New Images of Thought in the Study of Childhood Drawing (Children: Global Posthumanist Perspectives and Materialist Theories)

This book provides a revitalised account of the study of children’s drawing by outlining a departure from existing approaches privileging developmentalist accounts and presenting drawing as a specialised human endeavour separated from other material entanglements constituting children’s everyday experiences. The book takes on current developments in the fields of early childhood arts and early childhood literacies to advocate for process-oriented, new materialist and decolonial approaches that re-conceptualise the study of children’s drawing. It proposes a future-oriented approach, centred on thinking experimentally with a focus on nonrepresentational elements, such as movement, sensation, intensity, rhythm, story and place, which singularly assemble in drawing events. Thus, the book discusses drawing as a process of sense-making that is not enclosed in the individualised body of the child and that unfolds corporeally in time and space. It revises the relation of drawing with symbolisation by suggesting that the use of language and signs in drawing form in entanglement with matter and sensation in processes of creative speculation connected with the movement of thought. Presenting a series of contributions by internationally recognised scholars and artists, the book aims to create synergies between theory and practice that speak of everyday realities interconnecting children, learning and sense-making. Acknowledgements 7 Contents 9 Editors and Contributors 11 1 An Introduction: For New Images of Thought in the Study of Children’s Drawings 14 1.1 Childhood Drawing: An Overview 16 1.2 Development: The Dominant Discourse 16 1.3 A Sociocultural Approach: The Conviviality of Context and Culture 18 1.4 Posthumanist New Materialisms: New Images of Thought in the Study of Children Drawings 19 1.5 Drawing as Immanent and Multisensory 21 1.6 A Vitalist Approach to Participation in Drawing Events 22 1.7 Drawings as Gatherings that Capacitate/Debilitate 25 1.8 Children Drawings’ Ontological Indeterminacy 27 1.9 Directions and the Book’s Structure 32 References 34 2 Are We There Yet?: In Search of Drawing Events in Early Childhood 40 2.1 There You Go, Bear! 41 2.2 Drawings that Can Get a Kid in Trouble 44 2.3 How We Have Looked at Children’s Drawing in the Past 46 2.4 The Necessity of the Sociocultural Perspective 47 2.5 Drawing Events 49 2.6 Are We There Yet? 52 References 53 3 On Children’s and Students’ Drawing Practices: Advocating a Pedagogy of Taking-Care 56 3.1 Introduction 57 3.2 Opening Remarks and Questions: Developing a Pedagogy of Care 58 3.3 Ritornellos 62 3.4 Drawing as Vernacular Mapping 64 3.5 Drawing Practices and A-Signifying Semiotics 67 3.6 Institutional Legends and a Politics/Ethics of Difference and Care in Pedagogic Work 70 3.7 Pedagogical Practice and the Gift of Otherness 71 References 74 4 “These Are Lion Tracks”: A Place-Stories Approach to Childhood Drawing 76 4.1 Introduction 76 4.2 Place Stories 78 4.3 “These are lion tracks” 79 4.4 Remembrance and Obligation 80 4.5 The Betrayals of Seeing 82 4.6 Relations of Erasure 84 4.7 Dispossession 86 4.8 A Place-Stories Approach 88 References 89 5 Curves, Sways, Loops, Folds and Witches’ Traps: Sensing Duration in Sylvie’s Drawings 93 5.1 Introduction 94 5.2 Background 94 5.3 Time and Drawing 95 5.4 Thinking Sylvie’s Drawings as Duration 98 5.5 The Salt and Flour Play: Moving in Simultaneous and Successive Durations 102 5.6 The Dance of Wrapping and Unwrapping: Tracking Qualitative Progress in Events 105 5.7 Sylvie’s Suite of 12 Drawings: Moving with the Line 109 5.8 Concluding Thoughts: Sympathizing with Children’s Drawings 111 References 113 6 Drawing and Being Drawn by the Hand: A Dance of Animacy 115 6.1 The Hope of Drawing 115 6.2 The Pulse of a Project 116 6.3 Drawing and Being Drawn by the Hand 118 6.4 The Mystery Hand 123 6.5 A Dance of Animacy 127 References 129 7 Strawing: Perpetual Line 130 References 146 8 Drawing as Felt 147 8.1 Introduction 147 8.2 Drawing as Felt 149 8.3 Carding 153 8.4 Nesting 153 8.5 Robert’s Nest 156 8.6 Birding 157 8.7 Fulling 159 8.8 The Nest 161 8.9 Roving 162 8.10 The Snow Nest 162 8.11 Nested: Attuning to Feeling Drawing as an Entanglement 164 References 166 9 City as Soundscape: Sounding-Drawings and Drawing-Sounds as (Re)creations of Urban Space 168 9.1 Introduction 168 9.2 Sound, Architecture and Spatial Exploration 170 9.3 Sound Drawings in Space 173 9.4 Concertina of Sounds 174 9.5 Playing the Bridge 176 9.6 Re-Creating Drawings in Extended Ecologies of Relations and Possibilities 178 References 182 Afterword 184 Reference 187