Emanata: On the Vast Spillage of Teachers’ Emotions in Comics

This chapter attunes to the use of imagistic metaphors in comics—the lines, squiggles, and shapes surrounding characters, here referred to as emanata—to describe the otherwise unrepresentable, affective atmospheres of teaching life. Looking to non-representational theory as a way to conceive the world as composed of imperceptible things and movements whose meanings may never be finally settled, and by recalibrating the interpretive lenses that make particular forms and functions of reading possible, this chapter intensifies the emotional backgrounds framing teachers’ lives in comics. Reading for emotion is thus described as a process of de-emphasizing the narrative center, momentarily leaving questions of sequentiality aside, while simultaneously welcoming that which language and representation cannot easily abide.