Children and the Ethics of Creativity: Rhythmic Affectensities in Early Childhood Education PDF
Preview Children and the Ethics of Creativity: Rhythmic Affectensities in Early Childhood Education
Children: Global Posthumanist Perspectives and Materialist Theories Series Editors: Karen Malone · Marek Tesar · Sonja Arndt Victoria Jane Hargraves Children and the Ethics of Creativity Rhythmic Affectensities in Early Childhood Education Children: Global Posthumanist Perspectives and Materialist Theories Series Editors Karen Malone, Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, VIC, Australia Marek Tesar, The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand Sonja Arndt, The University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand This book series presents original and cutting edge knowledge for a growing field of scholarship about children. Its focus is on the interface of children being in the everyday spaces and places of contemporary childhoods, and how different theoretical approaches influence ways of knowing the future lives of children. The authors explore and analyse children’s lived embodied everyday experiences and encounters with tangible objects and materials such as artefacts, toys, homes, landscapes,animals,food,andthebroaderintangiblematerialityofrepresentational objects, such as popular culture, air, weather, bodies, relations, identities and sexualities. Monographs and edited collections in this series are attentive to the mundane everyday relationships, in-between ‘what is’ and ‘what could be’, with matters and materials. The series is unique because it challenges traditional western-centric views of children and childhood by drawing on a range of perspectives including Indigenous, Pacifica, Asian and those from the Global South. The book series is also unique as it provides a shift from developmental, social constructivists, structuralist approaches to understanding and theorising aboutchildhood.Thesedominantparadigmswillbechallengedthroughavarietyof post-positivist/postqualitative/posthumanist theories of being children and childhood. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/15731 Victoria Jane Hargraves Children and the Ethics of Creativity Rhythmic Affectensities in Early Childhood Education 123 Victoria JaneHargraves University of Auckland Auckland,New Zealand ISSN 2523-3408 ISSN 2523-3416 (electronic) Children: GlobalPosthumanist Perspectives andMaterialist Theories ISBN978-981-15-6690-5 ISBN978-981-15-6691-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6691-2 ©SpringerNatureSingaporePteLtd.2020 Thisworkissubjecttocopyright.AllrightsarereservedbythePublisher,whetherthewholeorpart of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission orinformationstorageandretrieval,electronicadaptation,computersoftware,orbysimilarordissimilar methodologynowknownorhereafterdeveloped. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publicationdoesnotimply,evenintheabsenceofaspecificstatement,thatsuchnamesareexemptfrom therelevantprotectivelawsandregulationsandthereforefreeforgeneraluse. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained hereinorforanyerrorsoromissionsthatmayhavebeenmade.Thepublisherremainsneutralwithregard tojurisdictionalclaimsinpublishedmapsandinstitutionalaffiliations. ThisSpringerimprintispublishedbytheregisteredcompanySpringerNatureSingaporePteLtd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore Slide waits… Still. Shiny. Steep, and long. You stand at the top of Slide, pause, wait, look down, press your feet into Slide and imagine yourself lon-n-ng, with Slide an extension of your feet, becoming-with Slide… “Sit down”. “Sit on your bottom”. An adult, experienced in the ways of the playground, is trying to support you to use this equipment correctly. But you don’t move, standing, still. “Come down now, your turn”. “C’mon, off you go” (this is what is assumed and expected) What creativity beats in the rhythm of not-sliding, in standing-there instead? I dedicate this work to my family—my husband Glenn, my children Freddy and Beth, my mum Marilyn and my dad Norman —without whom my becoming-book would not have been possible. Preface: Reading Affectensities The aim of this book is to explore, provoke and promote creative practices and thought, not only for its context of early childhood education, but also for living a creative and fulfilling life, through drawing on the immanent materialist ethics of Deleuze(1969/1990,1968/1994)andDeleuzeandGuattari(1972/1983,1980/1987, 1991/1994).Thebooksearchesforwaystomovebeyondthereproductionofstatic forms, rigidity and standardisation in thought, action, and institutions, which can becomesofamiliarandreproduciblethattheyinhibitcreativityandbecoming-new. Theethicsofanontologyofimmanentmaterialismcontinuallyseeksanexpansion and intensification of a body’s affect or capacity by working with posthumanist univocity, an affirmation and appreciation of all that is at play in the world of that bodyinagivenmoment,bothhumanandnonhuman,corporealandnon-corporeal. Thisbookisaboutsensing(bothperceivingandmakingsenseof)waystolivelifein morecreativeandexpansiveways,engenderingnewandintensifiedexpressionsof ourselveswithin thepotential-filled contextsin which we move. Thebookattemptsanintensificationofpotentialwithinthethoughts,bodiesand actions of its reader by seeking to open up a multitude of potential connections availablewithinthediversebodiesofthebook(itspages,letters,imagesandwhite space; the ideas, concepts, and literary quotes; the characters that illuminate ideas; thereaderthatnowscansthepagewithflittingeyesandfiringsynapses)forcreative transformations. The ethics of creativity put forward here is about heightening the potential available for becoming-new, ascribing bodies with more affect or power, and the concept of affectensity is used to describe an intense experience of heightened affect that is capable of breaking free of, and challenging, habitual meanings and relations between bodies and creating something new. The book explores a series of imagined trajectories of creative becoming, for entities as diverse as clay, table, and highchair; concepts such as expression, monster, and intensity; and fictional and conceptual personas including teacher, child, Deleuze, Guattari,andPiaget,astheycollide,diverge,accumulate,affirmandcontradictone another.Affectensitydoesnotemergeoutofchaos,butoutof therhythmicpatterns of a universe’s self-organisation. The book provides some suggestions for ways to proceedwithengagingaffectensity.Readersmayfindtheconceptsandpracticesof ix x Preface:ReadingAffectensities affectensity productive in supporting the development of ethical practices for enhancing creative thought, creative becoming and transformational practices in early childhood education. Putting the Book to Work This book comes together in, and is cut across by, several transversal lines that disruptthereader’shabitsofthoughtandenabletheconnectionoftheunrelatedand irrelevant. “The function of transversals is to assemble multiplicities, yet in such a way that the differences among entities are not effaced but intensified” (Bogue, 2007, p. 2), an affectensive process. There are rhythmic threads amongst chapters that connect (Fig. 1) in terms of their focus on concepts, methods (intensifying sections) or moments of everyday life in early childhood (events/data). These foci are not exclusive as all chapters engage these aspects— chaptersdiscussingconceptsormethodsareeventsinthemselves,andeverychapter aimstobeintensifyingofitstopic.Transversalityengagesandoverlayseachlineof development (concept, method, or event) so that vertical lines of expectation, transcendence, and presupposition are always confused and altered by something unexpected, tospark potential for becoming-new (Boldt &Valente, 2016). Chapter 1: Chapter 2: Framing the Creativity of Intensifying Ethics Starting Stratified: Chaos (Chapter 3) The Highchair CMhaappptienrg 4 : Caan hCdao pEwtxe par nr3ed:s Rsai eoClnao:tw iMo nSosav yiinns /gMb eBotweoy”eo ennd C “oTnhtiesn its IPnetdeangsoifgyyin (gC Bhaepintegr- 4) Expression as the Monstrosity of an Chapter 6: How Creative is the Subject? Intensifying Data / Earthquake meets Capturing Contingency in the Subject Material (Chapter 7) Doing-Curriculum Intensifying Language, Chapter 5: Chapter 8: Repetition, Refrain, Creativity Code (Chapter 9) Assembling Thought: Experiments in Chapter 10: Making Creative Sense of Intensifying Stories of Juxtaposition Chaos Life and Self (Chapter 10) Chapter 9: The Affect of Chapter 11: Concluding Rhythms: To Intensifying Method Language: Order- Dance (Chapter 11) in(g) the Child’s World of Bees Transversal for an Early Childhood Education Machine Transversal for a Pedagogical Machine Chapter 7: Working the In- Transversal for Affect betweens of Material Transversal for a Conceptual Machine Expression Transversal for the Posthuman Fig.1 Potentialtransversalsacrosschaptergrid Preface:ReadingAffectensities xi The structure of the book is therefore non-linear and fragmented. Conceptual explorations are punctuated by early childhood events, previously documented but differing with repetition here for new affect, AND … interrupted by intensifying intervals,which make adifferingofpedagogical methods, AND … stretched across encounters in the void or temporary space of potential, of intensitiesofexpressionAND…passedthroughrefrains,sensesandstyles,AND. Thisstructureaimstomakesmallruptures,smallbreaksandopenings,becauseitis in the break that potential becomes diversified, and affect can be expanded. In the oscillating rhythm created in such organisation, it is intended that the transversals of concepts, methods, and events connect in multiple ways to create a rich network of potential. These are connections in which concepts are disrupted, losing their secure and reliable identities, transforming in the entanglements of language and context in the event. They are also then transformative of the becoming of others (Jackson, 2016), including pedagogy and book, teacher and child, writer and reader. Rather than the confidence of clear definition, there is a continuousvariationthatcanaccelerateabecoming-new,thatexplorescreativenew possibilities of thinking about and with the world. Intensifying sections (Chaps. 3, 4, 7, 9, 10 and 11) begin with a methodological problem, a problem about how to do early childhood education from within an immanent materialist ontology, with intent to generate creative pedagogies. A contingent methodological sense emerges in response to problems and works against the formation of transcendent solutions for all time and all contexts.Theaimofgeneratinganintensityhereistoopenupthegreatestrangeof potential for the most enlargening of pedagogical capacities. These sections are concerned with what methodology might (come to) be. The “events”ordata pieces (Chaps. 1, 4,5, 7 and 9) require some clarification. Theeventsarewherewhatmightbetermedthedataforthebookcanbefound,butit wouldbemisleadingtopresenttheseasthereportandanalysisofdata.Theseevents do not describe and analyse something that happened in the past, but are actively createdinthealwaysnowoftheirbeingwritten(Leander&Boldt,2013),orbeing read. They are situated as present moments, in the whirl of their coming-into- assemblage with all the elements (concepts, methods, ontology, epistemology) of becoming-book.Theactofwritingorreadingtheseeventsextendstheirbecomingin a move towards enhancing their conative potential, enabling contact with new potential. In this way an event is always generative, a creative self-organisation. Philosophyandpedagogyemergeanewratherthanremainstaticformsforapplica- tion, a way of philosophising “that does not fold back into itself as philosophy” (Rotas,2015,p.93)butextendsoutintotheworldandtransformsitselfandpractice alongtheway. The individuating, always-becoming-new nature of the event is best felt in dis- orientation (Manning, 2013): the frame that constantly shifts in “Framing the Creativity of Chaos” (Chap. 2); the sceptic whisperings of Deleuze and Guattari interruptingandtransformingPiaget’slecture(event,Chap.5);themutatingstyleand senseof“Relationsin/betweenContentandExpression”(Chap.3);theforegrounding ofclayascentralprotagonistin“WorkingtheIn-betweensofMaterialExpression”
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