Queering Understandings of How Matter Comes to Matter in the Baby Room

Abstract

In this chapter, I attempt a reconfiguration of ‘diversity’ in early childhood contexts by turning attention to everyday matter. I work with data that draws into sharp focus noodles, spit, sound, movement and embodiment to argue for an opened-out view of diversity. The aim of the chapter is to examine how we might move beyond narrow formulations of ‘diversity’ in early childhood and instead attend to the possibilities that open up through thinking deeply and sensing ordinary routines and mundane situations. Inspired by Haraway (2016), I want to tell different stories about childhood diversity than those generated through curriculum frameworks, inspection regimes and pedagogical practices. Drawing attention to the policy context, and considering the discursive construction of childhood diversity provides a useful entry point and means to generate other stories. This chapter requires that attention is paid to how stories come about, how they come to hold currency and the affects that they have. This chapter therefore considers the material-semiotic-discursive and affective entanglements that unfold during festivals, events and celebrations within early years setting to try to gain some purchase on other stories. Particular attention is given to the materialised and embodied celebration of Chinese New Year as it plays out in the baby room. I argue that adopting a feminist new materialist approach demands that the world is viewed differently—as material-discursive and that our human-centric place in the world must be reassessed.