Generation Z by Victoria Carrington Jennifer Rowsell Esther Priyadharshini & Rebecca Westrup

Author:Victoria Carrington, Jennifer Rowsell, Esther Priyadharshini & Rebecca Westrup
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer Singapore, Singapore

The Reflections of the Students: Disruption, Embodiment and Nascent Critical Looking

Reading and analysing the two sets of reflections of students and FB walkers, I detected recurrent and divergent themes, both across the two groups and differentiated by them. Among the students’ accounts (designated by letters [A–J]) recurrent themes included the disrupting of their usual routes or ways of journeying, a sense of heightened and sometimes performance-like embodiment (presumably informed by their theatre studies) including particular attention to listening, transformation of their experience of everyday space, and a developing critical view of that space through the pessimistic gaze of the zombie narrative.

The various disruptions to usual routes or ways of journeying included changes of trajectory: “I crossed the road three times unnecessarily” (H), “I crossed the road 6 times on one street…. took back streets” (D), “reluctantly moved away from the area I knew and headed toward an area I was unfamiliar with” (H).

There were also breaks from usual behaviour in relation to other pedestrians: “began to move away from people” (D), “found myself always steering clear of the people passing” (A). One student reflected on a disruption of habitual destination-orientated walking: “my walking was beginning to feel aimless” (H). The everyday traversal of familiar urban space was made problematic. Passersby might still be ignored, but now by conscious choice: “most definitely avoiding eye contact” (A).

The students were conscious of playing an embodied role. One “made sure I sped up” (H), while another “seemed to slow my movement” (C), yet another was repeatedly “looking behind me” (D). A number reported a heightened, and embodied, emotional response to the task: “I felt an overwhelming sense of hunger” (H), “hunger, thrust and mystery” (I), “makes me feel sick” (B), “[I]mpatience and aggravation resonated throughout my body. I fidgeted” (H), “a deep sense of sadness feels (sic) my body” (B). Physical experiences can be intense: “my heart beating…. bum…bum…bum. I start to run faster and faster…. the blood rushing to my head” (B). Along with an emphasis on seeing familiar spaces differently, hearing (real and imagined) is intensely engaged: “I passed an eerily silent primary school” (H), “[T]he caw of a small group of seagulls above my head started to sound more like a cry for help” (H), “my footsteps echo” (E), “my ears filled with dead murmurs and clumsy footsteps” (C), “I could hear the occasion (sic) groan” (A).

This heightened awareness extended to perception of the environment. Familiar urban spaces were seen in transformed ways: “The spaces performed for me” (I). In some cases fictional layers were laid across spaces that took on a charged quality, including a participant’s flat that at first felt “safe. However, if the affected caught on, I’d be trapped” (H), a cafe where “a milk spillage… reminds me of someone being ripped apart in front of me” (F) and, most commonly, shops which became places to “raid” (D), where a participant was ‘watched’ from within “the darkness of the broken down shops” (E) and that were changed from

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