‘Don’t say his name, or he’ll appear here’: intersectionality and performance among young children’s narratives

Abstract

This paper is based on a narrative event that took place among 5 and 6-year-old children at a Brasília/Brazil public kindergarten, in which characters such a s God and Zé Peli nda (among others) were evoked, to promote a debate about how young children use social markers of difference. Religious, ethnic-racial and gender issues arise from their narrative performances in intersectional distinctions, which enable us to understand how these markers, and the politics of fear that often impose them , operate in children’s social liv es from a very early age.