Syncretising ways of doing, seeing and becoming in children's faith-inspired text-making and conversations around texts at home

Lytra, Vally; Ilankuberan, Arani

doi:10.1080/14708477.2020.1781875

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…As Bennett (2009) has argued, the material world is not inert and inconsequential, but rather, it confederates into deliberate 'assemblages' that have an agency of their own. Lytra and Ilankuberan (2020) investigate how children navigate their faith identities and their understanding of their self and place in the world through faith-inspired text creation. In looking at scrapbooks, with texts and images as material objects, created by two London children of Sri Lankan Tamil Hindu/Saiva heritage, they do not so much focus on the interrelationship between the different languages the children use (English, Tamil, and Sanskrit) but rather on the entanglement of the languages with the broad range of communicative repertoires and semiotic chains of cultural practices, material, and symbolic resources at the children's disposal.…”

Section: Languagementioning

confidence: 99%

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Vibrant identities and finding joy in difference

Solé

Fenoulhet

Quist

2020

Language and Intercultural Communication

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As Street's (1993) memorable phrase 'culture is a verb' suggests, cultures are 'doing things': vibrant, pulsating and alive. Such a statement heralded a turning point in our view of cultural identities, one that worked towards more unsteady, porous, and messy processes. Far from being fixed in a specific place, the articulation of biography, space and materiality in the intercultural encounter is never at rest. Like 'life in a caravan', multilingual and multicultural existence is lived in constant motion, movement, and chaos. Inseparable from such buzz of activity and cacophony of 'difference' are the rhythms and assemblages of 'doing' and 'becoming' in the intercultural encounter. Like the geometric patterns of the moiré effect described by Jaworski (2017), the approximate and imperfect alignment of forces in the intercultural encounter can appear like the pleasant ebb and flow movement of watery or wavelike pattern on silk, as 'people come and go, objects move, conversations start and end' (p. 536). And yet, too often, the feelings and mood typically associated with interculturality are the bitter after-taste of pain, conflict, and defeat. This issue claims that there is a secret force and potentiality in the intercultural encounter which resides in the messiness and the stumbling of the intercultural (Phipps, 2006). This article argues that it is in this slight misalignment of purposes, frictions, and rupture where identities thrive and create something new: other realities and other possibilities. The title of this issue, vibrant identities, captures the organic and complex nature of identity in the entanglement of material, dynamic, and multiple configurations of life. It seeks to sketch out an understanding of identity that thrives in chaos rather than in order, in unpredictability rather than certainty, and in entanglements rather than in straight lines. It discusses the myriad of temporary and radically unstable identities that are open to modification and alteration (de Freitas & Curinga, 2015) and how such imperfect, exploding, and vibrant identities are played out in the fields of education, translation, educational philosophy, and literacy studies. We see vibrant identities as removed from an anthropocentric understanding of cultural formations that relies on a sovereign subject who gives meaning to life. This approach equally rejects binary traditions that see culture and nature as irreconcilable. It challenges the existence of clear cut boundaries between humans, their context and organic and non-organic life. Instead, a vibrant understanding of identity sees culture and nature in a continuum and draws on a monistic view of the world that sees signs of life everywhere. This is an understanding of identity that gives primacy to the materiality and force of life rather than man-made language and culture. It also takes a fresh look at identity by focusing on perceptual and pre-verbal aspects of languages and cultures. Such a multisensorial view of languages and cultures forces us to see identity as con...

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Section: Languagementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The example by Lytra and Ilankuberan (2020) shows how cultural artefacts and multilingual speakers are not independent, separate bound identities. Rather, objects are viewed as sediments of individuals' meaning-making practices, where feelings, memories and experiences are intricately played out and identities are constituted relationally.…”

Section: Languagementioning

confidence: 99%