Pookey,poory,power: An agentic powerformance

Abstract

Early childhood curricular documents in countries such as Australia position children’s voice and agency as central to all early childhood practices. Children’s choices expressed by their voices are regarded as children’s exhibition of their agency. Hence, early childhood educators are urged to listen and respond to children’s voices, and such ‘listened’ responses are applauded as educators’ acknowledgement of children’s agency. Moreover, recognition of children’s agency is also seen as accepting children as individuals capable of making preferences and choices, like adults. In this article, the author argues that children’s agency and voice cannot be conceptualised in their absolute, individualistic terms, and such simplistic consideration only results in diminishing children’s capacity as political enactors. In doing so, the author does not obliterate the presence of agency and voice. However, it is suggested that children’s agency and voice should be viewed as performances attached to power.

Pookey, poory and me

I have to introduce us before I begin this article. We are the key players around which I write this article. These narratives are a part of what I collected for my doctoral study. I never used these in my final write-up, as I became overwhelmed with emotions every time I engaged with them. However, after all these years, I want to (re-)engage with them, as these were the central events that repeatedly make me question the evidence of agency in both children and adults alike. Currently, with best practices in early childhood being focused on the concept of agency, I feel compelled by my desire and fear of challenging agency and open these narratives with much trepidation.

Pookey was a four-year-old girl with migrant parents from the Indian subcontinent. She was born and brought up here, in Melbourne. Pookey, her parents and I share not only the same geographical and ethnic background, but also the same linguistic background – Tamil. I had requested to seek those with a similar ethno-linguistic background as my focus children for my doctoral study, which inquired about cultural inclusion in early childhood settings. Through participatory action research, I wanted to investigate how we can collaboratively transform early childhood education and care practices in order to equitably include all cultures in early childhood settings. Thus, my methodology focused on identifying current practices that can marginalise or silence children, families and educators from expressing their cultural practices, and exploring these with educators to take collaborative, active actions to change such practices. The educators in the long-day-care centre who consented to participate were well aware of this approach and were eager to embark on this journey with me. All of the educators and children who participated gave themselves pseudonyms, and Pookey is the pseudonym she gave herself, when she gave her assent to participate in my study.

I first met Pookey’s mother before I met Pookey. I vividly remember that evening. She had just picked up Pookey from the kinder room and came to the yard to meet me. Pookey’s mum expressed how excited she was that they were going to be a part of my doctoral study. We spoke in Tamil, and nothing could wipe the grin off our faces as we shared our experiences as migrants in our adopted country. We shared the complexities of bringing up our children to become a part of many cultures, not just one or the other. We also realised something – that we shared a passion for Tamil music and, most of all, cooking. Pookey’s mum said that Pookey also loved cooking and that, as a family, they cooked together every evening. She added, Pookey’s favourite food was poory and she loved rolling them out with her dad. As we parted that evening, we began to wonder whether our love for food and cooking was also a part of our ethnic make-up.

Weeks went by and I enacted my participatory action research at the setting, spending two days a week in Pookey’s room. It was lunchtime:

Pookey, two of her peers, Aruna [a co-educator in the kinder room] and I were sitting at the lunch table. They had served chicken nuggets for lunch. Pookey picked up a piece of chicken nugget from her plate with the fork casually and took it to her mouth. It dropped on the floor.

Pookey: Ooops, I dropped it.

Aruna: Doesn’t matter Just put that one in the bin and have the rest.

Pookey picked up another piece and this time put it in her mouth. I was watching her very closely and as she chewed and swallowed it, she almost gagged. Pookey picked another piece with her fork and she dropped it on the floor again. She laughed nervously and looked at Aruna.

Aruna: What happened? Fell down again? Doesn’t matter. Just put it in the rubbish bin.

Pookey nodded, picked it up, put it on her plate and tipped everything on her plate into the bin.

Pookey: I forgot. I accidently tipped everything into the bin, Aruna.

Aruna: That’s okay. Can I get you more from the kitchen?

Pookey shook her head. I silently applauded Pookey’s diplomacy in evading lunch.

Aruna: You will be hungry later. It’s your choice, remember.

Me: You know, Pookey’s mum said poory is her favourite food.

Pookey: Nah, I only like noodles.

Me: But Pookey, your mum said that you love poory. Let me ask her this evening.

Pookey shook her head vehemently, with a determined look on her face.

All my conversations with Pookey’s family were in Tamil and I have translated our conversation. That evening, when Pookey’s mum came to pick her up, I told her the lunch-table episode and how Pookey dodged eating what they served cleverly.

Pookey’s mum: We know Pookey never eats anything at kinder. She is not a fussy eater at home. We cook together and she loves to help us. She rolls out poory, chappathi.

Me: That reminds me. Pookey said poory is not her favourite, and she only likes noodles.

Pookey’s mum: No, she loves poory. Pookey?

She looked at Pookey questioningly.

Pookey: I love poory, but not poory here, in kinder.

Me: Why not? You think we can’t eat poory at kinder? Is that what is bothering you?

Pookey nodded, with an anxious look on her face.

Me: You know what? I will make poory and bring it to kinder tomorrow. We can share this with everyone.

Pookey’s mum: Really? Is that okay? That is such a great idea. We can show everyone, including Pookey, that it is okay to have poory at kinder.

Pookey: Poory? Here? Really? Yummmmm.

Me: Of course, Pookey. Remember, Katherine (the room leader) brought some chocolate cake today to share with the group for afternoon tea. I will bring poory for morning tea and that should be okay, I am sure. Unfortunately, she has gone home now. I will ask her anyway as soon as I come in tomorrow. I can ask Cathy (the director) before I leave today.

I wondered then: Why did Pookey insist that she liked noodles and not poory, even though poory was her favourite? Why did Aruna repeatedly insist that it was Pookey’s choice to remain hungry and that she was not going to act against it in any way? Why did I decide to bring poory to share with everyone in the kinder room the very next day? Most of all, do all these choices by each one of us express our agency? I briefly explore some of the literature on children’s agency, and particularly on the relationship between individuals’ agency and social structures. While the literature on children’s agency enables me to unpack Pookey’s agentic choices, that on the relationship between individuals and social structures enables me to make meaning of the role of agency in our choices.

Pookey, poory and agency

The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia defines agency as ‘being able to make choices and decisions, to influence events and to have an impact on one’s world’ (Department of Education, 2009: 45). The Early Years Learning Framework further embeds the concept of agency to develop a strong sense of identity in children. Thus, the concept of children’s agency has been appropriated, propagated and practised within the field of most childhood practices, including those concerned with not only children’s educational care, but also others such as health, social work and judicial systems. Such concerted efforts to promote children’s agency stemmed from the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (Office of the United Nations, 1989), which rightfully elevated the participation of children in making decisions with regard to themselves and their lives. Hence, agency has greatly influenced and transformed the ways in which children are educated, cared for and included in everyday activities performed with adults.

Due to this strong focus on children’s agency in international and national documents, there is little dispute in recognising the capacity of young children to enact their agency in their day-to-day lives, especially within the field of early childhood educational care and research. In most cases, such recognition has resulted in the belief that children can make independent decisions about their sleep, food, play and participation in other activities. Mashford-Scott and Church (2011: 17) extend the notion of agency from its abstract presence to conceivable actions by defining agency as a ‘quality that enables a person to initiate intentional action in order to achieve goals that are valued’. Thus, by attributing the role of agency to propelling actions that are of value within a social context, they slightly acknowledge the relationship between children’s agency and the immediate community and its expectations. Cheeseman (2017) recognises educators’ inaction as their acknowledgement of children’s agency, and recommends educators to take a step back and watch and allow children to express their agentic choices actively without adult intervention.

Children’s agency and choice is also regarded as less clear-cut and less conceivable by adults when children, adults and structures share their social space. Van Nijnatten (2010: 34) explains that children’s consideration of those around them and their viewpoints is expressed through their dialogues with others and, through this dialogic process, they develop ‘interactive agency’ to form shared understandings and meanings. Hence, the structures and adults around children play an integral role in the development of their agency, and such development in children is indicated by the way they become attuned to the emotions and feelings of others and, thereby, modulate their own agentic actions. Thus, children have the capacity to control the behaviour of ‘self’ according to structural expectations and the expectations of others, and such nuanced control reflects the sophisticated development of children’s agency.

The above explains it all for me. Aruna repeatedly stressing that it was Pookey’s choice to remain hungry reflected Aruna being the expert educator, who amply supported the development of Pookey’s agency. By reminding Pookey of the consequences of refusing food and yet complying with Pookey’s refusal to fill her plate, Aruna was abiding by the Early Years Learning Framework’s (Department of Education, 2009) recommendations on supporting children’s capacity to make choices and decisions for themselves. Pookey’s ability to pick up the subtle nuances and expectations of our social world was expressed through her choices. Pookey had figured out the least contentious way of refusing her lunch by repeatedly dropping it on the floor. Most of all, she also had the capacity to modulate her food preferences, from poory to noodles, to suit the unspoken values and expectations of her social environment. Regarding Pookey’s choices as her development of ‘interactive agency’ (Van Nijnatten, 2010: 34) and Aruna’s unquestioning acceptance of Pookey’s choices are then practices that enable children to express their agency and choices in relation to their social context. However, James and James (2012) aptly pose the question of whether all individuals can act without being influenced by social structures, and whether agency – children’s and adults’ alike – can be conceptualised as a choice that is born out of one’s free will.

Short (2012) extends this further by contending that acknowledgment of children’s agency should result in children making decisions for social change. Therefore, rather than just encouraging children’s expressions of their wants and needs, or even enabling them to critique social discrepancies, adults are encouraged to promote children’s agency to engage in actions that bring about social justice and equity. To me, there was a discrepancy, as Pookey remained hungry and it was because she did not like what was served. Moreover, as I had already heard from her mum about Pookey’s likes and dislikes, I could not accept Pookey saying that poory was not her favourite food. Hence, I wanted to act on it in such a way that I transformed some of the responses of the educators in the name of ‘choice’ and ‘voice’ in early childhood educational care. And, most of all, I wanted Pookey to practise her culture openly with everyone around her. I wanted to enact social change – a change in the practices of ‘choices’ and ‘voices’, beginning with cultures and food within that educational care setting.

Regarding children and adults as those with the capacity to engage in actions for social change enticed me, especially because of who I am, and my intentions and the purposes of my doctoral study. After all, it was positioned around participatory action for the inclusion of cultures. So, I theorised and justified my agentic choice for action.

Me, poory, agency and social change

Situating agency within the interactions between children, adults and social structures offers possibilities with regard to not just the acknowledgement of children’s agency, but also recognising children’s ability to enact their agency with much calculated precision, like adults do. Since the Enlightenment period, it has been believed that human beings are capable of agentic thinking and action that are free from bias and judgements (White, 2002), and this has in many ways resulted in many of us believing that individuals act on their own will. Structuralism, however, insists on the role of institutions, such as schools, the Church, families and other sociopolitical establishments, in creating subjects and, thereby, covertly and overtly dictating every human being’s will to all forms of action (Althusser, 2008). Although many theorists have tried to unpack the intricacies of structure/individual relationships, I particularly engage with the works of Giddens and Archer, especially with regard to not just discussing the interaction between the individual and social structures, but also how individuals can enable structural and social change.

Giddens argued that agency is a reflexive process through which all individuals negotiate structural or social expectations (Akram, 2002; Kaspersen, 2000; Loyal, 2003). Through the theory of Structuration, Giddens (1984) clarifies the relationship between individuals’ reflexive processes and agency. Giddens espouses that practical and discursive consciousness, which represent unspoken knowledge, are essential for social reproduction and maintenance. These two forms of consciousness, although silent and reproductive of social norms, are still the agentic choices of individuals. Giddens adds unconscious motives/cognition – another agentic process which is distinguishable when the individual breaches routines, and when unintended consequences are endured by such actions. According to Giddens, this is when social norms are challenged and transformed. He argues that all agents can exert their agency to engage in transformative actions, or ‘make a difference’, and hence he believes that every human being is endowed with the ‘power’ to transform their social world by acting ‘otherwise’ (Giddens, 1984: 15). Archer (2003: 167–255), too, proposes that individuals can choose to reproduce existing social norms through evasive and strategic stances, but they can also resist existing social practices with their subversive stance. She states that we act on structural expectations through our ‘personal power’ (5) and thereby transform each other. Thus, both Giddens and Archer believe that individuals have the power to either conform to or transform structural expectations and existing practices.

I analysed my actions in response to Pookey’s agentic choices with Giddens’ and Archer’s work. I knew that I had the agentic power to submit or subvert; I chose to subvert, by intervening and introducing transformed practices that included and represented our cultural background – Pookey’s family’s and mine. I did not have to reflect too much to decide that; I just did it as I spoke with Pookey’s mum and Pookey. Pookey seemed elated when I reaffirmed that I would bring poory for all of us to share the next day. Pookey’s mother, too, seemed to desire this form of transformative practice. My methodological stance informs and affirms such change-inducing actions, and I wanted to ‘make a difference’ and act ‘otherwise’ (Archer, 2003; Giddens, 1984). Therefore, I informed Cathy, the centre’s director, very casually on my way out that I was bringing poory to share with the children and adults in the room, and she nodded in acceptance.

Pookey, poory, me and power

I exerted my power and agency to do something different. I planned my transformative action for change excitedly:

I woke up very early and made poory to share with the whole group. I entered the kinder room and Pookey ran to greet me, and whispered:

Pookey: Did you bring poory?

Pookey tugged at my arm with a look of apprehension.

Me: Yes, I did. In my bag. Remember, I must ask Katherine first.

Pookey urged me towards Katherine.

Me: Katherine, I had a chat with Pookey’s mum last evening and she said poory is Pookey’s favourite food. I made some poory at home …

And before I could finish my sentence:

Katherine: Pookey this, Pookey that. Why do you give her so much attention? You are discriminating. Making her feel as if she is different. You can’t show special support for her. If she does not eat, it is her choice.

Me: I am very sorry that you think I am biased, and I want to avoid that. That is why I have brought some for all of us to share.

Pookey backed away and found something to do at the activity table. Katherine angrily pushed the packet of poory I had placed on the table and walked into the kitchen. Jenny, another staff member, came out of the kitchen and said:

Jenny: This is not on. You are giving special attention. She never eats what we serve here. It is her choice. We cannot be giving individual attention for every child. You have upset everything and everyone here.

I was shocked to silence. I picked up the packet of poory and walked to the staffroom. Cathy caught me all upset and teary. She consoled me, picked up the packet of poory and asked me to follow her. We walked to the kinder room. The children were seated at their tables for morning tea. She sat at one of the tables and pulled up another chair for me. I sat quietly. She opened the packet:

Cathy: Prasanna has brought a gift to share with all of us. A gift that she has made all by herself. It is something delicious and I am going to have some and who wants to share this with me?

The children brought their plates and took one each. Many had more than one. Pookey kept looking at me silently with an uncomfortable smile and a shrug as she ate a few poory. Katherine and Jenny stood aside with folded hands. Aruna, too, refused to have any. Cathy left and we did not speak about poory never, ever.

Days followed and Pookey always dropped her food on the floor during lunch and when she refused a refill, she was reminded of her choice to go hungry. I noticed these choices and quietly looked the other way. I never spoke about food with Pookey or Pookey’s mum. A month or so later, Multicultural Week was celebrated by the centre. Everyone was asked to bring their ‘cultural’ food to kinder one day. Katherine specifically asked me to bring something ‘Indian’, and I brought murukku. Without any fuss, she allowed me to share murukku with the children. Katherine wrote in the Information Book for parents and read what she wrote to the children:

‘TODAY PRASANNA BROUGHT INDIAN BREAD TO SHARE WITH EVERYONE. YUMMM … WE ENJOYED HAVING IT.’

Pookey and I looked at each other. We never spoke about food.

My efforts to act ‘otherwise’ resulted in distress, as I was unforgettably reprimanded by Katherine and Jenny. They made a difference to my knowledge. In fact, Pookey seemed to have a secret knowledge of their rules. She knew that the introduction of poory into the kinder space would be deemed unacceptable, so she even denied her preference for it. Cathy, being the centre’s director, had the power to intrude and intervene and change those practices, to ‘make a difference’ and ‘act otherwise’, like Archer and Giddens propose. She shared some of that power with me, and I basked in it for a while. However, both Pookey and I knew that we should choose to succumb and submit or find shelter in trickles of the power shower when made available. We could never stand up against the social expectations and norms preordained for us. It seemed to me that Pookey had always known this, and her agentic choices were mostly acts of submission. They were rehearsed acts that seemed to be from within, but also outside of within. Youdell (2006) also highlights agency as being less absolute. I could not stop thinking that agentic choices of subversion can never be available for us. I wanted to make meaning of Pookey’s less absolute agency, and I sought out literature that spoke of the ‘power’ that modulated agency, and ways of resisting that ‘power’.

Pookey, poory, me, and power and subjective performance

I draw on Butler’s and Foucault’s contemplations on the subject, power, performance and agency. Butler and Foucault highlight that the act of subjectification creates subjects out of individuals through language. Hence, individuals exist only through the realisation of their subjectivities. Foucault (1997) particularly notes the mode of subjectivation, which is not just the act of subjectification, but also the process of becoming that subject, during which the individual recognises structural rules and commits to practising those prescribed behaviours attached to the attributes of that named subject; and Foucault highlights that this commitment by the subjectified self is related to social and political realities. Thus, subject formation is not immediate, but is a process that is layered from outside and within. Foucault takes this further by recognising the presence of power relations in the making of the subject. Hence, much of Foucault’s (1980, 2000, 2010) work particularly notes the role of power relations between political institutions and individuals, and between different individuals in the act of subject formation or the mode of subjectivation. Foucault (2000: 337) declares that power, when exerted over others, can ‘modify, use, consume, or destroy them’. Thus, power has a specific purpose and is particularly invested in controlling the behaviour of others; and yet, its very existence depends on loyal subjects who respond and act accordingly. Hence, power relations play a critical role in modulating the behaviour of others and thereby produce seemingly self-determining subjects, who then take it upon themselves to stand by those rules ascribed to them as behaviours are attached to sociopolitical realities. When human behaviour is understood in this manner, it is highly problematic then to passively accept one’s choice and voice as expressions of one’s agency, as such behaviours are also restrained and constrained within the realms of power.

Butler (1999) also acknowledges the political power of language in the making of a subject, and adds that the very subject is nothing but discursive formation. However, Butler argues that all acts are mere performatives, gestures and enactments that are bound by rules and regulations governed through subjectivation. Hence, Butler ponders whether such subject formation is an agentic act, because the process of subjectivation is so intricate and what is outside becomes seemingly a choice from within. Butler (1997a, 1997b, 1999) repeatedly suggests the improbability of recognising agency as a comprehensive, self-driven behaviour from within when a subject’s enactments invariably stem from the power that acts from outside on the subject. Therefore, Butler (1997a: 15) aptly proposes ‘conditional forms of agency’ when agency is an effect of subjection or subordination. Thus, if we consider agency as a performance which is tied to subjectivation and subjugation that forms all individuals into subjects, how can we decipher whether what is expressed by any one of us is a voice of choice that represents free and unattached will? Agency, an act that is the very opposite of subordination, is less rigid, fuzzy and comprehensive as an absolute expression of one’s choice. Hence, agency, too, becomes another act that serves a performative role moderated through power.

Now it all became clear to me that Pookey and I learnt through the process of subjectivation to perform to choose silence and to accept restricted, allocated moments of appropriated partial cultural inclusion. As Butler proposed, our seemingly free agentic choices became ‘conditional forms of agency’; We showcased or hid our desires using our learnt performances. The resistant me refused to accept this. Is this all there is to all of this? Isn’t there a way to resist these conditions? I wanted to slip out from under the structural net cast over us by power.

Pookey, poory, me and our agentic ‘powerformance’

There is a way to resist and I did not have to look very far from our space of submission. Foucault and Butler propose that sites of power are shared by resistance and, therefore, agency that resists the power that subordinates is available. Foucault (1980: 142) declares that ‘there are no power relations without resistances’. Hence, power relations can limit or liberate, restrict or release, and in one way or another it structures the actions of others (Foucault, 2000). Thus, control and resistance both happen at the same site where power is exercised. Butler (1997a) proposes that it is during the process of subjectivation that subversion or resistance appears. A subject’s agency, a performative, can be recognised through their resistance and their political choice to perform alternate discourses. Hence, it can be concluded that, for both Butler and Foucault, the subject is not real and hence all performances, including agency, attached to that subjectivity are not real. Performances that resist or acts of agency that subvert are always available in the space where subjectifying power is exerted and acts are repeated.

When subversion is possible even in a space where power dominates and regulates, then agency, or acting ‘otherwise’ (Giddens, 1984), is available for all of us, including Pookey and me, whose desires were restrained, marginalised and silenced at that time. Stickney (2012) argues that agency is possible only when absolute freedom is made available within power relations. Pookey and I could never find that freedom which surfaced our ‘truth’ through the arbitration of the power relations of Katherine, Jenny and Cathy. Yet, Butler (1997b) contends, the possibility of agency and speech from the margins should be recognised; hence, Pookey and I seek an alternate inquiry, our act of resistance and subversion, and we speak from the margins. We name this our agentic ‘powerformance’ – our calculated performance with and against power.

Our agentic ‘powerformance’ and ‘othered(wise) inquiry’

The ‘othered(wise) inquiry’ is a methodological and analytical tool that is purposefully used to engage in critical acts, including research contemplations and conversations. It aims to challenge and bring to the surface silent forms of silencing, and thereby reveal points of power and resistance during acts of subjectivation of the silenced. Therefore, in this inquiry, the speech is from and with the ‘othered’ – those who are seemingly rendered voiceless, powerless subjects. Such silenced speakers can be humans, animals and material, abstract, celestial and metaphysical elements. Yet these speakers are ‘wise’, with the knowledge of how power relations operate to essentialise subjects and their performances. The speech performance is always real and unreal, abstract and concrete, theoretical and theatrical, as materialised by the reader, the subject with physical or metaphysical speakers. The ‘othered(wise) inquiry’ is more than Bakhtin’s use and analysis of polyphony in literature, where Bakhtin regards literary characters as extensions of the author’s consciousness or self, and hence a medium for praxis (Hermans, 2001; Malcuzynski, 1984). Nor is this inquiry a form of textual analysis that identifies the third space with Bakhtin’s heteroglossia (Tate, 2007), in which the researcher sits outside or inside the speech, but still makes meaning of those texts theoretically from a distance. The speakers are indistinguishable as author and character/s, as they be and become each other and contest this space with critical knowledge and theories that are beyond the portrayal of another perspective or viewpoint. The ‘othered(wise) inquiry’ is rooted in texts that convey visceral emotions and feelings that are supressed to perform the subjectivity of the ‘othered’. Like the shared space of power and resistance, the invisible expressions are accessed and made visible during the same researching process to contest that space methodologically and theoretically.

I have used such inquiry elsewhere to unpack the discourses of ‘whiteness’ in early childhood settings (Srinivasan, 2014). In this inquiry, I used the River Ganga not just as a metaphor to present and represent my research and its components. I spoke with and as Ganga, a physical and metaphysical energy, who shifted in her forms and roles with my self, other and ‘othered’. Doing so enabled me to step outside the dominant ways of representing research conversations and their theoretical interpretations. I could not name my inquiry at that time; however, having discovered the strength in this process, I am repeatedly drawn to it to speak critically with complex happenings attached to physical, political, emotional and theoretical spaces. Hence, I speak to (re)narrate what happened. Pookey, the ‘othered’ and ‘wise’ subject with the knowledge of power and performance, speaks with me through this ‘othered(wise) inquiry’, our agentic ‘powerformance’. We use Butler’s and Foucault’s work with post-colonial (Said, 1978) and critical race theoretical concepts (Frankenberg, 1993). And I beseech Pookey:

Me: Pookey, we need to talk about our unfinished business: poory.

Pookey: Why have you rekindled this? Just forget about it and move on.

Me: Wait, I want to know more about your choices and the presence of your agency in making those choices.

Pookey: What about my choices now? You know how Butler grapples with subjectivation and agency. So, while I was being subjectivated with agency, it is like as if I don’t have one. Aruna repeatedly reiterates that it is my choice. Thus, Aruna, as an early childhood educator, promotes my agency. Therefore, I perform as if it is my agentic choice – my choice to remain hungry when I drop my lunch.

Me: Pookey, I don’t understand. Don’t you feel denied, subjugated to relinquish your right to eat?

Pookey: You saw me gag. They didn’t and won’t see it. Not seeing my gagging but listening to my choice to remain hungry are their subjective performances of promoting my agency. What you see as subjugation is my act of subversion when they impose their power. Like Foucault declares, in the very same site of power, there is resistance. They can serve me what I don’t like, but they can’t force me to eat it.

Me: Resistance? Come off it. Your mum, too, was so upset that you never ate at kinder. And she did tell me that poory is your favourite, but you insisted it was noodles in front of your peers. It seemed as if I was lying about your tastes.

Pookey: Yeah, I did say noodles. What difference is it going to make if I say I love poory? Do you think they will make it? Remember, she rejected the poory you made.

Me: I was so hurt when she pushed aside the whole packet of poory. I wanted to share a part of our culture with everyone. Katherine brought cake from her home to share. Wasn’t that a part of her culture and the culture of some children in the room? She was also discriminatory by supporting her culture.

Pookey: Yeah, Katherine brought cake to share so casually. It is their unmarked cultural food. What you bring is marked as supporting my culture, your culture, our ‘Indian’ culture. They mark it to control our practices from permeating into their everydayness, can’t you see? Only then can they accuse us of being biased and having favourites. By bringing poory you wanted to ‘normalise’ it by bringing it into a public arena. As Jenny accused you: ‘You have upset everything and everyone here’. You cannot do that. Their power to subjugate us is stronger.

Me: What is their culture?

Pookey: Katherine’s, Jenny’s culture is ‘white-Anglo’. Their cultural practices are ‘normalised’. Critical race theory proposes that such ‘normalising’ is the key to ‘whiteness’ domination and control of the ‘other’. This way, the culture of ‘whiteness’ is so easy to support, propagate and maintain. No need to ask for permission or space. Imagine if they begin to culturally name those practices, then their bias, privilege and control will become evident.

Me: I think I get it now. But it was so annoying the way you changed your preferences.

Pookey: It is all a performance for the audience. You know the realities; the effects of my voice and choice depend on my audience at that time and in that space. My voice, choice and agency change depending on whether the audience slaps or claps when I perform. You need to know your audience well to make those decisions seamlessly.

Me: Maybe, but didn’t we ‘make a difference’, like Giddens proposes? Katherine asked me to bring our food for Multicultural Week. Remember, I brought murukku.

Pookey: Here we go again. You are happy to receive a crumb from your master. Selective engagement. They chop our cultural practices into bits and throw away what they deem is unnecessary and keep some. They post-mortem our culture and tear us inside out to classify what is acceptable – when, where and how much. That Multicultural Week – its celebration is all politically supported. That way we always remain as migrants with ‘different’ practices. Your murukku was named ‘Indian bread’. Such is their power in making sure that they control what has to be named how, with such sweeping categorisations.

Me: What is wrong with that?

Pookey: You don’t get it, do you? Our acts of submission and subversion were layered. There were so many points of subversion as we were marginalised with those practices. We could have refused to bring something for a one-off event or we could even have stood up and contested ‘Indian bread’. We kept quiet. We knew the rules that regulated our speech and action.

Me: The continued sadness is that you continued to go hungry. I watched silently. I let you go hungry day after day. That still hurts.

Pookey: We are used to it. Or we succumb and eat what is served. We know our choice and its connection to power. So we ‘powerform’ our agency, and they tick ‘We support children’s agency’. Giddens and Archer were partially right after all, and Butler and Foucault too. Look at us. In the very same space where we wrote of our inability to act ‘otherwise’, we have acted ‘othered(wise)’. This is a symbol of our agency and resistance. We still have the power; we changed our performance and this is our agentic ‘powerformance’.