Children and the Ethics of Creativity: Rhythmic Affectensities in Early Childhood Education (Children: Global Posthumanist Perspectives and Materialist Theories)

This book presents a critical reimagining of education and educational research in addressing practices of representation and their relation to epistemology, subjectivity and ontology in the context of early childhood education. Drawing on posthumanist perspectives and the immanent materialism of Deleuze & Guattari to conceive of early childhood education, childhood and indeed, adult life, in new ways, it highlights the powerful role of language in subjectivity and ontology, and introduces affectensity as a concept which can be put to work to undo habitual relations and meanings. It proposes that ethical becomings require the engagement of an expansion and intensification of a body’s affect or capacity, and offers readers a provocation for enhancing creative capacity as an ethic. This book is an important contribution to the discussions on methods for living and of ways of thinking commensurate with the orientation of a posthuman turn. Preface: Reading Affectensities Acknowledgements Contents List of Figures 1 Starting Stratified: The Highchair Highchair as and in Expression Mapping Highchairs-Infants-Bottles-Adult-Food Expressions A Curricular Tracing Highchair Stratified and Destratified References 2 Framing the Creativity of Chaos First Framing Reframing Reframing Reframing Reframing References 3 Relations In/Between Content and Expression: Moving Beyond “This is a Cow and a Cow Says Moo” Mapping New Relations for/in/as Content and Expression Content-Expressions of/in/with Early Childhood Education The Gap of Nonresemblance A Detour in/with Affect Expression-Becoming-Affectensity Intensifying Ethics ... References 4 Mapping Expression as the Monstrosity of an Earthquake Meets Doing-Curriculum Children and Teachers “Talking and Thinking About Earthquakes?” Mapping for Affectensity? Notes on an Image Intensifying Being-Pedagogy References 5 Assembling Thought: Experiments in Juxtaposition Piaget’s 2020 Lecture in Which Deleuze and Guattari Sit in the Audience A Constructionist Structuralism for Genetic Psychology Rhizomatic Thoughts of Education in Aotearoa New Zealand References 6 How Creative is Subjectification? Capturing Contingency in the Subject Complicating Stratification as a Theory of the Subject [Capture] ...Contingency... An Ethics of the Subject Fleeing the Monster—Working the Interval for an Ethics of the Subject An Education-Machine Interprets ... The Child Improvises References 7 Working the In-Betweens of Material Expression Clay Sits on Table Clay Sits on Table Intensifying Data/Material References 8 Repetition, Refrain, Creativity The Consistency of Difference in Repetition Differing: Difference-Becoming-Ontological Differing: Difference-Becoming-Univocity Differing: Difference-Becoming-Passage-and-Movement Differing Again: Difference-Becoming-Creative-Energy Difference Shakes up Ontogenesis Again and Again and Again... a Refrain Develops The Refrain To Refrain ... References 9 The Affect of Language: Order-in(g) the Child’s World of Bees Movements Out of Order Enacting an Interval: Order-Word/Bee Intensifying Language, Code ... References 10 Making Creative Sense of Chaos Developing a Style of Sense Making Sense of Signs The Power of Sense Sensing a Way to a Style Sense(:) a Truth, but Only What Works Intensifying Stories of Life and Self References 11 Concluding Rhythms: To Dance Intensifying Method A Becoming-Differential of Becoming-Dance A Becoming-Passage of Becoming-Dance A Becoming-Territory of Becoming-Dance A Becoming-Diagram of Becoming-Dance References