Abstract

Dystopias—societies organized around deep inequalities—have existed in the context of Atlantic Canada since colonization. In this article, we seek to center the concept of dystopia as an important sphere of inquiry through participatory visual research with six 2SLGBTQ+ young people (14–17) in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. Using an intersectional lens (Crenshaw, 1989), we consider how intersecting power structures—gender, race, class, and disability—produce unequal impacts in relation to social and reproductive justice issues in Atlantic Canadian contexts. In this paper, we highlight DIY media-making—as a multiliteracy practice—with 2SLGBTQ+ youth to explore social and reproductive justice. As early as 1994, Julian Sefton-Green and David Buckingham wrote about the importance of acknowledging the situated nature of people’s local literacy practices and of
examining the ways that people make meaning through multiple texts in order to instigate social change. Other scholars working within a multiliteracy framework argue that an understanding of multiliteracies includes modes of processing, producing, analyzing, and meaning-making. Centering 2SLGBTQ+ youth agency, we position DIY media-making as a multiliteracy practice through stencil production and drawing. Through a close reading of three youth-produced images, and an interdisciplinary inquiry into dystopias present and future, we seek to make visual an ethical place of belonging among the dystopic.