‘The toys you sleep with’: Embracing otherwise literacies in early childhood wor(l)ds

Abstract

Early childhood literacy is pervaded by dominant discourses telling children both what to say, how to say it, and what is worthy of adults' attention. These discourses are affected by the need to constantly see language through solely representational accounts, and children as still progressing, developing and becoming literate while excluding the strong presence of more-than-humans and the diverse ways of being child. However, the field of posthuman studies has introduced other perspectives on literacy that are neither solely exclusive to humans nor solely representational or intentional. They trouble the dominant frames of literacy that can serve to diminish children, especially those from minority groups. Building on this framework, we propose to address how otherwise literacies are created among children and objects, such as toys. Our data come from a current research project being developed in a school in Seville (Spain). The children in our research are 4 to 5 years old and come from different socio-cultural backgrounds. In our research, our data are written as a vignette which describes different affective encounters in a classroom. These encounters are part of an action that required children to bring from home a treasure box with cherished elements inside. We diffract these data through theories of affect to consider what otherwise synergies emerge between children and toys and what we can learn about literacy through them. We claim that the toys you sleep with bring otherwise (political) ways of being and becoming through literacies embedded in more-than-wor(l)ds. They recall how literacy practices involve objects that affect (with) us in unpredictable and not easy to describe ways, but that are essential to consider more justice-oriented practices.