Vagueness and Care: On Affect and Literacy

In this commentary, the author responds to three articles using affect studies to rethink literacy, in Reading Research Quarterly ’s special issue on affect theory. Taking up how the three articles—by Boldt; Truman, Hackett, Pahl, Davies, and Escott; and Tanner, Leander, and Carter‐Stone—draw on divergent genealogies of affect theory, the author proposes that the ability of affect to capaciously capture such different approaches is one of its most important strengths. The author ends by considering the problem of borders as it appears across all three articles, ultimately arguing that the vagueness of concepts drawn from affect literacy is precisely what makes it an invaluable concept for thinking through how we may care for the literacies that sustain us.