Queer worlding childhood

Affrica TAYLOR, Mindy BLAISE

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlespeer-review

40 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

This paper sets out to queer education's normative human-centric assumptions and to de-centre the straight and narrow vision of the child as only ever becoming an autonomous individual learner. It re-focuses upon the more-than-human learning that takes place when we pay attention to queerer aspects of children's, as well as our own, entangled becomings in the common worlds in which we live. In this case, the entangled becomings are those of children and dogs. Drawing upon Donna Haraway's notion of ‘queer worlding’ and Karen Barad's assertion of ‘nature's queer performativity’, the authors explore how we might go about ‘queer worlding’ childhood. Using deconstructive and diffractive methods, they trace a selection of entangled child–dog events across three sites: the streets of Hong Kong; an Australian early childhood education bush setting; and an exhibition in a Swedish art museum. Through narrating some of the more disconcerting aspects of these events, the authors reveal how we might tap into the ‘queer worlding’ ways in which the world is acting on us, even as we are acting on it. Copyright © 2014 Taylor & Francis.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)377-392
JournalDiscourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education
Volume35
Issue number3
Early online dateFeb 2014
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2014

Citation

Taylor, A., & Blaise, M. (2014). Queer worlding childhood. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 35(3), 377-392.

Keywords

  • Queer worlding
  • Children and dogs
  • Diffractive method
  • Nature/culture divide
  • Multispecies ethnography
  • Common worlds pedagogy

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Queer worlding childhood'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.