a

place to go rock climbing

16 Cedric

that—that woulda been decent to have the camera in the rock climbing

17 Antwine uh yup

18 Timothy

we could go rock climbing and then the killer come try to stab him in the leg and cut his—

19 Syrome fall down the steps

20 Timothy

<laughing>no, cut—cut—cut the um wire off and the person [1.5] but they don’t die

21 Lalitha oh that’s another way he kills

22 James for Christmas when we got our

23 Syrome for Christmas?

24 James I meant <laughing>

2 Timothy yeah for Christmas he can get us a 17

5 bomb (?)26 James for Christmas I [intel]

Several seconds later

I had an idea but [1] we too far in the movie

27 Timothy what’s |your| idea^?

28 Lalitha |your ideas| dangerous

29 James

cuz his cousin not here. <pointing to James>. We gotta find somebody little

30 Timothy

um… oh he gonna |(hurt?) you!| <thinking of what the idea might be>

31 James

|like dontchoo| know the fire escapes on the um…<tch> on the um, apartments? You could hang somebody right there and just have some blood dripping

32 Timothy oooh…creepy

33 Lalitha [intel] <laughing>

34 Syrome where would we do that?

Particularly salient to the boys’ recollection of the visit was what they identified as “rock

climbing” (line 6), and what I recast as “statue climbing” (line 12), or, as I noted earlier,

the tactile nature of engaging with this new location. Although someone (line 3) makes a

note of the “pictures n’ stuff” that we viewed2, it is the tactile experiences that are most

resounding in their descriptions of the visit. Similar to other visits to new locations – e.g.

2 Our initial intention in visiting the Art Museum was motivated by the exhibit, Indivisible (www.indivisible.org), which was on display during the fall of 2002. I described this exhibit to the boys as examples of “telling stories through pictures” (FN, 9/20/02)

18

Penn’s campus, the El (for a couple of the boys), the University Assisted School – tactile

interaction with a place was intimately tied to the process of meaning making about that

location, and, as lines 13-19 indicate, yield insights into the ongoing scripts of our space.

At that moment it was the horror movie STAB!, and as these connections are made by the

group, they illustrate how place (Art Museum) is connected to our space (and identities as

moviemakers). Tactile and ownership. But our visit was also one instance of several in

which our collected practice or traversing locations using our hybrid literate lenses came

into conflict with a location’s expectation of appropriate behavior. As a group, we

constructed new meaning around these questions of appropriateness that served to

strengthen our collectivity, and gave us institutional fodder to story against and beyond.

On other occasions we have made explicit connections to our continued

counterstory of the schooled expectations of a literate space – i.e. “do well here”

comment at penn

The multiple locations we moved across prompted us to question and comment on

a range of topics, among them a critique of the indoor nature of schools and limitations

that rules create for interaction in public places. The dialogism between the multiplicity

of locations and out storytelling is made evident in the multi-layered nature of our

movement across the city. Through collective engagement we enacted our space across

multiple locations, some new and some old. In doing so, we were enacting our spatial

hybridity precipitated by our shifting geography. These moments not only call up

questions of where literacy practices occur (in what locations) but what it means to make

a space for literate engagement in different locations; and in a related breath, our

19

moments of negotiating both familiar and unfamiliar terrain made visible the problem of

place for youth (e.g. Heath and McLaughlin, 1998; Weis & Fine, 2000). In the next

section I discuss the ways in which multiple modalities engendered the discursive

hybridity of our space, acknowledging the overlapping simultaneous interplay across the

dimensions of geographic and identity hybridity, as well.

Discursive hybridity in a co-constructed third space:

Engaging multiple modalities

The literacies in the lives of adolescents are increasingly multimodal and are

being explored with growing frequency (e.g. Alvermann, 2002; Gee, 2003; Moje, 2000;

O’Brien, 2000). In this space I actively sought to make a range of meaning making

modalities available for the boys’ construction of stories and counterstories.

Consequently, engaging multiple modalities pushed the discursive hybridity of our space,

which in turn afforded a shared ownership of meaning making in our space. This

collective ownership is also reflective of the ways that modalities were taken up in the

broader context of multiplicity of the locations we traversed and the selves we authored.

When I talk about engagement with multiple modalities, I am talking about the ways that

we used the video camera, notebooks, speech, disposable cameras, and other

representational modes to make meaning – or story – within our space. In this section I

explore how we engaged modalities to help construct our third space, our context for the

development of our literacies.

20

The social context of our multimodality

From the beginning of our coming together, the boys and I imagined the practice

of storytelling through multimodal lenses. The genesis of our group was driven by texts

that engaged a range of visual and oral modes, and the social context of our space

significantly shaped and was shaped by the range of discursive modes that were

available. By that I mean the availability of meaning making modes – writing, speaking,

video, audio – interacts with the social norms of our context to create the engagement of

modalities. Given that premise, it is important to understand the origin of our group as

multimodal from the beginning.

Our first meeting took place atop the jungle gym at their school (6/21/02). As I

pitched the idea of meeting together as a group, we took turns climbing across the

monkey bars, and sliding down the fireman’s pole. Timothy suggested the West

Philadelphia branch of the library as an initial meeting place, and it stuck as the primary

meeting spot for the remainder of our time together. Timothy asked me when I wanted

to “start the group” and I left the decision up to them, thinking that they might want time

to enjoy their summer vacation. Almost in unison they asked if we could meet on

Monday, just three days later. I wondered aloud about getting their parents’ permission,

but they assured me that their parents wouldn’t mind and that they would definitely

approve. “Anything educational,” I heard Cedric say, “is fine with my mom.” “Yeah,

anything educational,” Timothy echoed. It was a phrase that I’d hear several times

throughout the study – “anything educational” – in reference to our group activities and

outings. I described my idea vaguely, saying that I was interested in bringing together

photography – the medium they’d come to associate with me as a documenter in their

21

classroom – and creating stories – an idea that I had broached with two of them

throughout the months preceding this meeting. Of the five boys that ended up

comprising “the group,” I had only had these preliminary conversations with two of

them, Timothy and Cedric. As we hung out on the jungle gym, I told them that I needed

their input to help shape the idea further. All four of the boys seemed interested, and they

were especially taken with the possibilities of using cameras. Immediately they began

sharing with me stories of trips they had taken with their respective families during which

they had taken pictures. A couple of them had used “throw aways” – disposable cameras

– and a couple had used “the kind you keep putting film in.” (FN, 6/21/02). Thus, from

the beginning of the study, visual modalities were central in our space, and their

importance in creating our space became cemented during our second meeting when we

began brainstorming project ideas.

At our first summer meeting (6/24/02), the Monday following the boys’ last day

of school on the Friday before, there were only five of us present – we were missing

Syrome – and, seated at two adjacent tables in the 52nd Street McDonald’s, we began to

imagine what we would do as a group. We pulled two adjacent tables together and began

talking about the role that photographs and the practice of taking pictures played in the

boys’ lives, a thought that followed from our jungle gym conversation. Battling the

steady buzz of the restaurant, the boys talked over each other and called out what they

already have and would want to, in the future, capture on film: people (family, girls), a

daycare center (people taking care of people), decent cars, “decent” houses, homeless

people. Timothy specifically suggests that we could go to Ishkabibble’s, an eatery on

South Street, and take pictures of the famous people that frequent the establishment;

22

multiple modes of inquiry and representations were embedded in the genesis of our

group, similar to how the notion of traversing multiple locations became an unwritten

expectation about what it meant to be our group.

When it was lunch time we paused our conversation to order some food. I had

promised to treat the boys to lunch so I gave Timothy a twenty-dollar bill and my order

and, after Cedric and Antwine told Timothy what they wanted, the three of us continued

talking. James went up to the register to help Timothy with the order. Several minutes

later, Timothy returned to the table with a fistful of bills, some loose change, and a smile

followed by a “Thanks, Ms. Lalitha.” James followed him with a tray full of burgers,

fries and cups for drinks, that the boys help themselves to at the nearby soda dispenser.

We continued our conversation as we ate and I posed to them my question about what

stories we wanted to tell. During the conversation Timothy’s voice and ideas cover the

page in my notebook as I wrote quickly to keep up with the ideas. Cedric adds his ideas

and he and Timothy banter back and forth by challenging each other’s claims and

engaging in impromptu one-upmanship. Cedric suggests that we can make a chart, “like

a Cedric chart,” he says. His multimodal description – oral and gestural – of what a

chart-based representation of Cedric would look like, including categories of information,

is cut off mid-sentence by Timothy, who suggests that we can watch something change

over time – he gives the example of a homeless person transitioning into housing, or a

woman’s pregnancy. Cedric hits him when he hears the word pregnancy. Timothy

pushes Cedric back and goes on to say that “you could also see how people keep the

streets clean.” For example, first there would be trash, then no trash, then more trash

again.

23

Stepping out of this vignette, I want to explicitly point out the social context in

which multimodal meaning making was being enacted, and recursively how the

multimodality helped to create our third space. We developed a shared understanding of

how we made meaning and as individuals and as a group. Especially challenging for me,

at times, was the recognition that because I did not share some of the similarities that the

boys shared among each other – i.e. I was not an African American adolescent boy, who

attended the same K-8 school as the five boys, who had the same teachers – I had to learn

to read the boys interactions with each other as part of that differentiated meaning

making. I do not mean to imply an essentialized identity for the boys in the group based

on outwardly identifiable characteristics, but am rather referring to something that

Cedric, himself, refers to when he suggests that there are some things that are common

among groups – in this case the boys in our group – because of their identities as boys;

being aware of this, Cedric notes, is necessary to better understand who boys – the boys

in our group – are as makers of meaning, and constructors of knowledge that is worth

hearing (VT, 12/30/02).

Textual multimodality was also evident in our space from the outset as we

engaged, constructed and discussed a range of multimodal texts. Here, I return the our

conversation from our first summer meeting to illustrate how these texts were both

introduced into our space, and helped to enact our space. Central to this hybrid

enactment is the mode of speaking. I present this next section excerpted directly from my

fieldnotes to retain the immediacy of the moment.

The conversation took a turn when something that Antwine says sparks several comments about movies, namely a flurry of Adam Sandler movies fly around our tables. Then the boys start talking about Harry Potter, the

24

movie. Cedric wonders aloud when they are going to release the second one. After a few seconds of discussion, Antwine states that they (he and James) have the (video)tape but that he didn’t like it. Cedric looks at him with disbelief and restates how much he liked it. He goes on to say to me, pointedly, that J.K. Rowling (author of the Harry Potter book series ) likes him; he then brings up the character Cedric Diggory, placing his right hand proudly on his chest and utters the name a few more times with a special emphasis on the last name, “Cedric Diggory! Cedric Diggory! Cedric Diggory!” Cedric then points out the James is in there, too – James Potter, Harry’s father. More discussion ensues about the beginning of the story and the lack of information that the author gives about Harry’s origins and history. After a bit more discussion, they start talking about other movies that they have seen that were also decent. As we talk I encourage the boys to think about the possibilities for storytelling across audio and visual (e.g. photo and video) modalities. This prompt engenders audible excitement from the boys as they offer more ideas of what to photograph and, presumably because of the recent talk about movies, as they begin imagining out loud ideas for a movie.

(FN, 6/24/02)

There are direct and recursive connections that persist throughout our time together

between the multimodal possibilities we imagined for representing stories, and the

multimodal texts that fed our collective imagination. Other multimodal texts in our space

included movies (Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, X2: X-Men United, Scary

Movie3) and other videos (ArtShow) that we watched together; magazines (Vibe, Philly

Weekly) and books (Our America, Monster) that we discussed; websites

(www.newgrounds.com, http://www.ncrtec.org/picture.htm) that we explored; and texts

(Timothy’s digital stories, e.g. The Mens Day Out; group photo essays) that we

constructed.3

3 The space of a dissertation only allows for the inclusion of a few examples that are representative of larger patterns in the analysis of data. In the category of co-constructed multimodal text, in addition to the ones listed above, is the impromptu Sprite “commercial,” that James recorded and that features Cedric, which was taped on a walk back to the park from Syrome’s house. This commercial is titled “Sprite.mov” on the CD.

25

Another aspect of the recursive relationship between our space and multiple

modalities is reflected in the production of new text genres that reflect the hybridization

of outdoor play with our multimodal engagement. In particular, I am talking about

“threat messages” that were a spontaneous outgrowth of the ways we engaged with the

video camera in our space. These threat messages proved to be a strong foundation on

which the boys, James in particular, built their fluency with maneuvering the video

camera. By the time the first video threat was taped (7/31/02), utilizing the playland at

McDonald’s was a common activity following lunch. In this first example4, James is

lying down inside the play structure and lackadaisically talks into the camera that

Antwine is holding. This particular move, of engaging the kind mock-fighting play that

the other boys regularly engaged in, was outside of James’s usual interactive repertoire,

which is what makes this exchange particularly interesting.

James’s threat to Cedric:

[James, lying down inside the McDonald’s Playland structure]

I’m chillin this hot little thing [?] Cedric but he is very uglyAnd I’m gonna beat him upCedric [mock punches himself in the face]4 I’ve included stills from two of the threat messages – the ones exchanged between James and Cedric – below, with the corresponding oral text. The set of four threats, including the exchange between Cedric and Antwine taped on another visit to McDonald’s, can be viewed as a video clip found on the accompanying CD. This clip is titled “Threats.mov”

26

You’re gonna get thatI’m gonna rip you in little pieces

Right after James and Antwine slide down and show Cedric this message, Cedric grabs

his soda and asks Antwine to follow him into the playland where he begins to record his

own message back to James. He situates himself in the same spot from where James

recorded his message. His audience is both James, to whom the threat is directed, and to

Antwine as he asks “It’s on? It’s on?” Cedric is interrupted when he sees James hot on

his tail, causing him to yelp and slide down.

Cedric’s response to James

It’s on, it’s on? <To Antwine>Ok, look here, James! [pointing]You ugly bum!You talkin’ to m—[scrambles to get out when James appears]

Antwine’s voice as the cameraman during these sequences can be heard in the

background, and together these messages illustrate the social context of our space

through the multimodality, and recursively illustrate the engagement of the multimodality

of our space to enact our social context. Common across these assertions is the

recognition of the discursive hybridity that our space affords.

27

These clips are also representative of more than the “goofing around” they appear

to show on the surface; embedded in the construction of these “threats” are what I am

calling the social affordances of technologies, and multiple modalities more broadly. In

the next sub-section on the discursive hybridity of our space, I look at the social

affordances of multiple modalities that are brought up in an email; I explore both the

story of email in our space and contextualize Timothy’s email (below) to render how

email was invoked in the enactment of our space.

Multimodal engagement makes with visible

Email was not a common feature of our space, and in fact after an initial flurry of

obscene language laden emails between the boys on the day I showed them how to set up

and use their Yahoo! email accounts, only Timothy utilized email to communicate

outside of our face-to-face meeting times. I use Timothy’s email to illustrate how the

nature of with is both rendered and enacted in our space.

Return-Path: <timothybaker1026@yahoo.com>Delivered-To: lmv@dolphin.upenn.eduDate: Mon, 6 Jan 2003 12:45:51 -0800 (PST)From: timothy baker <timothybaker1026@yahoo.com>Subject: rep lingTo: Lalitha M Vasudevan <lmv@dolphin.upenn.edu>X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 11698

DEAR MS. LALITHA,HI THIS IS TIMOTHY I GOT YOUR MESSAGE JUST NOW IMSORRY THAT I COULDNT COME TO THAT MEETING IN 2002 BUTI WAS KINDA CONFUSED BECAUSE I THOUGHT YOU WANTED THEGROUP TO TRAVEL BACK IN TIMEHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!! OK WHAT IREALLY WANTED TO KNOW WAS WHEN WE WERE MEETING AGAIN? MS LALITHA I JUST WANTED TO SAY THANK YOU FOR ALLYOU DONE I KNOW THAT ITS NOT EASY TAKING CARE OF USLIKE THAT BUT I JUST WANTED TO SAY THANK YOU FOR ALLYOU DONE. OK SO AS SOON AS YOU GET THIS MESSAGE LET

28

YOUR FINGERS DO THE TYPING AND E-MAIL ME BACK. OH YEAHIN THE E-MAIL ME THE ADRESS TO THE PEOPLE THAT WILLGIVE US A LOAN? OK GOTTA GO SO I"LL SEE YOU WHENEVER!

-TIMOTHY BAKER

__________________________________________________Do you Yahoo!?Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.http://mailplus.yahoo.com

Timothy first responds to the fact that I had sent him an email at the end of the calendar

year 2002, when I had set up an email account for all the boys (12/30/02). His familiar

humor comes through in this mode, which could be seen as a hybrid between speech and

written communication (CITES – re: the conversational nature of emails). The second

paragraph, that begins with “MS LALITHA,” is characteristic of the discursive

performance that accompanied many of Timothy’s engagement with digital modalities.

His “THANK YOU” echoes a pattern of response when we, as a group, have engaged in

prolonged interaction with different technologies. In addition to this email, at our

meeting in December and earlier (October) Timothy explicitly thanked me for “letting”

them use the technology and noted the difference between the access to technologies in

our space and the controlled and lack of access to technologies in school. Along with

other commentaries on their access to technologies in school – notably absent access is

the story that kept recurring in our conversations – Timothy’s discursive construction of

our space as one in which he read my actions as caring for them (the boys) further

contextualizes the meaning of with as he engages this mode to convey his message.

When I received Timothy’s email, I was overjoyed and wrote an email to myself,

that I consider to be a part of my own multimodal reflective space (my research journal).

29

In it I explicate the questions that I had about the extent to which the boys, and Timothy

in this case, were given the space to utilize the digital modalities in their school.

Return-Path: <lmv@pobox.upenn.edu>Delivered-To: lmv@pobox.upenn.eduSubject: timothy's emailTo: lmv@pobox.upenn.edu (Lalitha M Vasudevan)Date: Tue, 7 Jan 2003 12:53:23 -0500 (EST)From: lmv@dolphin.upenn.edu (Lalitha M Vasudevan)X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 11704

i am elated to get timothy's email. it is in all caps and was written yesterday, monday 1/6 at 12:45. i'm guessing that he wrote it at school, so that hopefuly means that he has access to the internet somewhere in school. i shoudl ask him about this.

timothy also asked me to send him the email addresses for people who might give us a loan - this is great! it potentially means that he is thinkign about this work outside of our time together as a group and may be an indication that he wants to participate in the process of acquiring money for this work.

i wrote back to him and responded to his question about our next meeting - today - and remionded him of our next project idea. i'm curious to see how he responds to this email and also to see how email will grow in our work.

These questions, in concert with Timothy’s words and actions, serve to further construct

our space against schooled discourses of literate engagements and a literacy context.

Although we did not carry through with our plan to seek external funding for our project,

we did develop a budget and an equipment and supply list. Multimodal engagement in

our space also echoed the multimodality in the boys’ lives, that was not only constructed

within our space but that was present in the boys’ stories, the texts they brought into our

space, and the discursive possibilities they imagined. The ways in which our meaning

making was regularly hybrid and multimodal further noted the importance of our space as

one of discursive possibilities, in constant contrast to their experiences with technologies

30

in school. In these ways, technologies in our space – the digital modalities – had social

affordances for constructing the with-ness of our space.

Literate engagement in our space was multimodal, and carried a quality of hybrid

discursivity that afforded a shared ownership of the meaning making in our space. I was

struck during the study at the complex ways that engagement with digital modalities –

technologies, broadly – within a stance of with played a role in making ours a space

against school, but also in the ways that we made our way beyond the discourses of

school. While Kress & Jewitt (2003) describe the affordances of a mode as “what it is

possible to express and represent readily, easily” within the context of designing

meaning, I found it more useful in this inquiry of meaning making to release my

expectations for digital modes of representation. In fact, I believe that suspending my

expectations about what a particular mode is for opened up the possibilities for how the

boys used technologies, which then significantly shaped our group space as one in which

play with technologies was allowed (discussed in more detail in Chapter 5). These

moments of play also contributed to shaping the relationships that I had with the boys,

and that we had as a group. In the next section, I build on this idea of relationships

through the lens of identity hybridity and by engaging the idea of self-authoring. The

multiple selves we authored in our space were intimately connected to the locations we

traversed and modalities we engaged, which will evident in the examples that follow. In

the discussion for this chapter, I will return to the notion of hybridity seen across the

31

dimensions of our space in order to return to a holistic – trilogic5 – portrayal of our third

space.

Identity hybridity in a co-constructed third space:

Authoring multiple selves

According to Soja (1996), a “thirdspace” is generative of “new social

possibilities” of representation; he argues for an understanding of space as constitutive of

knowledge. The boys and I enacted multiple selves within our space (Soja, 1997), and in

so doing enacted the necessary spaces within which to engaged in that identity work.

This recursive work, of making space and enacting selves, also resonates with Holland,

Skinner, Lachiotte, and Cain (1998), who build on Bakhtin’s (1986) construct of self-

authoring to challenge the notion of fixed identities. In our space, I found several

instances of the literate selves that we authored across contexts, and by engaging our

shifting landscape and different modalities. In this section I want to pay particular

attention to those selves that fell primarily into two categories: authoring group identity

through discourses of membership, and authoring discrepant selves in reflexive moments.

I argue that, similar to the other dimensions of our space, these authored selves were both

constituted by and were constitutive of our third space. I understand authoring to be an

intentional act of meta-discourse about our space.

5 I am using the idea of a trilogic, or trilogism, in the vein of Bakhtin’s dialogism, wherein if, according to Holland, et. al. (1998) who build on Bakhtin’s (1981), “The figured world of dialogism is one in which sentient beings always exist in a state of being ‘addressed’ and in the process of ‘answering’,” then I add to that dialogic – of being addressed and answering – the enactment of representing. I see representation to be separable from and at the same time intertwined with addressing and answering; but extended to recognize the possibilities afforded by multiple modalities for representation across space and time.

32

Authoring group identity through discourses of membership

While movement and multiple modalities shaped our space, so, too, did the shared

meaning making around our group identity. Since we weren’t quite “One or the Other”

(Bhabha, 1994) and had no outwardly discernable rules of belonging, how we existed as a

group was a regular topic of discussion; these discussions are peppered across the data,

from the first meeting in which we mused about what we might do together as a group

through to the last official meeting when our group identity was discussed in reaction to

Syrome’s absence. After our first jungle gym meeting, the boys assumed the role of

establishing the membership parameters of our group, and by extension the “who” of the

research space.

The discursive norms of our space were consistently hybrid, and any group

activity we engaged in regularly spanned a range of locations, modalities, topics, and

literacies. We effectively began each meeting with the question of what we were going

to do that day, and very often the impromptu agenda drew on the previous meeting to

pick up on loose ends, an invoking of the project we were currently working on as a

group, and a plan to travel to a few different places. Among the decisions that were

factored into this process was whether and in what ways other kids could hang out with

us. While all five of the boys did not necessarily socialize outside of school before we

came together for this study, they were insistent that we “close the group” to anyone

outside the six of us (FN, 5/8/03); they wanted me to enforce their rule that no one could

leave or join the group after that date, albeit nearly a year into our initial group meeting.

This particular comment was precipitated by Syrome missing yet another group meeting.

Of the six of us, he met with us the fewest number of times. In fact, as Cedric pointed

33

out on several occasions, it was primarily when “we were going somewhere, like Penn or

the movies or something” that “the whole group” was together (11/7/02). Syrome was

also the only one of the five boys whose weekly schedule included a “diet” of several

school-related after-school programs. Thus, it was often in the context of Syrome’s

absence that one of the boys – usually Timothy or Cedric – would make a note about

membership and what it meant to be a part of the group; they consistently named

attendance as key to membership.

The notion of attendance was complicated on the numerous occasions when

friends or relatives would join us for a meeting, which then “wasn’t really a meeting.”

(Antwine, FN, 4/30/03). By nature of others’ presence, our audience for our discursive

performances was altered. Even when Jasmine, James and Antwine’s younger sister who

regularly joined us during meetings that were scheduled after-school – because the

Antwine and James were allowed to meet as long as they brought their sister along – was

around, the social dynamics of the group necessarily included her as an audience as well

as an actor. In this way, the expected hybridity of our space was disrupted, however the

hybrid nature of our space also accommodated “others’” participation. One exception to

this relative fluidity of membership was the interactions with Ebonnie, who was in the

same fifth grade class as Cedric, Timothy, James and Syrome, and whom I had gotten to

know through my fieldwork in the same classroom. Ebonnie met with us eight times

during the late summer and early Fall of 2002, primarily because she was cast as a

character in STAB! Timothy begrudgingly assigned her the role because we had run into

Ebonnie and her younger siblings and cousin at the park while filming, and she expressed

great interest in what we were doing (making a movie); and because the script called for

34

Timothy’s character to have girlfriend. Once her last scene was filmed, and her character

was “killed off,” the boys – mainly Antwine, Timothy, and Cedric – were adamant that

she stop meeting with us. They stated this to her clearly, and then asked me to reinforce

their decision. My hesitance to relay such a harsh message gave Ebonnie an opening to

vie for an extension in her participation in the group. She did so by volunteering to stand

in line for Cedric at McDonald’s during a late September meeting. It was during that

meeting that the boys and I decided to visit the museum; not only did Ebonnie come with

us, but she figured prominently in one of humorous moments from our journey to the

museum. In the excerpt below, which follows from the earlier transcript excerpt above,

the boys reference this moment as they recount the visit during a group conversation. As

they do so, they are explicating their understandings of our group identity by situating

Ebonnie’s actions outside of acceptable group norms (lines 4-8) and my actions within

the group (9-13):

1 Cedric |that was decent how we|—2 Syrom

e[unintel] gon’ dry up

3 Cedric how we um…<tch> when we was waiting for the bus an’ everything

4 Syrome

she was out, yo <referring to Ebonnie>

5 Cedric yo, oh, she was like “which one is the 33?” <imitating Ebonnie>

6 Lalitha <laughs>7 Syrom

ethe one with the |33|

8 Cedric the one—|3-3!| <repeating the response that E had gotten when she posed the question to a passer-by>

35

9 James member--remember when the bus |[unintel?] was tryin’ to leav n’?|

10

Timothy

it’s turnin’, Ms. Lalitha, she’s like |“aaah!”| <and motions like he’s running, like I did toward the bus during our art museum trip>

11

? |I’s about to|| [unintel]

12

Lalitha <laughing>

13

Cedric yeah, we was all runnin’ in the streets an’ e’rything

14

Timothy

I was about to throw my water bottle at it

15

James <laughing>

16

Cedric I was—I was just cursing, yo! <laughing>

17

Timothy

[unintel]

18

Cedric I ‘as like “wait, you mother--|<fist to table>|

19

James <laughs>

20

Cedric I’s just cursing, yo

I include this excerpt to illustrate the positionality that is evident in this space of

collective authoring of our group identity, as demonstrated in the ways that my and

Ebonnie’s actions are discursively invoked and categorized as outside and within the

group, respectively. In these lines of our conversation in the library, the talk focuses on

the journey to the museum, and in particular two events: Ebonnie’s interaction with the

man who responded to her question with intentional sarcasm, and my running to get on

the 33 bus after having waited for it for over an hour. On the basis of the boys’ disdain 36

for Ebonnie’s appearances during group meetings that is evident throughout my

fieldnotes from the late summer and early fall of 2002, I read the difference in

characterization of these two “funny” moments by the ways that the boys do and don’t

show alignment. In their description of Ebonnie, they situate themselves outside of the

event, as spectators even. When they describe my running toward the bus, their inclusion

in this event is ratified by Cedric (line 13) who says, “yeah, we was all runnin’ in the

streets an’ e’rything.”

The instances of laughter are significant in how they render the quality of “fun”

and “funniness” about this event and in what they reveal about the relationships we had

with each other in our group. By itself, the laughter might not mean much, but it is

layered within the later connections that the group makes between this visit and their

critiques of the kind of places schools are. In subsequent retellings of the visit, the points

that are made about fun – e.g. the rock and statue climbing – and funniness – e.g. the

absurd image of me, the adult, violating adult behavior in the presence of adolescents –

are the facts that reoccur. This is consistent with the boys’ earlier musings about how

school, a formalized and indoor learning place, might and should be different as

discussed through the lens of who teachers and present themselves to be (further

discussed in the next chapter). In many ways, our group identity was shaped with, by and

against the different ways that each of the boys experienced school. Other examples of

the use of membership discourses to author group identity included the discussion about

our group name that was simultaneously generative of collective reflection on “what we

do.”6

6 The engagement of location – the boardroom in an office building on Penn’s campus – and modalities – flip charts, and the video camera – converge during the conversation referenced here and yield insights into

37

Authoring discrepant selves in reflexive moments

While I did not specifically look for how identities were made and lived, it is clear

that in the multimodal co-construction of this group across space and time Cedric,

Timothy, Antwine, James and Syrome each found different modes of engagement and

spaces for making meaning about a range of topics. The ongoing enactment of our “lived

space” – traversing multiple locations, engaging multiple modalities, and authoring

multiple selves – necessitated and welcomed my hybrid teacher and researcher identities;

similarly, our space afforded moments of reflexivity in which they engaged discursive

practices that veered from their predominant ways of participating in our space. I did not

identify these moments as discrepant because of their reflexive nature – so as to imply

that reflexivity was discrepant – but rather to identify the uncharacteristically singular (or

dual, given my presence) nature of these self-authoring spaces. In the following example,

I return to the context of Timothy and his email account, a reflexive moment that was

borne of sheer happenstance; miscommunication coupled with the weather – rain – that

was noted as the reason that only Timothy and I showed up on this day (12/14/02). Prior

to this moment, I had been waiting for the boys outside of the library. Having talked with

all of the boys the night before, I am confident that we will meet as planned; however I

rethink my assuredness when I see the drizzle. We were supposed to convene at noon,

but I knew from past experience to not start worrying until at least 12:20.

These conversations run through my head as 12:00 becomes 12:10 and I look down Sansom St. to see if James, Antwine or Cedric is on his way. I continue checking the clock inside the library and remember that sometimes the boys don’t leave their houses until 12, which means that they will get to the library several minutes later. Around 12:15 I am

how the boys conceived of our space. I’ve included a brief clip from this meeting that presents the hybrid context for this authoring moment, titled “Whatwedo.mov” on the CD.

38

greeted by the father of one of Antwine’s friends (Stanley) who asks me how I am and asks if I’m leaving. I say that I am waiting for “the boys” to which he clarifies by asking “Antwine and them?” I nod and smile. This prompts him to shake my hand, wish me a good day and then say “They should bottle up that smile of yours!”

…12:30 I conclude that no one is going to show up, but before leaving the library I decide to go inside and look Syrome’s address up online. A flyer for a poetry slam catches my eye on the wall next to the short flight of stairs that lead to the computers. I make a mental note of the slam and head up the stairs and find Timothy sitting at a computer. He is dressed in his tan/light beige velour sweatsuit and is wearing a light beige doorag on his head. I walk up to him and sit down at the next computer and ask him how long he’s been here. He says that he has been here for a while, and I tell him that I’ve been outside since 12:00 – we share a chuckle over this silly situation. Timothy tells me that James and Antwine can’t come today and then asks if Cedric is coming. I tell him that I spoke with Cedric last night and that it sounded like he was coming. Timothy suspects that Cedric might have thought that we weren’t meeting because of the rain.

(FN, 12/14/02)

Timothy confirmed my suspicion that the rain may have hindered our group

attendance for the day. He showed up because he had breakfast with his dad earlier that

morning. I took a seat next to him and told him that I had set up email accounts for him

and the other boys and asked if he wanted to check it out. I had used the boys’ full names

and their birthdays to construct their usernames and I was going to take that afternoon to

help them customize their accounts. Timothy pointed out to me that I had used the wrong

date for his birthdate. I used that mistake to set up another email account with Timothy at

the controls, so to speak. We talked our way through the process of setting up an email

account, of deciding on a username, of choosing a password, and the basic rules about

Inboxes and sending and receiving email. Throughout this process, Timothy talked in

quiet tones and remained seated in our chairs. I point this out to make clear the

discrepant nature of this moment, when our primary audience in that moment was each

39

other; we were wholly focused on working through an activity (setting up an email

account) and in the process Timothy exhibited an uncharacteristic “stillness” in his

interactions with me.

After we spent the rest of his hour-long slot allotted for computer use in the

library, we moved to a round table in the main area of the library’s first floor. I show him

a copy of Our America that I had brought with me and intended to share with the group

that day. In this moment, informed by Timothy’s interactive cues, I authored myself – as

someone familiar with this text – in a way that was perhaps less active than I had

originally planned. The convergence of group members (Timothy and me), context of

the location (the library on a rainy Saturday), and use of multiple modalities (email,

book) resulted in this self-authored reflexive moment; I engaged in my own brand of

stillness to mirror Timothy’s actions. By stillness, I mean taking the time to look at

something with the luxury to really look; there is a quality of “stepping outside” to reflect

inward. Similar moments also took place with Cedric and Antwine, both of which are

invoked in this dissertation. In both of these cases, like with Timothy, my relationship

with the boys was shifted due to the convergence described above during which time

Cedric authored a more readily assumed the role of informant that I often implicitly

ascribed to him; Antwine authored a noticeably more thematic self, by which I mean he

engaged modalities to construct moments for his still reflective selves to emerge.

The multiple selves we authored, in the enactment of identity hybridity, gained

meaning through active engagement with the other dimensions of our space. Not

explicated here are the ways that the boys made use of the video camera and digital voice

40

recorder to further create an authoring space for themselves. I invoke these moments in

the discussion of the multimodal quality of literacies in our space, which were

contextualized in play (Chapter 5). As my own identity was in constant negotiation, so,

too, were the selves that the boys authored in our space. These selves were informed and

shaped by the broader context of our space, but as well by the meanings and purposes for

literate engagement in a given moment. For example, the threat messages could also be

read for the space for self-authoring they provide as Cedric, Antwine and James used the

video camera to construct and represent a focused message to each other. Our third

space, that affords these reflexive moments for the reasons of hybridity outlined above

and that are characterized by their discrepancy against the rest of the data, further pushes

the counterstory of schooled expectations for literate engagements and contexts for

literacy by being a space in which multiple selves can concurrently exist; where the

expectation of hybridity is welcomed, and sought after. In the vignette and transcript

below, I aimed to bring the dimensions of our space back together, so to speak, after

having looked at the interconnected dimensions of our third space.

Co-constructing a multimodal space of discursive possibilities

In representing our space, distilling something so dynamic into distinct and

describable pieces presents a new set of challenges. Among them, a challenge to the

reader to keep the other dimensions in mind and at play while delving deeper into one

aspect of a group space. To conclude this chapter I use a vignette excerpted from

fieldnotes taken during a meeting that occurred two-thirds into my data collection to

41

attempt a more holistic representation of the ways we lived our space. I follow this

vignette with an audio excerpt from that same day that presents a look at our space from

my interactions with Antwine, who figures only peripherally in the vignette but whose

authored self is central in the description of the discrepant reflexive moment that is

afforded by the multiple modes for meaning making.

Making movies in the park

There were six of us who met during the boys’ spring break, on a beautiful clear

Wednesday afternoon. After gathering at the library, we attempt to meet at McDonald’s

to regroup after having not met for three weeks. There were a lot of people inside and

after a few minutes to trying to have a conversation, Timothy says, “Y’all wanna go

somewhere quiet?” (AT, 4/16/03). I agree and follow his suggestion that we head to the

park, that, oddly enough, was quieter and better suited for the movie-making followed

This scene represents, in writing, one aspect of our meeting that day: making movies in

the park.

I am sitting on the bench partially shielded from the sun by the pavilion overhead. Timothy is sitting to my right and waits in anticipation as I unearth my laptop form my backpack. I had just finished mentioning that I made a mini-movie about (Malcolm X Park) from some of our pictures from the summer. Timothy nods when I ask him if he’d like to see it. As I bring out the laptop I quickly survey the park and see Antwine and Cedric taking turns riding Timothy’s bike. James first stands in front of me to my left and then takes a seat on the other side of me on the bench. He seems somewhat interested in my conversation with Timothy and when I notice this I try to include him by looking at both of them as I talk. Once the laptop “wakes up” I click through the appropriate folders and locate the movie and open it up inside Windows Movie Maker (WMM). As I go through this process I tell them again that they can use this program to do a movie of their own; we might also use this to edit our horror movie, I suggest. Timothy and James nod. When the movie finally begins both boys get a knowing smile on their faces as they recognize the opening

42

chords of Jill Scott’s “A Long Walk.” “Ok, Ms. Lalitha,” Timothy says approvingly as he bops his head in rhythm with the song. As the movie progresses I comment on the different clips. For example, I point out the aerial photograph of the park that I found on the internet and the text I overlaid onto it. I laugh along with James at a picture of Cedric making a funny face. At this point Cedric and Antwine are standing behind us and I hear Cedric make fun of Antwine’s “hang time” (the length of his braids) and then comment on how long we’ve been meeting. “We known each other that long?” Cedric remarks. I remind him that I first met them even earlier while they were still in 5th grade. “Oh yeah,” he responds. I resume my commentary on the movie and point out some of the video transitions and video effects that I played around with in making the movie. I also note that this is a movie made up entirely of stills and we could also import some of the video we’ve taken to string clips together. By now, James has also moved and is standing behind the bench to be able to see better. There is a slight glare from the sun and Timothy, who is holding the laptop on his lap, fiddles with the angle of the screen to help the cause.

When the nearly 2 minute-long movie ends I try to judge the boys’ reactions. Antwine moves his gaze from the screen to Cedric and attempts to provoke him; Cedric staves him off nods in my direction and offers a pat on my back by way of encouragement. I ask the 4 of them if they’d want to try one of their own and Cedric nods and then excuses himself to catch up with Antwine who has just taken the bike out from under him. Timothy begins to ask me questions about how he can put a movie together and I respond by asking him if he’d like to one now. He nods and say “Ok.” With the laptop secured in his grip, I direct Timothy though the process of opening up a new project – i.e. click on “File”, select “New Project”, etc. Using the prompts made available in WMM we engage in a back and forth discussion and walk through of how to import files – pictures and audio – and an impromptu overview (on my part) of how my filing system is organized on my computer. During one quiet moment as we waited for the pictures to be imported, Timothy remarks, “Man! I need to get a laptop!” For several minutes more we work together to become familiar with previewing images, importing them, and finally dragging the images and audio onto the sequencing strip at the bottom of the screen. I apologize to Timothy for my lack of current music tracks and vow to download more before our next meeting on Saturday. For this new project Timothy selects Missy Elliot’s “The Rain” and imports then drags it onto the audio section of the sequencer. The song begins playing when he hits the play button causing Cedric, who is riding by, to peer over and see what Timothy is doing. He starts singing the song and then interjects, “Go Tim,” as he sees Timothy building his movie.

43

At this point in our time together, we had already filmed a horror movie, taken several

series of photographs on a range of topics, and had begun gathering and creating texts

under the theme of “How friends act toward each other” (described further in Chapter 4).

We had established a practice of moving across multiple locations and repurposing

locations and texts to meet our needs. On this occasion the park became a movie making

and editing studio for Timothy, our photographs marked both future stories and

memories, and our space became a site for learning a new software program.

Authoring a reflexive self multimodally

Later the same afternoon I handed out another set of disposable cameras to the

four boys who were present, and immediately Antwine snapped pictures of what was

going at that moment. He was “starting [his] story now” (FN, 4/16/03), but didn’t yet

know what the story would be about. What he did know, and later wrote about, was that

he enjoyed the chance to document our group’s activities. Among the photographs he

took was one of Cedric, Timothy, James and me hanging upside down at the park (Figure

3.2). This particular photograph came to have a long life in the multimodal enactment of

our group, and was regularly referred to when describing our space, our relationships

with each other, and a description of “what we do” (FN, 4/19/03). I will talk more about

this photograph as it functions as a description of our relationships and our group

activities in the upcoming chapters. I include the photograph here to talk about the

context in which it came to be. That is, conceived in the discrepant moment of singular

44

reflexivity, Antwine’s authors a photographic self and begins to distribute cameras as

well as take photographs using one of the disposable cameras.

Figure 3.2

Antwine’s presence in this photograph is imagined, is evident in the fact that the

photograph even exists. This intangible quality of these discrepant moments gained more

significance in the communication modes that were opened up between me and Antwine

as he authored this self multimodally. As a researcher in this space I sometimes worried

that all the voices and perspectives of the boys were not always reflected in sense making

about our space as one in which literacies flourished. However, in these moments and

enactments of authoring, I gained insight into the ways that the different boys were

engaging with our space, in relationship to the stories they wanted to tell. These

discrepant moments elucidated the predominantly collective nature of our space by

reminding me to look for, and in some instances create, contexts that would engender the

authoring of these singularly reflexive selves.

45

The next two excerpts further illustrate space of self authoring evident in a

conversation that Antwine and I had, in this case on the walk to the park and then sitting

on the bench in the park; and shows the ways that he imagines multimodal possibilities

for storytelling as well as for his role(s) in the group.

1 Antwine

we can have a movie of … some… a little boy, some little boy cant make it to the … to the .. NBA and stuff. <hear momentum in his voice>

2 Lalitha mm-hmm3 Antwin

eA’right, a’right… he cant go into the NBA until he an adult but then

4 Lalitha uh-huh5 Antwin

ebut then as a little kid… he go straight into the NBA

6 Lalitha Kobe—7 Antwin

eno, he could go straight – like 13 or 14

<later, in the park>8 Antwin

elike… we can all be like playing a game and stuff

9 Lalitha mm-hmm10

Antwine

[you] taking pictures of us

11

Lalitha mm-hmm

12

Antwine

playing little bit – that’s how im thinking…

Basketball was important in Antwine’s life. He was a guard on a local

community team and for most of the time that we met as a group, he talked about his

basketball games and skills with confidence. Although by late spring he was no longer

46

associating himself with the community basketball team, his interest in basketball as a

sport remained. What is particularly interesting to me about these exchanges, and several

others like it, is the way that Antwine engages in the space; these moments are different

from the regularly busy nature of our group meetings, and why I have been thinking of

them as discrepant. I am conscious of the tendency to understand this concept as

situations where everyone was quiet or not moving. In fact, the opposite was often true

and Antwine, in particular, engaged in these self authoring moments multimodally. For

instance, Antwine’s next move was to take one of the disposable cameras and take

pictures around the theme of basketball. Everyone left that meeting intent on

photographing around a theme. I collected the cameras two days later and developed

them in preparation for a meeting three days we initially made movies in the park. We

met at an office building, where I had shared office space for the consulting that I did.

Antwine ordered these pictures – that is, he suggested that we pool all the photographs

we all had taken and label them by theme. These pictures were also later used to signify

family, relationships, and a few found their way into the ongoing theme of “How friends

treat each other.” (I explore the multimodal storytelling and literacy practices involved in

this sorting in Chapter 5).

47

48

Timothy and Antwine, in separate ways, were helping to construct the space as

multimodal in the ways that they engaged multiple modalities to not only imagine

possible stories, but also to assume different literate identities. Timothy used

photographs, video editing software, music, and the park pavilion to engage a range of

multimodal literacy practices as he became a movie maker and storyteller. Additionally,

Timothy’s impromptu movie debut is both a reflection on his adeptness at quickly

developing a level of fluency with Windows Movie Maker, and a demonstration of how

he used of our space to play with the available technologies and texts to construct his

movie.

Antwine as a manager and producer as he organized the distribution of the

cameras, and imagined a basketball story to construct. The language of movies was a

constant in our group, as we not only made a movie but also watched several movies

together; our discursive identities were similarly shaped. Antwine shaped who and how

he was in this space. Following the tradition of the movie language we often used to

name our group activities, I read his discursive acts He also assumed the identities of

documenter, photographer, and storyteller as he engaged different discursive practices to

produce a unique and hybridized member of the group, which still resonated with the

collective identity and purpose of the group.

Discussion

Third spaces are regularly spoken of as emerging out of need, sites that are born

of resistance and necessarily hybrid in response to an imposed and often dualism; the

hybridization, therefore, is located and studied within the self (Bhabha, 1994) . These

49

assertions are also primarily located in postcolonial discourses, as initiated by Bhabha’s

(1994) theorizing of the cultural identities produced in struggle. On the surface,

therefore, the connection between the space that the boys and I created and a theorized

third space may not be obvious. However, it is the marking of hybridity that supports this

analysis of collective instantiation across the dimensions of locations, modalities, and

selves. Our collective expectation of hybridity afforded this space of with in which new

literate possibilities, and through this literate hybridity we co-constructed a space of/for

hybridity.

A hybrid third space, co-constructed with youth, affords new possibilities for how

to explore the ways that they engage literacies in their lives outside of school. In so

doing – collaboratively creating this space of with – my inquiry about how the boys

might engage literacy practices to “talk against” evolved to consider how the very context

of this research impacts these engagements and engenders possibilities for new and

unscripted sites of inquiry about literacies and related discursive practices. My initial

goal in this study was to create a space for stories and counterstories – which I

understand to be discursive sites themselves within which to explore how race is

positioned/constructed/situated in the meaning making practices of this group of boys;

and to engage technologies in order to open up new representational and reflective spaces

in which to engage in this meaning making. By collaboratively creating a context in

which to explore and complicate the relationships of literacies and race,

The boys theorized for me what kind of group space this was, a practice that

spotlighted some of my frustrations as both a practitioner and researcher in this space. I

50

wondered about what kind of research this was; what my role was in this space; what it

meant to engage with the world around us across modalities.

51