Fences, Bogs, and Bodies: Diffracting Belonging Alongside Black Futurity in Early Childhood Education and Care
Abstract
Set in the geopolitical space of Ireland, this article pursues a (re) storying of belonging within Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC). Data led the knowledge production process, as it emerged from two unrelated stories of children's world-making to include a fence and the Bog. As guided by a feminist relational paradigm, I diffract these two stories to make agential cuts that bring new materialism and Black futurity into conversation. Story 1 emerged from children’s intra-action with a fence and dominant discourses of belonging. Story 2 is generated as a response to a photograph of a Black child’s relational moment with the Bog (peatland). In the intra-action of (re)storying belonging, the following agential cuts emerge as provocations: How can Black futurity be included in thinking with belonging as a relational practice of world-making? Within a relational paradigm, what types of borders can be undone to connect humans and more-than-humans?
Keywords: Belonging, Black Futurity, diffraction
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