‘When the whole sky falls down’: Minor gestures towards play out of place/time in toddler groups

Abstract

This article takes a discrepancy between experienced pedagogical and childish life orientations as a point of entry and speculates about loosening play from its organised position as form and instead looking at play as processes. Accordingly, the speculative focus of the article is on how different orientations might come into existence within an ordinary activity in a toddler group. To manage the discussion, the article puts fragments from Whitehead’s philosophy of process and Manning’s focus on the minor gesture to work within the actual event. Without claiming to propose fixed answers or solutions, the author discusses manoeuvres within the im/possible at the end of the article.

Introduction and context

If, for a moment, we think of children and teachers as two internally homogenous groups (which they, of course, are not), they seem to activate opposite orientations when participating in activities together. ‘[C]hildren are embodied within their life-living experiences of their negotiating (their) childhood(s) in ways that adults cannot be’ (Sellers, 2010: 557). While politicians and teachers emphasise play as an activity justified by its benefits for learning, children seem to slip away into a playful creative performativity. From my previous career as a kindergarten teacher, I recall toddlers who, without hesitation, engaged in playfulness and creativity in the midst of serious investigations or practical routine tasks – just like that! Regardless of pedagogues’ presumably better knowledge, toddlers seemed to reset the agenda by gliding in between pedagogical plans and learning arrangements (Deleuze and Parnet, 2006: 24). Something disturbing yet fascinating at the centre of this discrepancy between what I see as pedagogical and childish fulcrums catches my curiosity and invites speculation. Therefore, I search beyond play as form limited by a specific temporality and spatiality and forefront play as process. Despite the fact that play as form also includes processes, these are not my interest. Furthermore, I am not chasing the reasons for young children engaging in playful performances. Rather, I explore how childish life orientations might change the directions of toddler pedagogy. How is it possible to manoeuvre in the im/possible discrepancy between childish and pedagogical orientations?

The text emerges from a Norwegian kindergarten context traditionally characterised by a holistic view of young children and childhood. In Norway, pedagogies and educational authorities have traditionally seen care, play and learning as interwoven elements, welcoming play in its own right (Kunnskapsdepartementet, 2017). Such open approaches allow play to be child-driven, carrying unpredictable and uncontrollable and as such sometimes feels disturbing. However, as throughout the rest of the western hemisphere, Norwegian educational policies are caught up in teleological, individual and cognitive logics (Nilsson et al., 2017) that direct attention to linearity, systematics and clarity (Sandvik, 2016). Recently, the World Bank (2018: 69; my emphasis) published a report stating that ‘preschool programs should concentrate on building foundational skills through developmentally appropriate program structures that emphasize play and interaction’, due to the efficiency of children’s brains when it comes to incorporating new information through exploration, play and interactions with caring adults or peers. The focus on efficiency, information and structure pulls play in teleological and cognitive directions. In turn, it seems that the vitality of play is fading, as its legitimacy depends on its virtue as a humble servant of learning (Sandvik, 2016). Inspired by Deleuze and Guattari (1987: 503), I try to give the concept of play ‘the forces it needs to return to life’.

The article’s structure: searching to get a grip on messy thinking-feelings

Although this text promotes messy-fication rather than clarification, I will point to its structure in order for the reader to follow my speculative movements. I begin with a brief outline of the article’s ontological premises, followed by a presentation of my two lines of inquiry. Next, I present a retrospective text based on an event from my PhD study. ¹ To counteract the tendency of such a retrospective text to deactivate the forces of the previous event (Manning, 2016: 47), I introduce a song text by the Norwegian songwriter Anne-Grete Preus (1998). The song does not refer to anything outside itself, as art (including music) is radically non-referential (Deleuze and Guattari, 1994). However, bits and pieces from the song text work as subheadings and an invitation to join in. The retrospective text, the philosophical concepts and the song text merge in speculations on play out of place/time. Finally, I manoeuvre into the field of toddler pedagogy and search for pedagogical potentialities to remind myself of the im/possibilities that are always activated.

The ontological premise: process as the fundamental constituent

I position myself in the landscape of process philosophy as I focus on play as process. Such positioning includes fragments of both Whitehead’s (1920, 1926, 1929) and Manning’s (2016) works. Whitehead regards processes as the most important metaphysical constituent in life. Thus, every real-life object is a constructed series of processes (Irvine, 2015). The world, therefore, is made up of ‘happenings rather than things, verbs rather than nouns, processes rather than substances’ (Shaviro, n.d.: 1). Within this landscape, it is possible to ask how the joint forces of potentialities offered by the more than human, the senses, desires and imaginations experienced by humans, bring play to life. In addition, process philosophy pulls the human subject slightly sideways in order to benefit processual issues within an everyday activity: ‘the force of process philosophy lies in its ability to create a field for experience that does not begin and end with the human subject’ (Manning, 2015: 116). However, this does not imply a neglect of human agency, as educational practices (and, I would add, research) need to be approached as if humans and the more than human are equally important in a flattened co-constitutive relationship (Lenz Taguchi, 2017: 701). As experience is multifaceted and carries feelings, sensations and intensities into the fields where events occur (Manning, 2016), humans cannot, however, choose which feelings, energies or flows work during certain events. Instead, processes tend to carry us away, as we do not master a superior capacity to control every aspect of them. We are of the world (Barad, 2007). I will return to the question of ethics towards the end of the article, suggesting an ethics towards the minor to strengthen the action forces within events as they unfold.

Consequently, the focus of this article is on orientations towards various flows of intensities that come into being, develop and fade. Thus, I am interested in the orientations that allow play out of place/time performances to evolve. From this ontological starting point, I concentrate on two ideas of process philosophy: ‘everything is everywhere at all times’ (Whitehead, 1926) and ‘the minor and major gesture’ (Manning, 2016). I explore how these two philosophical premises might contribute to a different approach to play out of place/time.

Here, I need to comment on how the chosen philosophical fragments leave me with one intricate ‘troublemaker’. It may seem illogical to rely on Whitehead’s (1920) resistance to categorical divisions and simultaneously argue within a constructed divide between play in place/time and play out of place/time. Despite this problem, I have chosen to retain the division because it might help address the problems of the previously mentioned increased emphasis on play as the humble servant of learning.

The main questions: two lines of enquiry

Based on already presented worries related to a worldwide formalisation of play, I question how childish life orientations might change the directions of toddler pedagogy. How is it possible to manoeuvre pedagogically in the im/possible discrepancy between childish and pedagogical orientations? To respond to these questions, I follow two lines of enquiry. I discuss them consecutively to comment on them in more depth, although they converge.

The first line of enquiry concerns spatial and temporal extensions of the moments when something/someone comes into being – what Whitehead (1929) would call an actual occasion. ² Related to this, I put Whitehead’s (1926: 114) idea that ‘In a certain sense, everything is everywhere at all times’ to work with a retrospective text from making shepherd’s pie in a toddler group. I try to put the song text ‘When the whole sky falls down’ (Preus, 1998; my translation) to work with the retrospective text in an attempt to new-activate the energies within the making shepherd’s pie. By adding such an external element, I trust that conditions for a new activation might be created, in line with the Deleuzian assumption that every genuine thought is dependent on an external jolt (Deleuze, 1995: 8–9). Thus, the song text does not serve as an illustration of the event. Rather, it offers a moment of what Manning (2016: 52) calls speculative propositions: ‘forces within the conceptual web of experience in the crafting that lurk on the edges of the thinkable’. The second line of enquiry explores what happens when ‘tendencies already in germ’ (Manning, 2016) towards play out of place/time come into being. Here, I put Manning’s (2016) concept of major and minor gestures to work with the retrospective text.

My issue is complicated, messy and far-reaching, and I have no intention of resolving the dilemmas to which it gives rise or of arriving at pedagogical guidelines. Nor do I want to argue for the benefits of play out of place/time by building on sentimental clichés regarding the playful-oriented forces in the events where toddlers operate. Both toddlers and play in general have the appeal of an anaesthetic promise of happiness, to borrow Ahmed’s (2010) book title; therefore, sentimentalising seems like an easy option. Such a temptation poses the danger of shadowing the potential destructive and/or oppressive aspects of play that also colour playful orientations and experimental derailments, highlighted by, for instance, Osgood et al. (2017). As indicated earlier, I wonder if it is possible to move our ideas of play into a more open landscape, considering play as an orientation rather than a specific, easily recognisable and controllable activity. By doing so, play out of place/time might appear as powerful, forceful parts of the everyday routines and activities in kindergartens.

Vignette 1. Play out of place/time while making shepherd’s pie

In the following retrospectively reconstructed event, one pedagogue asked two-and-a-half-year-olds Phillip and Emil if they wanted to participate in making a shepherd’s pie. The boys accepted the invitation without hesitation. As I wrote this text before Whitehead’s (1920, 1926, 1929) philosophy of process aroused my interest, the text takes the human subjects as an unproblematised starting point, showing how, at that time, I was fully immersed in humanist logics. To counteract the human focus, I now emphasise the energies/moods in the processes of the event in italics, letting them become more visible:

Both Phillip and Emil ran into the kitchen as their bodies and voices radiated with eagerness and enthusiasm, anticipating the upcoming event, making me think that this in all likelihood was not an everyday routine. Eventually, the boys each got a package of meat dough and were supposed to help fry it. Gradually, they also got the other necessary ingredients (flour, milk, butter, spices, eggs, etc.). The boys grasped every ingredient as it was presented to them, seemingly full of energy and anticipating the unrevealed potentialities of the newly introduced elements. As the pedagogues verbally explained the contents of the different bags, the boys seemed to be oriented elsewhere. Phillip and Emil joyously ripped up bags with mashed-potato powder in ways that made the powder explode through the air. Silently, it landed on the countertop. The time seemed to stand still for a second or two as parts of the room expressed amazement and expectation. Looking on the slow-motion, soundless dance of the powder that almost rested in the air for some seconds, as if to let the boys really take in its movements, Emil smiled and shouted, ‘Oh, it snows!’ and Phillip answered, ‘Look at the snow!’ In the span of a moment, feelings of peace, activated by previously experienced sentimental winter movies, invaded my body/mind and merged with the sentiments of the field. Phillip exaggerated the forces of the experience and increased the intensity by pouring out more powder. The pedagogues’ attention (understandably) was on all the mess created when the light powder covered the countertop, so organising procedures seemed to take over and, in a certain way, they seemed to transform the energies in the room once more. This time, it went back to a more ordinary, pedagogical-controlled atmosphere, stripped of enchantment and magic.

Taking process as the point of entry implies paying attention to the evolvement, increase and fading of a-personal energies/intensities within the shepherd’s-pie event. Doing so, I orient towards a zone of proximity, of indistinguishability or inseparability (Knausgård, 2017: 80). This seems easier in retrospect than in real time, as thinking backwards offers a kind of boundless time, whereas real-time reflections in some sense run after what happens. The tricky (or magical?) thing is that, as long as we participate in the event, we do not know its potentials, as we cannot know the future (Grosz, 2008). Thus, no one could foresee the transformation of the ordinary potato powder into potato snowflakes or the transformability that activated in the kindergarten kitchen to offer the wonders of a winter landscape.

As I will elaborate later, focusing on minor gestures pulls the recognisable and verbal domain of pedagogy aside. The minor-gesture focus implies an acknowledgement of what can only be sensed within each event, disregarding any educational intentions. Hence, an indulgence in the event itself, without identification and verbalisation of the exact senses, is the only possibility.

‘Everything is everywhere at all times’: temporal and spatial extensions

It is possible to explore all objects, places and moments as fields with both temporal and spatial extensions. Following Whitehead’s (1920) arguments against the habitual affinity for dividing up life (e.g. the past–present–future division of time) leads me to suggest that the playful processes within the shepherd’s-pie event are inseparable from other events in kindergarten life. This includes both play in place/time (i.e. activities regarded as play) and daily routines. Previously experienced elements are active entities, ‘chunks in the life of nature’ (Whitehead, 1920: 185). Still leaning on Whitehead (1926: 114), play and playfulness in some sense are everywhere at all times, activating the irrelevance of separating, for example, play from work, learning from living and joy from sorrow.

Simultaneously, the making of shepherd’s pie extends spatially beyond the actual kitchen walls, independent of our ability to identify each element that might/might not intrude as ‘every location involves an aspect of itself in every other location’ (Whitehead, 1926: 114). Thus, writing about the shepherd’s-pie event as a delimited, isolated episode seems like depriving it of its complexness. Additionally, consciousness and language are incapable of capturing every possible entangled aspect inside/outside the kitchen in its full potential. Thus, only fragments of what might have happened in that kindergarten kitchen activate in my writing.

Whitehead’s point of spatial and temporal extensions is also included in my methodological approach, though in a slightly different manner. In the process of writing, the retrospective text rhizomatically entangles with external elements from all over place/time. As I mentioned previously, I multiply the speculative potentialities by inviting the song ‘When the whole sky falls down’ by Preus (1998) to the table in order to counteract a depletion of ‘the event-time of its middling, deactivating the relational movement that was precisely event-times force. Backgridded, experience is reconceived in its poorest state: out of movement’ (Manning, 2016: 47). Inspired by Deleuze (Hurley, 1988: 3), I search for any flashes of sensing/speculating (sense-ulations) that might evolve as I put the song into the retrospective text. To hint at my focus, I have italicised some lines of the lyrics.

Vignette 2. ‘When the whole sky falls down’

…

I lean my head back

and get an ice kiss on my mouth.

It snows.

Speechless sisters of stars are falling

from invisible mouths

and dizzy from the attack from swirling, soundless seconds.

Today the earth is captured by a heavenly force,

and without weapons the city is brought to its knees.

Everything moves more slowly here on earth

when the whole sky falls down.

Thanks for the needless snow,

for the trouble and worries it brings.

The earth is captured by a heavenly force,

and without bombs and shells

the whole city is brought to its knees.

Everything moves more slowly here on earth

when the whole sky falls down.

Everything moves more slowly here on earth

when the whole sky falls down. (Preus, 1998)

Within the landscape of process philosophy, my premise is that the song passes through (Massumi, 2002) the retrospective text acts as an amplifier, carrying germs of something indescribable. I am not claiming that the song and the event activate identical energies. Nor do I allege that the song lyrics illustrate the event, making a perfect fit. My point is, rather, that the song’s lyrics make it possible for me to speculate on how the energies in the shepherd’s-pie event might have worked towards play out of place/time. I cut the song text into bits and pieces, and mix the lines in order to activate my speculations. Thereby, the lyrics no longer work as a linear narrative, echoing that no movement is a linear and unambiguous form but rather circulates, budding in all directions, growing, escalating and fading – and, and, and …

To make it easier for the reader to follow my arguments, I will point out two movements within the event that might seem to activate energy: the eruption and the showering of the potato flakes. I do this in a twofold manner. First, I focus on the two movements, mainly leaning on the idea of temporal and spatial extensions, following Whitehead’s (1926: 114) thinking. Afterwards, still focusing on the eruption and showering movements, I let Manning’s (2016) concept of minor/major gestures actualise.

‘Everything is everywhere at all times’: the earth/kitchen is captured by erupting forces

In the fraction of a second that carried the nascent feelings of sensation within the potato powder eruption, the powder was already imbued with processual forces, following Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987: 95) concept. Thus, despite the small amount of measurable time in question, it felt like time stood still within the explosion of potato powder. This implies a kind of continuous variability (Manning, 2016: 65), indicating that standing still does not mean stagnation or lack of flutter, but rather that the feeling of time standing still might encapsulate a jumble of nomadic sentiments beyond systematics. When the phrase ‘the earth is captured by a heavenly force’ makes itself audible when reading the retrospective text, the time-stopping capacities within the movements of the snow/powder might become sensible. The snowflakes and the potato flakes blend into captivating imaginaries on the interwoven receptivity/vulnerability in the earth/kitchen:

Snow-potato flakes

erupting – exploding – capturing

sudden untameable forces

demanding

begging

praying

for time

to stop … ponder … breathe.

Somehow, the kitchen becomes the earth, and vice versa. In both cases, the two fields all of a sudden were abducted by surprising wonders. Maybe such an abduction activated an immediate urge to stop, stand still and pause in some breathtaking seconds.

‘Everything is everywhere at all times’: ‘speechless sisters of stars’/potato flakes are falling

I now move to the falling potato snowflakes, while noticing how both the eruption and the showering movement seemed to transform the kitchen into speechless landscapes for a second or two. Maybe the eruption was still alive in the falling of the potato flakes, bearing in mind the Whiteheadian indivisible landscape. I do not know. Either way, Preus’s (1998) lyrical description of the snow as ‘speechless sisters of stars’ colours the slow, soundless dance of the potato snowflakes with poetry as I revisit the retrospective text memorising the event. The lyrics new-activate silent attraction to how the snow almost rested in the air for endless seconds, whispering of strong forces of silence. The song’s poetic approach to snowflakes pushes the imaginaries into almost divine landscapes, as if the energies activate the need for a deep breath and tranquillity. While writing this section, years of experience of silent falling snow and the muffling effect of snow on the ground burst open:

icy window glasses

hip-hop-dancing snow outside:

speechless sisters of stars

nose close to the frozen window

breath making dew:

sisters of fog

blurring the sight

childhood-tranquillity

transformations in germ

Simultaneously, the lyrics ‘dizzy from the attack from swirling, soundless seconds’ (Preus, 1998) activate flashes of sensing/speculating that hint at instability and lack of control – a relaxed lack of mastery, though. The eruption and showering movements actualise related entanglements, as the temporal and spatial divisions between the song and the kindergarten kitchen no longer seemed to work. To me, Whitehead’s (1926: 114) phrase ‘everything is everywhere at all times’ had come to life.

Major/minor gestures: captures (heavenly) forces

So far, Whitehead’s (1920, 1926, 1929) ideas have guided my arguments. In the following, the focus is on Manning’s (2016) concepts of minor and major gestures in order to explore the previously mentioned discrepancy between the pedagogical and childish fulcrums related to the erupting and falling flakes. Focusing on the shepherd’s pie as the event illustrates how this text folds into what Manning (2016: 1) calls ‘[t]he unwavering belief in the major as the site where events occur, where events make a difference’.

The mere planning of the event demands a major gesture (an orientation towards what habitually counts as a site that makes a difference). The difference here would be the imagined learning outcomes related to measurements (weight, volume, temperature) and social and intellectual learning. However, even as we tend to trust in major gestures, as in making the shepherd’s pie, minor gestures are activating around us all the time, working as the activator, the carrier, ‘the agencement that draws the event into itself’ (Manning, 2016: 7). Minor gestures, then, might be the childish orientations within the making of the shepherd’s pie that activate play out of place/time from within the major – a tendency already in germ that alters what that tendency can do (x). When orientations towards play out of place/time course through the major, they depart from the major’s structural integrity and problematise its predetermined normative standards (1).

While inside the kitchen, orientations towards something, somewhat unknown, seemed to lie dozing throughout the pedagogues’ explanations of the ingredients and procedures. The fullness of the feelings seemed not yet actualised and, at the same time, they might serve as a conduit for new occasions of experience, following Manning’s (2016) logic. However, in the eruption of the potato snowflakes, the explosion itself seemed to actualise sentiments. It seemed to carry feelings of joyous expectations, as the kitchen activity became uncontrollable based on surprising (heavenly?) forces:

The earth

is captured

by a heavenly force

– the kitchen was captivated

by uncontrollable energies,

degrees of intensities

– colours/smells/tastes of energies.

Nothing compares to this …

The abrupt eruption of potato flakes offered energies that were received with greed, thanks to an orientation towards what might happen within the major gesture and the attentiveness to tendencies already in germ. Maybe such tendencies within the potato-snowflake landscape were energies of anticipation – and then again, maybe not. In any case, the minor gesture’s activation of the potato snowflakes’ eruption was evolving within the major gesture that promoted the making of shepherd’s pie. In some sense, the minor activated itself beyond pedagogical control. Simultaneously, the minor seemed dependent on a tendency already in germ attended to by someone/something within the event.

Major/minor gestures: ‘sisters of stars’

The childish minor gestures towards something already twinkling within the event seemed overwhelming. The lyrics’ phrase ‘sisters of stars’ (Preus, 1998) might help us to discover some eventual magical aspects enveloped in the minor, hinting at potential wonders of not knowing, not foreseeing, not controlling. Then, in an inviting movement, the wonder came into being and Emil smiled and shouted, ‘Oh, it snows!’ Again, the tendency already in germ, the orientation (the minor) towards new becomings, became highly sensible. The showering potato snowflakes were not part of the major gestures’ ideas about making shepherd’s pie, unacquainted with their capacity to turn the kindergarten kitchen into an adventurous winter landscape. Phillip’s eagerly posed words ‘Look at the snow!’ seemed to strengthen energies of winter sentiments. The orientations towards such becomings worked strongly from within the major gesture of cooking, as Phillip poured out more potato powder. Suddenly, almost out of nowhere, a counteracting pedagogical tendency already in germ became applicable, putting orientations towards the major gestures into play. The previously energetically experienced intensities and magic faded, and the imaginative snowfall came to an abrupt, definite end. The landscape changed, not back to the former kitchen – the learning domain – but rather, I sensed, to an area of post/after-snowing:

my ear close to the empty kitchen walls

whispering from within

hidden imaginaries – memories

secret remembrances

snowflakes dancing

sisters of stars

inside-outside

past – present – future

everything is everywhere at all times: the minor within the major

intensities emerge, increase, fade away … Puff!

Manoeuvres within the im/possible

In the logics of the major gestures, neither the eruption nor the showering of potato snowflakes makes sense. The one thing that seems to make sense in such logics is the predefined procedure of making shepherd’s pie, perhaps with small adjustments to accommodate the children’s questions and assumed shortcomings. Therefore, whenever children latch onto minor gestures – for example, by accepting an invitation from explosive and dancing potato flakes – a dissonance between the childish and pedagogical fulcrums actualises. The pedagogical question, then, is how to manoeuvre pedagogically within this field of (im)possible discrepancy.

Despite my introductory remark about children and pedagogues as heterogenic groups in real life, I will now pursue the provisional imaginary of children and adults as two different and internally homogenous groups, briefly mentioning Gopnik’s (2012) text on neurodiversity and Olsson’s (2012, 2013) research on young children’s preferences and fascinations. Their work might help the discussion of how to make sense of and manoeuvre pedagogically within the cumbersome inconsistency between the fulcrums of children and pedagogues.

Gopnik (2012) makes a clear distinction between the attention of very young children and that of adults. She points to the large number of neurotransmitters in a baby’s brain that facilitate plasticity, making it possible for young children’s attention to expand. This means that young children are not primarily going after a definite focus. According to Gopnik, they do not exclude elements at once that might turn out to be interesting beyond the thinkable, as their brains work more like lanterns, searching potentialities. This resonates with orientations towards tendencies already in germ: the minor gesture. According to Gopnik, an adult’s attention works more like a spotlight that focuses on a few elements at a time, minimising the assumed distractions and often focusing on the end point. In pedagogical contexts, this would be a learning goal and a result. The question, then, is whether the spotlight attention goes after the major gesture to a greater degree, ignoring or resisting the minor gesture, bearing in mind the previously mentioned assumptions of the major as the site where events occur and make a difference (Manning, 2016: 1). This is perhaps especially so since professional kindergarten teachers are committed to governmental educational discourses privileging learning outcomes, regulations and control.

Based on the Magical Language project, Olsson (2012, 2013) argues that young children prefer being in process rather than achieving a specific result. They also tend to welcome change of forms and opinions. Olsson (2013: 231) notes: ‘What they really do is to go on a hunt for that which glimmers’. Consequently, surprising potato snowflakes, changes in the kitchen landscape and alterations in focus were more tempting to Phillip and Emil than a tasty shepherd’s pie and the assumed increased intellectual and social learning outcomes (the results). Such preference and fascination for processual orientations and welcoming of change might serve as orientations towards whatever might happen. The erupting potato snowflakes came as a surprise, probably carrying energy-boosting effects when they passed through the boys’ preference for the interchangeable. As the potato snowflakes filled the air, the intensified excitement emerging within the transformability of the potato flakes became quite noticeable, as play out of time/place was actualised. Both Gopnik’s (2012) and Olsson’s (2012, 2013) work resonates with my foregoing reasoning on different life orientation, albeit from dissimilar theoretical approaches and with slightly different conclusions.

My last concern, therefore, is how to establish a sense of ethical manoeuvrability in the midst of the previously mentioned dissonance between the pedagogical and childish fulcrums, while leaning on the presented fragments of process philosophy, supplemented with parts from neurodiversity and children’s reported fascinations and preferences. Fully aware of the strict lines of structural discourses within the educational field, I ask: What if we loosen the pedagogical straitjacket by focusing less on the major (formalising, systematising and control) and, to a greater extent, approach pedagogy like creations/creative orientations towards minor gestures? However, the pedagogical point of manoeuvres within the im/possible is not about how to ‘make’ a minor gesture, or how to resist a grand gesture, but how to develop approaches that resist immediate capture by the major gesture (Manning, 2016: 66).

Following this reminder, tentative and experimental orientations in between, but not fully embedded in either major or minor gestures, might be an option. This would imply an ethics towards the minor, as Deleuzian ethics ‘involves a creative commitment to maximising connections, and of maximising the powers that will expand the possibilities of life’ (Marks, 2005: 85). In line with this, orientations towards play out of play would clearly increase life’s potentialities.

Maybe paying attention to pedagogies of hesitation (Larsen, 2014; Nyhus, 2013) could facilitate such a movement – hesitation in the sense of a new orientation towards whatever might happen before intervening and restoring order. This demands pedagogical courage to ‘go with the flow’ of things and see what happens (Sandvik, 2016), without abdicating as professionals. At least as a start, such in-between orientations might carry potentialities for careful resistance when confronted with the tendencies of closure embedded in major gestures. Another manoeuvre could be to learn from the childish fulcrum and focus on childish orientations (Olsson, 2009), instead of a blind subjection to the major gesture as the site where events occur and make a difference (Manning, 2016: 1). Bear in mind that this does not imply a restoration of the ‘subject of will’ (Davies, 2010: 54), which relies on teachers’ free will, but rather is more about subjects coming into existence (Ulla, 2017), subjects in a coexisting flux. This involves a willingness to try, try and try again to make felt the unsayable in what is said and ‘bring into resonance otherwise backgrounded movements’ (Manning, 2016: 7).

Pulling pedagogy towards creative domains demands that creativity is regarded as process, not as form. Doing so, we might loosen creativity from both pedagogically planned and separated activities (often associated with play in place/time or artistic activities) and the tyranny of new public management’s predictability, teleology and control. Alternatively, we could celebrate the creative potentialities in pedagogy itself, learning from children (Johannesen, 2013) and their orientations towards play out of play/time.

Closing remarks

In this article, I have taken process philosophy as a premise and explored play as process, not as form, by focusing on play out of place/time. In addition, I have suggested that childish life orientations towards what might become can serve as intensifiers of the excitement in life during and beyond the actual event, regardless of eventual learning advantages. Thus, unforeseen paths of play, learning or living might open up. Struggling with such approaches brings thought to its limits while trying to resist the major gestures’ capture of the minor gestures, and undermines the certainty of what such major gestures know (Manning, 2016: 10). At the end of the day, maybe minor gestures are the sites where events make a difference to both children and pedagogues.