Making Payton's Rocket: Heterotopia and Lines of Flight

Abstract

This article explores the potential of heterotopia as a way to prompt us to think differently about children's art‐making. Foucault uses the term to describe a space of difference. As something that is not easily located within a system of representation, a heterotopia is not amenable to interpretation. It is this resistance to interpretation that can ‘force us to confront the limits of our understanding’. Linking Foucault's idea of the heterogeneous with Deleuze & Guttari's concept of ‘smooth space’ allows me to think differently about representational intent. As a teacher of young children, I have habitually valued and encouraged ‘purposeful’ play. In terms of artwork this has often meant that I have assumed an overriding and usually representational ‘purpose’ that underlies the work and gives it meaning. However, in many of the junk models produced by children during my fieldwork, I glimpsed a quality of the smooth space evoked by Deleuze & Guttari's patchwork quilt where, although ‘they may display equivalents to themes [and] symmetries … there is no centre; its basic motif (“block”) is composed of the single element; the recurrence of this element frees uniquely the rhythmic values’.

“Evil Cats” and “Jelly Floods”: Young Children’s Collective Constructions of Digital Art Making in the Early Years Classroom

“…It should be noted that storytelling in art-making is not exclusive to digital resources, and it has been observed in the context of children's non-digital art-making in multiple studies (Kolbe, 2005;Anning, 2002Anning, , 2003MacRae, 2011). Previous research has also found however, that early years practitioners tend to value children's art-making when it involves discernible representations (Soundy & Drucker, 2010;Duncum, 1999).…”

“…Just as this is dependent on the children in the class with 'expert' status, it also relies on the nature of the adult guidance which is given in the case of arising conflicts and, therefore, adult conceptions of what artmaking should involve. By considering digital art-making, we must therefore return to questions of what children's art-making is and how it should be supported, regardless of the resources that are used (MacRae, 2011;Knight, 2012).…”

‘We’re just gonna scribble it’: The affective and social work of destruction in children’s art-making with different semiotic resources

“…A social semiotic perspective is important for liberating us from a discourse that positions destruction and children's art-making more generally in relation to the desires and thoughts of individual minds (Thompson, 2015;Knight, 2013;MacRae, 2011). It enables us to ask 'what work does this do?'…”

The Astronautical discourse in an English primary school during the Principia ESA mission: A critical analysis

“…MacRae [20] "explores the potential of the heterotopia as a way to point us to think differently about children's art making." She considers explicitly that because a heterotopia is neither representative nor interpretative but stands in its own right, there is no requirement to perform an action of representation or interpretation of a child's art object.…”