Taking Age Out of Play: Children's Animistic Philosophising Through a Picturebook

Abstract

This paper emerges from experiences of putting picturebooks, philosophy with children and posthumanism into play. Responding to Derrida's notion of a ‘return to childhood’, we propose a different move of ‘re-turning to child/ren’, drawing from various entangled sources. First, the figuration of posthuman child (Murris, 2016) disrupts the conception of temporality that takes development and progress as inevitable. The posthuman child expresses the idea of the knowing subject as an unbounded sympoietic system. We put to work Miranda Fricker's notion of epistemic injustice to reanimate thought, with Tim Ingold and Jane Bennett. In respect of children's animistic philosophizing, our writing explores the materiality of philosophizing between adult/s and a class of 4–7-year-olds enquiring through an animated picturebook called Corduroy (Freeman, 1976). They are engaged in an epistemology of learning with, rather than about, the world. Ingold proposes that ‘knowing is movement to be taught by the world’ (2013:5) and that our inquiries should not set out to describe or represent the world but rather to open our perception to what is going on there, so we can respond to it. Making enquiries draws attention away from description and re-presentation to the movement, plurality and animatedness of knowing.

The ‘Missing Peoples’ of critical posthumanism and new materialism

“…Elsewhere (Haynes & Murris, 2019), ontoepistemic injustice is explored in the context of children's animistic philosophising. Animism in humans of all ages tends to be (mis)understood as 'magical', pre-rational and mere fantasy, a form of thinking to be left behind in the process of growing up, maturation or civilisation 7 .…”

Individual differences and influences on learning

“…and in which non-humans are considered actors that can bring about change in any given learning situation (Blaise and Hamm, 2019;Haynes and Murris, 2019;Taylor, 2019;Weldemariam, 2019). e key nding from such studies, for example, is not that children learn from animals but rather that they learn with them -developing mutual understanding, learning how to live with other species and respond to them, and learning how to deal with death (e.g.…”

right under our noses: the postponement of children's political equality and the NOW

“…What we have noticed in our pre-service and in-service education practices is that (student) teachers tend to 'translate' children's rich philosophical openings into more familiar epistemic territory, especially when their interest is of an existential nature (Haynes & Murris, 2012). Instead, concepts are like crystals, to be picked up and, as the thinking moves in and across disciplines as the enquiry demands (Haynes & Murris, 2019), different angles show different perspectives and richer and more varied understandings emerge (Lipman et al, 1977, p.9). Importantly, it is this kind of philosophical reasoning that develops over time through the experience of enquiring together in a community.…”

“…Elsewhere we have argued for a move away from locating meaning-making (hence facilitation) in one particular (zipped up) human or nonhuman body: either the teacher, child or the resource. When arguing for Philosophy with Children as a post-age intragenerational pedagogy, meaning is created in-between human and more-than-human bodies (Haynes & Murris, 2019). The uncertainty and ambiguity of meaning and the indeterminate performativity of word and image in picturebooks as philosophical texts is intricately linked with the political shift in educator/educated relations that tend to be governed by the 'not-yet' and deferrals of becoming affected by the NOW (Haynes & Murris, 2019).…”

“…When arguing for Philosophy with Children as a post-age intragenerational pedagogy, meaning is created in-between human and more-than-human bodies (Haynes & Murris, 2019). The uncertainty and ambiguity of meaning and the indeterminate performativity of word and image in picturebooks as philosophical texts is intricately linked with the political shift in educator/educated relations that tend to be governed by the 'not-yet' and deferrals of becoming affected by the NOW (Haynes & Murris, 2019). Troubled by not only the adulto-centrism, but also the human-centredness of such deferrals, we acknowledge that so-called inanimate objects, such as books and chairs (Reynolds, 2019) are also members of the community in Philosophy with Children.…”