LEGO intermezzo: Exploring territories of playfulness in kindergarten

Abstract

This article feeds on new materialisms, especially the work of Barad, while re-turning and exploring child/LEGO/pedagogue/(re)searcher intra-actions in kindergarten and drawing attention to both human and non-human organisms as agentic forces that produce diffractions, affects and effects when they clash. The article places a special focus on one particular LEGO event that triggered multiple diffractions within and amongst human bodies and matter in kindergarten. The rhizomatic LEGO event here serves as data – data that might infect and allure human body-minds over and over again. While troubling prerational chaotic LEGO play and the valuing or devaluing of various forms of play in a pedagogical institution like kindergarten, the article aims to rethink sedimented practices in kindergarten. The discussion is fuelled by Nietzsche’s Dionysian philosophy, while arguing for the return of pure excitement, joy and silliness to fulfil children’s ‘need to play’. The article goes on to propose that while re-turning the LEGO event repeatedly, new ideas, theories and practices might emerge, releasing what Deleuze and Guattari refer to as ‘nomadic thinking’, characterized by movement, change and lines of flight, and suggesting human organisms becoming (with) LEGO – and (re)searchers becoming (with) data. The article emphasizes an ethico-onto-epistemological approach to (re)search while aiming to flatten the human/non-human hierarchy.