Vibrancy of Childhood Things

Abstract

In this article, we explore the “vibrancy of matter” and “things” in early childhood education. We use Bennett’s and others’ ideas on the political ecology of place in a philosophical examination of vibrant entanglements of “things,” “thing-hoods,” and childhoods. We work with Bennett’s challenge to shift from thinking solely about “think-power” to also consider “thing-power” and “thing-hood” to take the call for-of things seriously within young children’s place. Matter has agency that behaves in non-predictable ways, in assemblages, aggregates of powers, and forces and things impacting, shaping, and molding other matter and things. Children’s daily connectedness with this vibrancy of matter plays out in the territory of their early years settings as we illustrate through the well-loved stories of Pinocchio and Little Otik. We examine these dead-alive, wooden-thing-materialities as vibrant thing-hoods with agency and power in a theoretical re-reading of Foucauldian thought through new materialist philosophies. This article offers an alternative reading of conceptions of power, discourse, and matter. It provokes further openings and becomings in fresh entanglements, relationships, and responses by conceptualizing them through particular materialities of childhood stories.