Early Childhood Activism, Minor Politics and Resuscitating Vision: A Tentative Foray into the Use of ‘Intersections' to Influence Early Childhood Policy

Abstract

Many postmodern and post-structural analyses of government policies affecting early childhood education stress the hegemonic nature of neo-liberalism and subsequently primarily focus upon identifying the manifestation of neo-liberal values in such interventions. An unintended and stultifying consequence of such analyses is, at times, to close off the possibilities of envisioning a positive engagement with, and role for, government policy. In addition, the primacy offered to localised knowledges can engender the development of policy responses which are not cognisant of more broadly based social impacts. In response, the authors proffer the use of intersections as key points for the development of analyses and action. This necessitates an active awareness of the ways in which local knowledges and experiences cross, or overlay, information generated from other sites, including disciplinary knowledges and analyses that may be classified as modernist. By utilising points of convergence, as well as understanding points of divergence, intersections can be used to open up spaces for political action that recognise and generate localised responses, whilst at the same time engendering policy that enables more broadly based social justice.