re(con)ceiving young children's curricular performativity
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Re(con)ceiving young children'scurricular performativityMarg Sellers aa School of Education , RMIT University , Melbourne, AustraliaPublished online: 06 Oct 2010.
To cite this article: Marg Sellers (2010) Re(con)ceiving young children's curricularperformativity, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 23:5, 557-577, DOI:10.1080/09518398.2010.500629
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International Journal of Qualitative Studies in EducationVol. 23, No. 5, September–October 2010, 557–577
ISSN 0951-8398 print/ISSN 1366-5898 online© 2010 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/09518398.2010.500629http://www.informaworld.com
Re(con)ceiving young children’s curricular performativity
Marg Sellers*
School of Education, RMIT University, Melbourne, AustraliaTaylor and FrancisTQSE_A_500629.sgm(Received 17 September 2009; final version received 9 June 2010)10.1080/09518398.2010.500629International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education0951-8398 (print)/1366-5898 (online)Original Article2010Taylor & Francis235000000September 2010Dr. [email protected]
Working (with) Deleuzo-Guattarian philosophical imaginaries opens (to) amultiplicity of possibilities for thinking differently about curriculum, youngchildren and how they perform their curricular understandings. In this article Iwork (as) rhizome, bringing the imaginaries becoming and milieu into an earlychildhood curriculum conversation towards perturbing conventional, entrencheddevelopmental understandings of young children and their learning. It is within/inmultiplicitous processing through becoming-child(ren) that I re(con)ceive childrenand their relationships with curriculum as a performativity of the milieu(s) theyinhabit, milieus that slide alongside/over/through those of adult worlds ofcurriculum. With/in milieus that children generate for their learning, thecomplexity of play(ing) is like clouds sculpting skyscapes as they make visible thealways already happenings of their curricular performativity.
Keywords: Deleuze; curriculum; philosophy; children
Opening (to) thinking differently
Thinking with Deleuze opens (to) a multiplicity of possibilities for thinking differ-ently about young children, curriculum and children’s curricular performativity.Putting the Deleuzo-Guattarian ‘imaginaries’ (M. Sellers 2009; W. Sellers 2008) ofbecoming and milieus to work with the notion of re(con)ceiving turns about conven-tional conceptions of curriculum and opens towards conceiving of curriculum as (a)milieu(s) of becoming – milieu(s) being simultaneously one and many. In thisre(con)ceiving endeavour I work to move outside technicist notions of curriculumand developmental theorising about children towards generative ideas that simulta-neously reconceive curriculum and receive young children’s understandings into thecurricular conversation. My assumption is that young children’s understandings areequitably expert to those of adult worlds; children are embodied within theirlife∼living experiences of their negotiating (their) childhood(s) in ways that adultscannot be, yet also in ways similar to adults working from/with/in their experiences,past and present of life and living. Arguably adults themselves have already negoti-ated childhood but this was in different socio-historical times and changing sociocul-tural contexts so the childhood experiences are inevitably different; and, theexperiences are also remembered through adult understandings. So, like Silin (2003),I wonder whether adulthood is one moment in time in which we have extended andexpanded, but not necessarily improved ways for understanding experiences of life
*Email: [email protected]
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and living. Foregrounding children’s understandings perturbs conventional curricularconceptions that the adult world assumes for/on behalf of children and their learning,towards generating other possibilities for re(con)ceiving young children’s curricularperformativity (M. Sellers 2009). The imaginaries, becoming and milieus, open (to)such generative thinking.
Introducing imaginaries
Thinking of Deleuzo-Guattarian philosophical concepts as imaginaries is differentfrom the common understanding of ‘imaginary’ that exists in the imaginative mind’sability to be creative, inventive and resourceful, to engage with fantasy as opposed toreason. It differs also from the Lacanian psychoanalytical imaginary, which, as a func-tion of being deceives us into believing that a word can ‘become identical with whatit represents’ (Clark 2004, 2). Thinking with Deleuzo-Guattarian imaginaries movesoutside the notion of a metaphorical figure of speech in which a word or phrase istransferred to an object or action so that something is regarded as representative,suggestive or symbolic of something else. Rather, a Deleuzo-Guattarian imaginarybecomes a way of working (with) complex thinking; the understanding of imaginarythat I work with here is that it is fluid, always already relating to other concepts inrhizomatic ways, partially overlapping in ‘a threshold of indiscernibility’ (Deleuzeand Guattari 1994, 19) with many imaginaries resonating singularly and together as‘centres of vibrations’ (23). As Warren Sellers (2008) explicates, rhizome is imagi-nary in this way, it is a ‘characterising affect rather than a mental image referencingsome thing, situation or circumstance’ (8) that avoids ‘leaving any totalised majorconstruct in mind’ (269). This non-totalising movement resists metaphorical represen-tation; any attempt to represent it either as metaphor or traditional trope fails as soonas an attempt is made to seize it. Rather, an imaginary works to ‘reveal notions ofunderstandings that are not otherwise conceivable’ (206).
A ‘beside’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 52) happens within a mo(ve)ment of irruption,breaking away; it is an emerging that accumulates and generates momentum of its own… so, I proffer a beside about rhizomatic … I’m wondering if I mean ‘rhizomous’ or‘rhizomic’, if there are such terms? In thinking with Deleuze and working (with)rhizome, a tipping point in my discomfort with the term ‘rhizomatic’ is emergingthrough my writing here. Perhaps I should just say ‘rhizo’ as a way of disrupting themore technicist ‘rhizomatic’ that confines and stultifies the opening(s) of rhizome. Inthe latter moments of writing my doctoral thesis, which involved ‘rhizomatically’researching with children, I shifted some of my wording to rhizo, as in rhizo mappingand rhizo methodology. The term ‘rhizoanalysis’ appears already in the literature(Alvermann 2000; MacNaughton 2003; O’Riley 2003); and Jackson (2003) makes asimilarly un-stated shift in introducing ‘rhizovocality’.
I should also say that instead of footnotes I am using ‘besides’ – St. Pierre (2000) simi-larly uses ‘asides’ – which for me resound as stuttering lines of flight (Deleuze andGuattari 1987; Deleuze 1997) that intermingle and go some way towards rupturingabrupt positivist interjections.
Imaginaries function in spaces of transitions and transactions, as unstable andcontingent, opening (to) possibilities for creating a different kind of work and forthinking and writing differently, this becoming the work of ‘explor[ing] possibilitiesimmobilised for so long by [modernist] fixities’ (St. Pierre 1997, 281). So, in mythinking with Deleuze – put to work in my doctoral research (M. Sellers 2009) – I
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follow Deleuze and Guattari (1987) and avoid assigning any one meaning to particularimaginaries, preferring they ‘reverberate’ through ‘shifting contexts in which they areput to use’ (Lorraine 2005, 207). I do not centralise or assign any one as key, rather Ipresent them as working together with/in complex arrangements that vary in differentmoments, with explanations of one drawing on/in others, al(l)ways, in some momentssome not (yet) explicated per se, such as rhizome, which works through (all) theothers.
Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) rhizo approach to thinking~reading~writingperturbs conventional order/ing, sequencing, categorising and linearity, including thatrepresented in/by the (metaphorical) tree of knowledge, in which conventional under-standings of curriculum are grounded. In contrast, heterogeneous connectivity charac-terises the complexity of a rhizome and rhizo thinking, such as rhizo researchmethodologies and rhizoanalysis. Rhizome is constituted of and constitutes ceaselessinterrelational movements – flows of connections – among numerous possible assem-blies involving both the similar and the disparate.
My use of the tilde signals that thinking~reading~writing is a co-implicated(ad)venture; a thinking~reading~writing assemblage that comprises and is comprisedof ceaseless interrelational movement, oscillating, flickering through its constituents.
An image of the botanical rhizome (Figure 1) and a rhizome familiar in virtualterms, the Internet, together illuminate the complexity involved in working withrhizome, or rhizo working. They open (to) a chaotic or differently ordered approachto thinking, writing and analysing research data, for example, as thoughts and ideasshift, (re)turn, (re)form (unlikely) connections, move in unexpected directions,
Figure 1. Rhizome∼multidimensional, a-centred. Source: Drawing by Warren Sellers.
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perform surprises. ‘A rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle,between things, interbeing, intermezzo … proceeding from the middle, through themiddle, coming and going rather than starting and finishing’ (Deleuze and Guattari1987, 25). Simply put, ‘the fabric of the rhizome is the conjunction, “and … and …and”’ (25). Thinking with rhizome or rhizo thinking thus opens (to) endlesspossibilities for approaching any thought, activity or concept, towards generating andassembling many and various ways of being and operating in the world.Figure 1. Rhizome∼multidimensional, a-centred. Source: Drawing by Warren Sellers.
… before beginning … about early childhood curriculum
before beginning sous rature signals that with/in a milieu of rhizo thinking, there isno actual beginning, only non-hierarchical openings into, in turn signalled by a lackof capitalisation.
Historically, curriculum has been imbued with shifting meanings (Pinar et al. 1995)and in recent decades, an extensive body of scholarship has emerged generatingdiverse possibilities for reconceptualising early childhood curriculum, away from atechnicist focus on the curriculum. This has been influenced by work from poststruc-turalist, feminist and postcolonial perspectives within sociological, psychological andcritical theories in particular. The shift towards developing philosophical understand-ings of what curriculum means in practical and theoretical terms has been attended toby early childhood educationists who have reconsidered and re-imagined (other) waysof thinking about early childhood curriculum.
Throughout the early 1990s in Aotearoa New Zealand, a national curriculum state-ment was developed (Carr and May 1993), entitled Te Wh [amacr ]riki: He Wh [amacr ]riki M [amacr
]tauranga m [omacr ] ng [amacr ] Mokopuna o Aotearoa (Ministry of Education 1996). In this bi-cultural document, produced in collaboration with M [amacr ]ori – the indigenous people ofAotearoa New Zealand – curriculum is presented as a woven mat, as a wh [amacr ]riki of prin-ciples (viz. holistic development, family and community, relationships,empowerment1) and strands (viz. well-being, belonging, contribution, communica-tion, exploration) (see Figure 2).Figure 3. Te Wh[amacr ]riki woven mat of principles and strands. Source: Ministry of Education 1996, 13.Conventional conceptions of curriculum all-too-frequently imply a more prescrip-tive adult and child-less interpretation of how learning should proceed, with adultdecisions prevailing as to what content is deemed valuable. This way of understandingcurriculum tends to prioritise historical matters of syllabus, that is subject matter andhow it is taught. Te Wh [amacr ]riki, however, is not such a prescriptive and definitivedocument in that content and processes are not specified. Rather, it is more directional,following principles of tikanga M [amacr ]ori (culturally this means all things M [amacr ]ori) withproposed learning outcomes being indications of potentially achievable knowledge,skills and attitudes. Towards meeting these outcomes, reflective questions for teachersare provided as well as examples of experiences for infants, toddlers and young chil-dren. Teachers thus work to provide opportunities to enable children’s growth andlearning by, most commonly, working with the strands. This involves: wellbeing asnurturing children’s health and well-being; belonging as linking with children’s fami-lies, with what they do and how they do it; contribution as valuing what individualchildren bring to learning; communication as using all kinds of language – spoken,written, drawn, signed; and exploration as playing, and working things out throughnew experiences. The potential for children’s growth and learning that Te Wh [amacr ]rikigenerates flows from it being a curriculum without ‘recipes’, a ‘dictionary’ of
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possibilities (May and Carr 2000). More complexly, Te Wh [amacr ]riki states that everythingsurrounding learners and their learning matters; the document statement simulta-neously avoids any specifics of the what and how of curriculum. Curriculum is thusdescribed as:
the sum total of the experiences, activities, and events, whether direct or indirect, whichoccur within an environment designed to foster children’s learning and development …The curriculum is provided by the people, places, and things in the child’s environment;the adults, the other children, the physical environment, and the resources. (Ministry ofEducation 1996, 10–11)
This includes both planned and spontaneous experiences and interactions amidst adiversity of programmes, philosophies, structures and environments.
a
Figure 2. Te Wh[amacr ] riki woven mat of principles and strands. Source: Ministry of Education(1996, 13).
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When reading this description of curriculum alongside Grumet’s approach tocurriculum as an educational experience, as ‘a process that takes on the world with-out appropriating that world, that projects the self into that world without dismem-bering that self’ (1976, 36), possibilities for children’s expressions of curriculum andhow they might perform it are generated. However, even this open approach tocurriculum opens the question of whose knowledge is privileged (Bloch 2007), aquestion that resounds in the literature, through, for example: critical theories ofcurriculum that confront issues of power and knowledge in curriculum and historicalquestions about curriculum formation (Cannella 1997; Kessler and Swadener 1992);critical decolonising research (Soto and Swadener 2002; Swadener and Mutua 2007);and diverse lived experiences of children and indigenous knowledge (Grieshaber andCannella 2001; Quintero 2007; Reedy 2003; Ritchie 2001; Ritchie and Rau 2003).But more to the fore in the conversation of this article is this: while young children’svoiced interpretations may be an increasingly acknowledged part of informed assess-ment of their learning (Carr 2001) and while researchers are working to enableyoung children to become active participants in all aspects of research processes,including designing research questions (MacNaughton, Smith, and Davis 2007),there is no cognisance of bringing young children’s curricular understandings intoadult perspectives of curriculum, both philosophically and theoretically. This worksto absent children’s expressions and understandings with/in the adult-biased curricu-lum conversation. However, thinking of curriculum as a milieu of becoming(discussed further on) opens possibilities for how we might do this differently … and… by philosophically re-reading the (structuralist) woven mat of the conventionallystructured whariki as (poststructuralist) ‘matting’, an interconnected rhizo network ofstems (M. Sellers 2005) opens to ongoing possibilities for a merging of children’scurricular understandings as perceived through their performativity and adult under-standings of these; also, of adult conceptions of curriculum. In a matting there arepossibilities for a rhizo (e)merging, converging and diverging of ideas.
Continuing with amassing the Te Wh [amacr ]riki description of curriculum and Grumet’sapproach, another linkage emerges, between curriculum and a Deleuzo-Guattarianunderstanding of becoming. Deleuze and Guattari (1987) say: ‘Becoming everybody/everything (tout le monde) is to world (faire monde), to make a world (faire unmonde)’ (280, emphasis in original) and I put this notion of becoming to work toprovoke the lack of involvement of young children’s understandings with/in concep-tions of curriculum.
Becoming-
A Deleuzo-Guattarian understanding of ‘becoming’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987,232–309) is significantly different from psycho/sociological perspectives of beingand becoming, which work to reduce the child to always being in states of incom-plete development while becoming a different person (Nelson 2007). The Deleuzo-Guattarian imaginary of ‘becoming’ offers possibilities for working a conception ofchildren as embodied be(com)ings. In this thinking of becoming, children and child-hood become subjective systems, characterised by continuous change and alterationso that they are no longer (in)complete bodies, but perceivable as alternative episte-mologies, in which dynamic processes are ongoing, being both subject and object ofperpetual change through de∼territorialisation – the tilde signals an ongoing ebbingand flowing of interrelationships, in this moment between territorialising and
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deterritorialising – where systems are in flux, recursively changing. Re(con)ceivingchildren as young human beings, not as being inferior, incomplete, immature,incompetent, which ‘child’ in wider society commonly connotes, and re(con)ceivingtheir childhoods as a significant life phase in its own right, not something to bepassed through towards a superior adult state of being, generates different epistemo-logical understandings of who/what children/childhoods are, in processes of becom-ing. Through/from/with/in this equitable (with adults) perception, what childrenhave to say and do about curriculum, for example – their curricular performativity –immediately commands not only acknowledgement but also respect. The dualism isdisrupted, requiring adults to observe and listen to children’s expressions of wordsand actions as a curricular resource.
Becoming, in this sense, works to disrupt being and identity – these presuming astable, rational individual – instead conceiving of bodies as constantly changingassemblages of forces. The notion of becoming – as in becoming-child performingcurriculum, each engaged with the other, embodied within curricular performativity –is a way to ‘get outside the dualisms … to be-between, to pass between, [to act and bewith/in] the intermezzo’ or the milieu (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 277). Workingwith a (my interpretations of) Deleuzo-Guattarian becoming opens possibilities forother linkages and intersections among concepts of children, their learning and curric-ulum. Understandings of becoming-child(ren) and becoming-curriculum are used forexploring the situated production of subjectivities of children alongside notions ofcurriculum in ways that decentre hierarchical arrangements, such as hierarchicalarrangements in which adult conceptions of curriculum assume precedence overyoung children’s understandings of curricular performativity.
Within the web-like interactions of rhizomatic thinking, of interconnecting andintersecting, becoming is not about becoming anything specific, rather, it is whathappens in-between, so that ‘becoming is the very dynamism of change, situatedbetween heterogenous terms and tending towards no particular goal or end-state’(Stagoll 2005). Becomings are always a flow of becoming-something, such as becom-ing-child, becoming-curriculum, becoming-curricular performativity; the happeningof becoming gives birth to an emerging subject or condition in moments and spacesof liminality, at intersections with/in in-betweenness, within the inter of interconnect-edness. ‘Becoming produces nothing other than itself’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987,238), it is the becoming itself that matters, ‘not the supposedly fixed terms throughwhich that which becomes passes’ (238):
A line of becoming has only a middle … A becoming is always in the middle; one canonly get to it by the middle. A becoming is neither one nor two, nor the relation of thetwo; it is the in-between, the border or line of flight. (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 293)
From within this in-betweenness, subjects – children – are a ‘flux of successivebecomings’ (Braidotti 2001, 391). The subjectivity of embodied subjects becomes ‘aplay of forces, a transformer and relay of energy, a surface of intensities’ (391), andfor singular children in their uniqueness as subjects, ‘the child [does] not become, itis becoming itself that is a child’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 277, emphasis added).From/with/in this happening of intersecting forces, all kinds of inseparable becom-ings emerge in an endlessly becoming-multiplicity. Similarly, curriculum is in flux,is always already becoming, is in an ongoing condition of becoming – amassing,overlaying, conjugating different dimensions like the making of a painting or poem
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or song in a cosmic assaying of what the artist deems essential lines and movements.‘It is in this sense that becoming-everybody/everything, making the world a becom-ing, is to world, to make a world or worlds’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 280). At therisk of becoming merely words, this then becomes processes of becoming worlds ofbecoming-child(ren) of becoming-curriculum of becoming-curricular performativity… with/in the doing of (a) constantly changing milieu(s) … with/in attempts to‘eliminate everything that exceeds the moment, but put in everything that it includes’(280).
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I use the notion of curricular performativity to disrupt expectations of a technicistperformance of achieving a specified standard, instead working with the activity of theperformance rather than the performance itself. In other words, curricular performa-tivity is not about attaining a certain level of performance of a particular standardisedcurriculum. Rather, curricular performativity involves matters of interrelationships ofcurriculum and demonstrated understandings, such matters working not withconditions or states but with/in liminal spaces or thresholds between. My workingwith children’s curricular performativity is to illuminate happenings – irruptions,eruptions – in spaces between, moving away from the given or representational towardsdoing, towards a doing that is generative of further(ing) possibilities. Such possibilitiesinclude those of becoming-children and their understandings of becoming-curriculum(e)merging as becoming-curricular performativity with/in/through milieus ofbecoming.
Curriculum as (a) milieu(s)
Embodied in a Deleuzo-Guattarian philosophical milieu are notions of ‘surroundings’,‘medium (substance)’ and ‘middle’ (Massumi 1987, xvii). Milieu(s) within milieu(s)are constituted by many singular moments – hence my styling of (a) milieu(s). In such(a) milieu(s), there are no beginnings or endings from which linear sequences derive,rather, middles of milieus work to intensify a multidimensionality of thought andthinking. As rhizome, a milieu grows and overspills through flows that simulta-neously radiate both outwards and inwards; ‘nomadic waves’ or ‘flows of deterritori-alization’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 53) go from a centre to a periphery, at the sametime the periphery falls back upon the centre and launches forth to a new centre inrelation to a new periphery (50, 53). In this way the milieu is continuously (re)consti-tuted, ebbing and flowing through a multiplicity of states of interior elements, exteriormilieus, differential relations of intermediate milieus between interior and exteriorconditions, as well as through associated milieus of energy sources. As children play,making visible their expressions of curricular performance or curricular performativ-ity, their personal interiority operates with an exteriority of their games, constantly(re)negotiating storylines of intermediate milieus in relation to other children playinggames nearby, always and in all ways (re)constituting energy sources of an associatedmilieu.
In this intensifying activity, there is an intermingling of ‘active, perceptive, andenergetic characteristics in a complex fashion’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 51) as allkinds of milieus ‘slide in relation to one another, over another’ (313). Relative tocurriculum, these rhizo milieus can be understood as sliding among, for example: chil-dren and adults in reciprocal relations; theories of play and children’s spontaneous
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games; discourses of learning and teaching; children’s social(ising) performance; chil-dren’s and adults’ negotiations of power-fullness; children mapping their playing andplaying out the maps of their learning; historic curriculum theory and contemporarydiscourses represented in/as Te Wh [amacr ]riki; and discourses of children and childhood ofvarious eras. Through ‘transcoding’ or ‘transduction’ (313), one milieu is constitutedor dissipated in another, one atop the other, one alongside the other. This (re)workingof such milieus is not, however, confined to specific boundaries; any one is able andlikely to (e)merge from/with (any) others. For example, as historic discourses of child-hood affect children’s expressions of power-fullness, and adult interpretations of theseexpressions; or, as theories of play affect understandings of children’s spontaneousgames.
The games that children play are (of) chaotically complex milieus. They – childrenand the games – can experience themselves ‘only in a milieu of exteriority’ (Deleuzeand Guattari 1987, 52) that compares advantages of associated milieus and contrasts‘differential relations’ (52) with other intermediary milieus. For example, themilieu(s) of games being played (out) within the snippets of my research data usedhere (e)merge from/with/in several games that are happening alongside each other,games that are both separated and connected, games that in differing moments areeither and/or both of the exteriority and the intermediary. The milieu(s) is/are consti-tuted of three girls playing a Goldilocks game, which segues into a strong girls’ game(involving more girls) through which they morph into butterfly strong girls. Also ofthe milieu(s) are similarly (e)merging games of a group of boys, (a) game(s) that slipand slide through Charlie’s chocolate factory and a muddy monster game with aconstantly changing Willy Wonka∼monster∼bear assumed by Kane.2
The elisions and collisions of Kane as monster and the strong girls and thede∼territorialising activity of these games show such milieus at work. Both monsterand strong girls elide and collide with the exteriority of the other as they play out theirbecomings-, each oscillating through an embodied performance of becoming-victim∼becoming-perpetrator∼becoming-strong girl∼becoming-monster. The gamesebb and flow, morphing through varying mo(ve)ments of energies. For example, thepower-fullness of the Goldilocks girls shows as they claim their space close toKane∼Willy Wonka who is overseeing the chocolate factory activity. But when Kaneturns and growls at them, their power-fullness appears to slip into a victimised modeas they seemingly abandon the physical and imaginary spaces of their game and fleethrough the chocolate factory. But … their flight does not involve the shortest meansof escape away from the chocolate factory, rather they race through the space of theboys, disrupting Kane’s Willy Wonka activity and inviting/inciting him to become thegrowly bear their Goldilocks game requires. All-at-once Kane and the Goldilocks girlsare both victim and perpetrator within their games and the others. Both monster andstrong girls elide and collide with/in the intermediary milieu of the others, the contrastof the differential relations opening momentarily to new thresholds of discernibilityfast becoming indiscernible.
From psychological and sociological perspectives, a game could be interpreted asa platform for individual children to develop skills for operating in the wider socialworld, but thinking with Deleuze illuminates it as a milieu of interiority, exteriority,intermediary spaces and associated energy sources. These intermingling characteris-tics of children’s games include the storylines narrated by the children as they play(children often talk themselves through their doing), the spaces of (mis)understand-ings among players within and about games, (mis)understandings which on one plane
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are circumscribed by the proposed but contingent storyline and on another arereflected in a liminal space with/in/through which characters (e)merge and/or fadeaway. More of the milieu of the game includes the players, their play-full activity andtheir energy forces, the physical territory of the game and the surrounding environ-ment, including natural resources and material artefacts. There is also the imaginativeterritory of the game, the teachers and children nearby, and, possibly more. All this,with/in an understanding that expressions and mo(ve)ments of the milieu areirreducible; everything is always already chaotically becoming with/in/of/through thechildren’s playing of games.
Akin to children’s play(ing) of games, Deleuze and Guattari (1987) describe thechaos and associated rhythms of milieus:
Chaos is the ‘milieu of all milieus’, and while milieus are open to chaos, it is a relation-ship with rhythm that subverts any risk of collapse: rhythm of the liminal spaces betweenmilieus; rhythm that co-ordinates heterogenous ‘space-times’; rhythm that ‘ties togethercritical moments’. (313)
In this understanding, rhythm is difference, not repetition; rhythm is the continualand continuous mo(ve)ments between, between things, intermezzo, interbeing(Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 25). What often presents as chaos is ‘glued’ withrhythm, such as rhythms of children constantly negotiating storylines and play spacesof the game, coming and going through the interiority of the game and exteriorities ofother games played nearby and other play spaces occupied by other children’splay(ing).
Thinking ‘milieu’ and the associated ‘rhythm’ opens understandings of curriculumand opens possibilities for understanding young children’s workings of curriculum.The imaginary games children play happen within milieus, are milieus and illuminatemilieus at work, all becoming curricular performativity. They weave strands ofstorylines through their games and games of others, intermingling in a milieu of‘chaos’, spaces open within/among a rhizomatic tangle of characters and roles as theyplay out storylines and explore social(ising) connections. Sometimes their play(ing) issubverted, dying in one place but irrupting elsewhere. They feed off their collectiveimaginings for/with/in their storyline and feed off imaginings of games and childrennearby. The forces of the play(ing), the games and their interrelationships affect andare affected by other play and relationships around them and the physical territory ofthe setting; also by the curricular programme and the operational culture of the setting.The milieu of performance of curriculum becomes (a) curricular performativity of themilieu becomes (another) performance of curriculum … and so on, recursively … and… becoming-children blur with becoming-curriculum and both blur within becoming-milieu(s).
Rhizo mapping
In Map 1, I picture the milieu(s) of four games – or five or six or seven, or is it onlyone? This ‘picturing’ is not to illustrate a worded description, rather it is to present thethinking of thoughts, concepts, ideas as imagery, as pictures not requiring any supportof the written word beyond the sign (W. Sellers 2008). This picturing maps theplay(ing) of games and the play(ing) of children play(ing) the games to illuminate thechaoplexy of the multiplicitous happening(s) of interrelations of the milieu(s) among
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International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 567
the milieu(s) of the storylines of the games, the play activity, the relationships amongthe children and the children’s curricular performativity.Map 1. Play(ing) mo(ve)ments of Willy Wonka ∼monster∼bear∼Goldilocks∼ strong girls∼butterfly strong girls∼explorers.The map as a whole opens a vista of an extensive milieu of space∼time, in whichboth space and time are irreducible to a linear conception. It shows mo(ve)ments,matters and manners of activity happening in the sandpit and adjoining adventureplayground area of three (interchanging) groupings of children. Willy Wonka’schocolate factory in which Kane is attempting Willy Wonka … and … a monstergame involving Kane and five other boys morph in and out of each other … and …both intermingle with a Goldilocks game, involving Libby, Lee, Alice, whichmorphs into a strong girls’ game … and … two explorers (Cassie, Eve) interminglewith Ani, who at that moment is operating the video camera … and … Ani havingrelinquished the camera and joined Cassie and Eve, these three explorers connectwith the strong girls … who segue into butterfly strong girls as their game morphswith the monster game into which Kane (now monster) has segued … and Ani hasbeen both immersed in the play(ing) and immersed in recording the play(ing) as shesaw it unfolding through the lens of the video camera … Although there is a tempo-ral flow to the activity within the milieu(s), any attempt to describe it linearly beliesthe complexity of the milieu(s) of the play(ing) at play. Much of the activity overlaps– interior elements and exterior milieu producing intermediary mo(ve)ments that arealways already happening all-at-once – as exterior milieus slide alongside and overeach other.
Recording unique moments of the milieu is not a sequential exercise. With no planto video in specific areas for specific lengths of time, when I was operating the camera
Map 1. Play(ing) mo(ve)ments of Willy Wonka∼monster∼bear∼Goldilocks∼strong girls∼butterfly strong girls∼explorers.
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as researcher through the setting, I flowed as nomad, with matters rhizo, followinggroups of children with the camera, moving through various play spaces. Working asrhizome in this way, video recordings generated data enriched with the complexityand chaos of many moments, catching glimpses of groups of children eliding andcolliding in de∼territorialising moments. Some of the children interacted with me asif the camera was not there; others disregarded me, although my presence wasobvious; others seemed oblivious. Although wanting to leave the children’s conversa-tion and their activity to tell the story, there were times when I asked a question, andthere were times when they included me in their conversation.
Although Ani shot the footage of many of the data snippets worked with here,most of the time I operated the camera, so that structuralist concerns about getting‘enough’ ‘good’ data about ‘the research question’ (viz. the children’s understandingsof curriculum) lingered. But, as various children took the camera, albeit for shortbursts of time, videoing what captured their attention, the rhizo approach was affirmedin regards to their involvement as participant∼researchers and regarding the generat-ing of data. They readily flowed with other children and games, capturing moments Imay have overlooked from my adult perspective. The lens became their way of fram-ing what interested them, often with a commentary as well. It was Ani’s footage thatcaptured many of the snippets of games that enabled the picturing in Map 2. For someof the children, the recordings identify artefacts that matter to them personally; othersvideo-ed other children’s activity. Ani, for example, focussed on the activity ofchildren with whom she often played. How the children used the video camera demon-strates their capabilities in communicating their insights about their curricular experi-ences, particularly when in charge of the technology (Dockett and Perry 2003); in this,children are demonstrably equitably expert.Map 2. Mapping (a) milieu(s) of curricular performativity.The children’s video recordings capture much activity beyond their immediatefocus, activity that enriches the understandings of the complexity of their play(ing),contributes to the amassing of the rhizome and to the rhizo mapping. Even thoughthe children’s recordings provided a dimension which I may not have captured,inevitably the data are limited to/by those who were willing to be video-ed and to/by those who were interested in taking charge of the camera. The space of arhizome is never complete.
Rather, the rhizo recording and the rhizo activity of the play(ing) rupture thespace, irrupting with/in manners and matters of movements and moments, intensify-ing the milieu. On the surface, at times the activity in the sandpit and the adventureplayground area seems like bedlam, but in moving as rhizome the complexly chaoticinterconnections among players are illuminated, as are the storylines of severalgames, each (e)merging with the others as lines of flight intersect … and … players… and … their flights traverse the multiplicity of the curricular milieu(s) … and …children’s responses to the milieu(s) they are operating with/in … and … the tracesof curriculum that surrounds them, all becoming (a) milieu(s) of curricularperformativity.
Using picturing again (Map 2), I generate more of the matters and manners of themilieu(s) to show how storylines emerge in the playing … and … games merge asplayers mingle together … and … games intensify in the boundless spaces … and …Goldilocks, the chocolate factory and the monster games de∼territorialise the others… and … emerge in other spaces through following flowing lines of flight. In theliminal spaces of ‘and … and … and …’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 25), asstorylines and roles segue and characters morph, linkages (e)merge and a non-linear
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Map 2. Mapping (a) milieu(s) of curricular performativity.
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procession of the games becomes apparent. There is an all-at-once-ness of singular butinextricably intertwined games about Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, monsters thatplay in and out of the factory, a morphing bear∼monster who (e)merges from/with aGoldilocks game, strong girls, butterfly strong girls and explorers. The players areshifting groups … sometimes six but sometimes fewer boys … and a group of threegirls segueing through Goldilocks and (inadvertently?) into the chocolate factory,becoming entangled with the Willy Wonka∼monster∼bear character whose role istacitly picked up by different boys in different moments … and there is a lone girl whomerges with another pair who are wandering, talking themselves through the territory,explorers, exploring, possibly looking for someone to save but needing to be savedthemselves … and there are (e)merging segues of strong girls and butterfly strong girlsmorphing through the other games. Mapping such (a) curricular milieu(s) of chil-dren’s playing of games illuminates ebbs and flows of the rhizo movement of severalgames and groups of children intermingling in (a) curricular milieu(s). There is oneand there are many – child/ren, game(s) and milieu(s) – nothing happening inisolation, only:
a flow of children; a flow of walking with pauses, straggling and forward rushes … Whatis important is not whether the flows are ‘One or multiple’ … there is a collective assem-blage … one inside the other … plugged into an immense outside that is a multiplicity.(Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 23)
Mapping these as rhizo mo(ve)ments avoids pathologising the children in terms of‘ab/normalising’ developmental psychological perspectives and similarly analysingtheir games, alternatively opening (to) insights about their curricular performance.Maps, as fragmented wholes, offer an expansive view of an extensive milieu ofspace∼time, in which both are irreducible to a linear conception. They picture mobilityand expression of activity, with de∼territorialising lines of flight flowing through/with/in the milieu(s) mapped. In such rhizo mapping, the a-centredness of the complexityand chaos among the children’s interactions with each other and their games is illumi-nated. For example, when Kane crashes into Ani at the bottom of the slide, a develop-mental perspective would likely assume an adult caution or reprimand is appropriate.Also, a developmental analysis may consider that Kane’s act of hiding in the tyresuggests that he understood that his behaviour was unacceptable and he is avoiding areprimand. This kind of analysis also assumes that Ani is ‘needy’ of protection andresolution from a superior adult world and that Kane ‘needs’ to be cautioned. This allassumes the adult nearby (me, with the video camera) to be in an all-powerful positionand the children to be lacking in power-full responses and interactions. However, inthe moment, it seemed that the collision was more about the uneven ebbing and flow-ing of activity among the players and the games. It is a de∼territorialising moment, inwhich the activity oscillates and over-laps and the collision becomes an opportunityfor various expressions of power-fullness. Kane takes himself off to a quiet spacemomentarily by hiding in the tyre, covering himself against unnecessary adult inter-vention … Ani runs to a quiet space of her own to recover … Libby and the stronggirls race in and discover Ani and not only comfort her but also decide that they havesaved her and others from the monster∼Kane … Kane and Ani each recover … thestrong girls’ chase of the monster draws his attention to chasing them. In terms of alinear analysis, it was impossible to determine who was chasing whom – differentreadings of the same activity could give primacy to either Kane, Ani or the strong girls
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International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 571
as instigators of the chase and perpetrators of the collision. But, most significantly, inthis moment the children all display their power-fullness in dealing with theirresponses to each other and in resolving the issue of the crash. The non-totalisingmovement resists being captured in developmental terms. Rather, the becoming-children of the becoming-milieu becomes a milieu of performance of curriculum (inTe Wh [amacr ]riki terms of this moment, those of well-being and communication, in partic-ular) becomes curricular performativity of the milieu becomes performance of curric-ulum … and so on … as I continue to ponder what the children are putting to workwith/in/through their play(ing).
In picturing children’s curricular understandings as (a) milieu(s) of becoming, themap here (Map 2) is an attempt to represent the un-representable (Lyotard 1984) innonlinear terms. It is an attempt to picture the multidimensionality of severalconstantly (re)constituting groups of children ebbing and flowing through singular andcollective imaginary games in the playground. Without such an attempt to mapmilieus of interiority and exteriority, my encounter with the complexity wouldcollapse into an unproductive, linear description. In presenting the whole vista, themap opens to considerations of/from various moments of the intermingling games,illuminating interior elements and exterior milieus, such as what came before, what ishappening now and what it is moving towards – constituting (a) milieu(s) withinmilieu(s).
Working with mapping is a way of negotiating the territory of this milieu of affec-tive thinking by considering what the children are doing in their performing (of an)embodiment of curricular thinking∼playing. In thinking through the data withDeleuze, incipiently different readings appear from/with/in the shadows, openingopportunities for reconceiving curricular understandings.
Ebbing and flowing through (a) milieu(s) of curricular performativity
As (a) milieu(s) open(s) to (a) milieu(s), as middles open to middles, the multiplicityis ever-opening, ever-intensifying, like a refrain. Lines of flight, as forces of de∼terri-torialisation, have affected the territory itself, continually changing and altering it,and/as the ‘territorial assemblage continually passes into other assemblages’ (Deleuzeand Guattari 1987, 325), generating (a) milieu(s) of space∼time coexistence. So whilethe chocolate factory, monster, Goldilocks, (butterfly) strong girls and explorer gamesgenerate singular intra-assemblages they also combine and move towards an inter-assemblage whereby they mutually and reciprocally (re)constitute. (Re)turning to themilieu(s) from the perspective of any of these (five? six? seven?) games is like arefrain that ‘collect[s] or gather[s] forces, either at the heart of the territory, or in orderto go outside it’ (327). The refrain of the intersecting lines of flight among/throughthese games finds its forcefulness inside … and … with/through these forces proceedsoutside, into (an)other territory. By working with intersecting lines of flight, I generatea singular map involving them all, a map that opens to the complex ways that childrenmake their curricular understandings work.
As the children narrate their storylines – talk about their games in/to the play(ing)of them – there are moments when various children incite others into their own perfor-mance, calling other characters into be(com)ing. For example, Lee in the Goldilocksgame calls as all three girls are running away from Kane: He’s got a really big growl!This seems to be as much a statement of what has happened as a reminder to Kane tokeep growling. In response Kane shouts: Mi-ine! What this means is indiscernible.
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Does it mean that as monster or bear he has identified the Goldilocks girls as his prey?Or, as Willy Wonka, is he defending the territory of the chocolate factory? Or, is heengaged with/in something else altogether? Whichever, he is claiming his part in themoment, this reflecting a Deleuzo-Guattarian de∼territorialising of potentialities ofinterior and exterior milieu, through which characters and their landscapes perform as(a) rhythmic refrain:
Don’t anybody touch me, I growl if anyone enters my territory … Critical distance is arelation based on matters of expression … [it is] a rhythm … caught up in a becomingthat sweeps up the distances between characters, making them rhythmic characters thatare themselves more or less distant, more or less combinable. (Deleuze and Guattari1987, 319–20)
Most markedly, in the seeming panic of the moment, in which the girls flee thesandpit, leaving their Goldilocks game with Lee, eventually, and apparently acci-dentally, dropping the bowl in the confusion as they run, the timings on the video-tape demonstrate the children’s disruption of a linearly ordered, sequentialprogressive game. The timings show that things actually happened after it wasclaimed they were already happening. For example, in the timings listed below, Leeclaims Kane is following them (42.24) before he moves off the sandpit edging eightseconds later (42.32). Also, Kane announces he has a good idea (42.28). What thisis exactly is impossible to say, but whatever it is he chases after the girls, eightseconds after the Goldilocks girls have run off (42.20) – did they anticipate beingchased?
42.18 Libby: … put Goldilocks poison porridge he-re. She places a bowl of sand onthe edge of the sandpit.
42.19 Kane, standing on the sandpit edging nearby (about 1.5 metres away), has beengazing in the direction of the chocolate factory but suddenly turns his attentionto the girls and growls at them:Grrrrraaaagggghhhh!!
42.20 There is a gasp and a squeal from one of the girls (it is indiscernible from whom)as they run off. Libby carries the porridge bowl as she leads the way, followedin single file by Lee, then Alice.
42.24 Lee, as they are running: Aaahhh! He’s following us! C’mon!42.25 The girls are now running across the back of the sandpit, several metres away
from Kane.42.28 Kane, still standing on the sandpit edging: Huh! I have an idea!42.28 At the same moment, Libby suddenly stops running and the others pull up short
behind her.42.31 Kane then jumps down off edging.42.32 Kane: Grraaaaghhh! and now runs after the girls.
The tacit understanding of processing through their games is seen in their interac-tions. The moment Kane says he has an idea, Libby stops her flight and turns to runback towards him, perhaps to make it a more credible chase? The girls had decidedthat Kane was following them and begun their flight before he had indicated, at leastexplicitly, that he was about to run off after them. It was only as they paused to lookback at him that he jumped down and stumbled after them. The interrelationshipsamong the children, as players in their games, generate complex linkages, a multiplic-ity of lines of flight, which assemble as rhizome, although only momentarily as in the
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International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 573
same instant everything de∼territorialises, perpetually changing, and always alreadyebbing and flowing within (a) milieu(s) of becoming.
Becoming-children, in one moment engaged in a Goldilocks game but in the turnof a breath through a gasp and a squeal, Libby, Lee and Alice leave it behind andeverything changes. In the same breath becoming-Kane∼Willy Wonka segues intobecoming-Kane∼bear∼monster. Becoming-curriculum of the games they are playingmorphs through several intermingling games, different in the same moments fordifferent groupings of children, groupings that also do not stay the same. The becom-ing-curricular performativity is also constantly in motion, ebbing and flowing throughstorylines and characters. In the breath of a moment becoming-Kane∼bear∼monsterhas run out of the sandpit after the Goldilocks girls but they have disappeared and sohis chase now focuses on Ani. Ani has finished her video camera recording and is nowon the slide. Kane slides down after her, colliding with her, and without hesitation heraces off and dives into a tractor tyre to hide. Then, with/in a simultaneity of happen-ing, the strong girls are both chased by Kane and also urge him to chase them; andKane chases the strong girls without catching up with them, making sure the chase cancontinue. In the next breath, it seems, the strong girls segue into butterfly strong girlschasing Kane but as soon as they catch up with him, without pause the flow changesas they race ahead of him and he follows, the chase again now his. This becomes (a)milieu(s) of becoming-child/ren involving Kane, Libby, Lee and Alice, Ani, Cassieand Eve, all generating more of the interior milieu(s) of their game/s and more of anexteriority affecting the game/s of the others.
Their play(ing) is like clouds sculpting skyscapes, each child flowing singularlyas one but they are also flowing together as one, like clouds constantly and(im)perceptibly changing. No mark between growl of Willy Wonka∼monster∼bearand gasp and squeal of Goldilocks girls, only a liminal merging of the one intoanother milieu. No positivist clarity here; the most clearly it can be stated is thatemergence of ‘matters of expression’ characterises the territory (Deleuze and Guattari1987, 315). The milieu(s) – instantaneously a multiplicity of children … and … their(e)merging Goldilocks … and … chocolate factory∼monster … and … (butterfly)strong girls … and … explorers games – is/are marked by/with territorialising expres-sions or signatures, the milieu(s) rapidly constituting ‘at the same time as expressivequalities are selected or produced’ (315). Moments in the timings above illustrateflashes of such rapidity: in particular, the rapidity with which the Goldilocks gameand chocolate factory∼monster game de∼territorialised each other – Libby putthe porridge bowl down ‘he-re’∼Kane growled∼the girls fled∼Kane went after them.The de∼territorialising happened in a flash, the activity all-at-once (re)constituting themilieu(s).
Re(con)ceiving this rhizo (ad)venture
The milieu(s) of these games makes visible the complex environments the childrengenerate and their sophistication in performing (with/in) such complexity. Eachstoryline grows through tangled systems (not a linear structure) involving the playersof the game and children playing in nearby games with supposedly different, yetintersecting storylines. However, it seems that in the play(ing), each game takes onaspects of adjacent games and simultaneously affects the storylines of the others.Willy Wonka∼monster∼bear demonstrates the intermingling, perhaps interdepen-dency even, of all (seven) games, their storylines, players and the physical space they
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de∼territorialise – the sandpit and adventure playground. So, what is it that the chil-dren are making visible about their understandings of curriculum that is outsidemodernistically imbued views of curriculum that focus on the what and the how? Inan attempt to understand, I pay attention to their doing (of) curriculum – how theyprocess through/with curriculum or how they go about ‘curriculum-ing’ or how theyperform curriculum or how they make curriculum work for their learning – theircurricular performativity.
An aspect of this that emerges from/with/in the shadows of the milieu(s) is theirsocial(ising) performance, as they play with their close friends – those participating inthe same game – and as they interact with players nearby and with adjacent games. Inthis performance they are demonstrating that each of the games is more than itself (…and … and … and …), that it becomes something of the others and that each of theplayers becomes something of the other players, players within their games and thosewithin other games. In contrast to conventional perspectives of curriculum that oper-ate in terms of specific subjects and skills, what are apparent in play(ing) of the map(Map 1) are the mo(ve)ments of children demonstrating that learning is non-linear inform and expression and that they understand how such rhizo processes work so thatany particularised curricular focus is inseparable from others. Their intrapersonaldramatic performance and oral expressions intermingle with interpersonal expressionsof social communications and with various media representations of children’s litera-ture and popular culture and with their imaginative interpretations of these: throughfilm (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Burton 2005), books (Goldilocks and thethree bears) and TV (monsters/superheroes; and possibly Dora the Explorer, Chialtaset al. 1999).
Children thrive within the complexity of their spontaneous play(ing) wherelinear processes are not necessary to the fruitful play(ing) of generative learn-ing∼living experiences. They are adept at responding to opportunities as theypresent – whenever … and … however … and … whatever … and … Indeed,linear processes obstruct generativity. When children ebb and flow freely throughtheir ideas, the work of their innovation, creativity and imagination is illuminated.For example, when the Goldilocks girls decide to leave the territory of their gameand the sandpit, we see a conventional approach to gendered performance inter-rupted through an embodied performance of victim∼strong girls that does notrequire the boys to agree to certain ways of operating. Rather, the girls’ expressionsof power-fullness open (to) (a) generative milieu(s), one that de∼territorialises thegames, their subjectivities and adult understandings of (non-)gendered activity. Asthe children ebb and flow freely, so any leadership subject positionings are similarlyfluid, collaborative and co-operative in varying ways as various boys become WillyWonka and monster. Attempting to formalise such curricular opportunities for thechildren to be ‘taught’ and ‘learn’ social(ising) performance around gender andleadership, for example, would be challenging. As children work with their ownexpressions to generate their own understandings of their own learning, in their(re)constituing of (a) curricular milieu(s), we catch glimpses of them making mean-ing of the social(ising) worlds around them, in a play(ing out) of curriculum throughtheir curricular performativity. These children working to express their understand-ings and our working to bring our understandings of their understandings of theirbecoming-children becoming curriculum becoming curricular performance are arhizo (ad)venture within (a) never ending milieu(s) of becoming-, including ours/yours/mine as becoming-adult with/in more of (a) milieu(s) of curricular performa-
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International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 575
tivity, with/in which we might welcome young children’s understandings into oursof becoming-curriculum.
Notes1. In my thesis, I problematise ‘empowerment’ by putting to work a rhizo understanding of
‘power-fullness’ (Honan and Sellers 2008). ‘Power-fullness’ responds to Deleuze’s provo-cation to ask not what power is and where it comes from, but to ask ‘How is it practiced?’(1988, 71). I thus work with children’s expressions and flows of power-fullness as theyshow in the data.
2. The following section, rhizomapping, discusses the milieu(s) of these games in more detail.Map 1 pictures the milieu(s) at work.
Notes on contributorHaving spent many years in the early childhood sector in Aotearoa New Zealand, Marg Sellersis currently a lecturer in early childhood teacher education at RMIT University, Melbourne,Australia. Her PhD research brings Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophical work alongsideyoung children’s understandings of curriculum towards and re(con)ceiving children within/through their curricular performativity. She also works with research methodologies that are(e)merging from/with/in Deleuzo-Guattarian inspired thinking.
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