Children's Power Relations After the U.S. 2016 Election : A Diffractive Analysis

Abstract

To challenge the traditional notions that children are apolitical or prepolitical beings, in light of poststructural theories of power relations and diffraction, this paper explores children's everyday politics in the classroom in relation to the politics during the U.S. 2016 Election. Through participant observation and videotaped interviews, I generate a snapshot of students' power relations in a fourth-grade classroom of an urban Title I elementary school. I elicit children's dominant identity discourses, racial marginalization, and exclusion. Drawing on the methodology of diffraction, I examine the relations of difference between children's and adults' politics in the post-2016 world. I end this paper with implications for researchers and practitioners.