Uncommon worlds: toward an ecological aesthetics of childhood in the Anthropocene

In addressing the need for a more robust engagement with aesthetics in posthumanist studies of childhood and nature, this chapter makes some tentative steps towards an ecological aesthetics of childhood that is responsive to Whitehead’s speculative philosophy. In doing so, the chapter takes an alternative theoretical approach from much of the ‘common worlds’ scholarship that has emerged in recent years, while making the case for a new aesthetics of childhood that is responsive to the accelerating social, technological, and environmental changes of the Anthropocene epoch. Our approach foregrounds the singularity of children’s aesthetic experiences as relational-qualitative ‘intensities’ that alter the fabric of nature as an extensive continuum held in common. We therefore argue that every moment in the life of a child is an uncommon and unrepeatable occasion through which the common world of nature is felt, perceived, and experienced differently. This eco-aesthetic approach is developed further through the analysis of photographs taken by children as part of the Climate Change and Me project, which has mapped children and young people’s affective responses to climate change over a period of three years in New South Wales, Australia. Rather than working with images as representations or analogic signifiers for children’s experience, we analyse how each photograph co-implicates children’s bodies and environments through affective vectors of feeling, or ‘prehensions’. This leads us to reframe aesthetic notions of image, sensibility, perception, and causality in relational terms, while also acknowledging the individuation of childhood experiences as ‘creaturely becomings’ that produce new potentials for environmental thought and behaviour

Unearthing withling(s):children, tweezers, and worms and the emergence of joy and suffering in a kindergarten yard

Abstract While there have been several attempts to account for relationships between humans and nonhuman animals in the social sciences and humanities, the discipline of education has, until recently, steered clear from the so-called animal turn. Drawing on post-anthropocentric theorizations, we introduce a concept of withling(s) and develop it empirically in the context of early years education. In particular, we zoom into one practice of science education at a kindergarten in order to consider what kind of child-animal relations are and might become invoked. Our concept of withling(s) is not an a priori positive relatings, as during the dance between earthworms, pupils, teachers, and technologies, both joy and suffering are invoked simultaneously