LITTLE THINGS MATTER MUCH Childist Ideas for a Pedagogy of Philosophy in an Overheated World
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LITTLE THINGS MATTER MUCH Childist ideas for a pedagogy of philosophy in an overheated world TANU BISWAS This work was mentored by Prof. Dr. Iris Clemens, Department of General Pedagogy, University of Bayreuth, Prof. Dr. Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo and Prof. Dr. Marit Honerød Hoveid, Department of Education and Lifelong Learning, Norwegian University of Science and Technology. It was accepted as a dissertation in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Pedagogy, at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Bayreuth on 3rd December 2019 Publisher: Büro Himmelgrün Munich Design & Typesetting: Christian Gruber Copyediting: Sarah Nuccio, Michaela Dudley ISBN: 978-3-947186-13-6 © Tanu Biswas 2020 LITTLE THINGS MATTER MUCH Childist ideas for a pedagogy of philosophy in an overheated world TANU BISWAS for Aniket Table of Contents Abstract IX Acknowledgments X List of Illustrations XI General Introduction 1 1. The Existential Crisis of an Overheated Epoch 10 1.1. Modern Education and Anthropocene Neoliberalism 10 1.1.1. Overheating and Childism 13 1.1.2. The Enframing of Childhood and Education 17 1.1.3. Philosophising with Children in an Overheated Epoch 21 1.1.4. The Irrational National 25 1.2. Seeking outside the spatio-temporality of schooling 29 1.3. Summary 29 2. Philosophy with/for Children (PC) 32 2.1. Continental Roots of Philosophical Praxis 34 2.2. PC in the Norwegian Context 36 2.3. Major critiques of PC 38 2.4. Summary 40 3. On Theoretical and Methodological Approaches 43 3.1. The Child as a Default Addressee of Pedagogy 48 3.1.1. The Child as a Default Addressee of Philosophical Development 51 3.1.2. Bluebond-Langner’s Axioms 54 3.1.3. Childhood Beyond the Developmental State Model 56 3.2. Children’s Cultures in System Immanent Childhood Cultures 58 3.2.1. Interpretive philosophical agency of children-in-the-world 62 3.3. Children as Citizens and Co-explorers 64 3.3.1. Re-conceiving the Adult Researcher-Self 65 3.3.2. Instances of Research Designs with Children 66 3.3.3. Ontological Reconsiderations of Pre-positionality 68 3.3.4. Warming and The Significance of Bodily Experience in 70 Least Adult Researcher Roles 3.3.5. Childhood Research through Ignorance 72 3.4. Summary 74 4. Phases of Exploration 77 4. 1. Attributes of the study at hand 77 4.1.1. On Nomadicity 78 4.1.2. On Hybridity 80 4.1.3. Ontological validation through Pluralism 82 4.1.4. Thematic and Geographical Routes 84 4.2. Phase 0: Embryological Stages 86 4.2.1. From Mi Kyong’s Child to Sungjae Kim: Alternative 86 class-based philosophising 4.2.2. Playing by Chance: Early recognitions of positionality and power 94 4.2.3. Hjerneflukt: Fielding by chance 99 4.2.4. Babies, Toddlers and Playing with Time 110 4.2.5. Playing more by chance: Barnehage with Enaya & Co. 115 4.2.6. Die Talentabwanderung: This is not America 121 4.3. Phase 1: Muddling through the Mystery 126 4.3.1. Muddling through with Interlocutors and Co-explorers 128 4.3.2. Failure of The Tea Party Experiment 137 4.3.3. Fielding Play with Childism 139 4.4. Phase 2: Immersive Play 144 4.4.1. Preparing for Immersive Play 144 4.4.1.1. Suspending the graspable Natural Attitude 145 4.4.1.2. Remembering the Breath 146 4.4.1.3. Jaina pluralism as analytical fall back 147 4.4.2. Playing 148 4.4.3. Cerebrations on Having Played 149 4.4.3.1. Philosophical Clearings with (hos/bei) Children 153 4.4.3.2. Toys are Tools for Toying with Meaning 154 4.4.3.3. Relationality: Thinking and letting think 159 from and for both sides 4.5. Phase 3: Retrospections with Enaya 162 4.6. Summary 172 5. Outro 176 Glossary of terms 182 Bibliography 186 Abstract In this overheated world, where children from the highest-scoring countries on the Human Development Index are on regular school strikes to cry for help - it is high time to ask what philosophy and education can learn from children and childhood. The scope of this work is - arriving at, asking and then attempting to answer the question: What is the scope for the philoso- phical blossoming of adults when they enter children’s playfully constructed worlds as guests? Through a hybridic, nomadic phenomenological investigation - by muddling through with Sungjae, Enaya, (Baby) Ole, Emma, Captain Duke, Finn, Thor, Amelie, Gullveig and Aida, I found that there is a vast scope for adults to blossom philosophically with children as their primary philo- sophical guides. For this however, the adult view of what constitutes the form of philosophising must be surrendered. Childism proposes that we view philosophy as play and play as philosophy. By play, I mean something akin to the Norwegian verb å leke or the Portuguese verb brincar. In doing so - ignorance, incompleteness and immaturity of the embodied adult is unveiled, whereby the epistemological authority of the everyday adult phi- losopher simply dissolves. Subsequently, philosophising itself becomes a process of muddling through the mysterious. When children play/philosophise - they perform embodied thought experiments in motion in a way that brings counter-factual spatio-tempo- ralities into the horizons of the particular lived experience of the moment. Philosophising/Playing with (Norwegian: hos/ German: bei) children requires us to slow down, scale down and cool down more often than one currently manages. In doing so, one can start nearing the possibility of - preparing for unpredictable futures and shouldering responsibilities in the face of the greatest challenges of the overheated world. For adults in highest-scoring nations on the Human Development Index, this is a more realistic possibility than those in the majority world. And it need not cost much. Acknowledgments I express my heartfelt gratitude to the following individuals and institutions for their support and encouragement: Sungjae Kim, Enaya Mubasher, (Baby) Ole, Emma, Captain Duke, Finn, Thor, Amelie, Gullveig, Aida and their guardians. The Department of General Pedagogy of the University of Bayreuth, Norwegian Center for Child Research (now Institute for Lifelong Learning, Norwegian University of Science and Technology), the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of the University of Bayreuth for financial support towards promoting Gender Equity in Academia, Pecha Kucha Trondheim, Olavsfestdagene Trondheim (especially Gita Aspen), Trondheim Kommune (especially Jensen Rolf Bjarne), Teatro per Caso, Gonpa School, Project HappYness, The Ladakh Expedition 2017, and PC Garage, University of Bayreuth. Aniket Jaaware, Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Marit Honerød Hoveid, Tatek Abebe, Stine Helene Bang Svendsen, Ingvild Eidshaug, Anne Trine Kjørholt, Monika Sjubert, Vebjørg Tingstad, Barbara Rogers, Karin Ekberg, Kari Vikhammermo, Pradip Gokhale, Deepti Gangawane, John Wall, Britta Saal, Bettina Zeisler, Mayumi Ura-Zimmerman, Alice Pinheiro Walla, Rudolph Schüßler, Uli Beisel, Katharina Schramm, Gabriela Paule, Stephan Kurth, Heike Feldhaar, Katharina Fink, Ingvild Sørenson, Eirik Swensen, Alice Mühlroth, Samita Wilson, Gita Aspen, Mario Wagner, Marie Paule Bilger, Pierre Friquet, Riny Sharma, Lukas Kuwaczka, Johanna Schmidtman, Tabea Chaudhari, Jose Ninin, Zamir, Tobias Hauffe, Shirin Assa, Mihir Sharma, Erica Vicenzi, Paola Marcello, Timira Gupta, Mikyong Kim, Sujata Biswas, Pradip Biswas, Sutapa Laxmanan, Neeta, Mary, Leon TSD Held, Charlotte Schöneman, Zuzana Hasanova, Irene Midtskog Liland, Marta Marques. Mira Myhr, Sarah Fuchs, Sebastian Hamm, Katrin Potzel, Sarah Nuccio, Michaela Dudley. And last but not least, Emma Neumeyer. List of Illustrations Illustration 1 General Overview Illustration 2 Erna Solberg depicted setting earth on fire Illustration 3 Hypothetical interstellar colonial triangular trade Illustration 4 Blueprint of a modern childhood lifespan Illustration 5 Nation as the default enframing of standardized modern childhood Illustration 6 Summary Part 1 Illustration 7 Child monks practising Tibetan Buddhist debate, Ladakh 2017 Illustration 8 Geographical routes Illustration 9 Thematic routes Illustration 10 Experimenting with new roles and positions Illustration 11 Supra-adult, Majestic Lady on Stilts Illustration 12 Extended version of Kjørholt’s auto-reflective exercise Illustration 13 Notes on Norway Illustration 14 Early reflections on Eriksen’s address to youth Illustration 15 Simplified illustration of the PC community of inquiry Illustration 16 Sungjae’s Alternative Class-based philosophy Illustration 17 Adult-teams intently observed Illustration 18 Emergence of an Idea Illustration 19 Planning the Tea Party Experiment Illustration 20 GIF frames of Lava-land Illustration 21 Baking in the Kitchen Illustration 22 Our City Kingdom Illustration 23 Tiger Snail Illustration 24 Flying to Norway Land Illustration 25 Poor Woman Cooking Illustration 26 The World Drowns in Lava Illustration 27 Symmetrical bodily movements during immersive play Illustration 28 Child and Youth Seminar 2017 Illustration 29 Azulejo i Lisboa General Introduction This dissertation constitutes a philosophical journey into the richness that children can offer adults, in order to overcome their own conceptual limit- ations and blossom philosophically. The core investigational process unfol- ded in the cosmopolitan Norwegian city of Trondheim with the generous companionship of some of its child-citizens. Without an intimate relating in those familial contexts, a work like this would not have been possible. But the pre-conditions, conditions and meandering trajectories of the specific routes that led to the realisation of this project have the vulnerable interdependent characteristic of my changing geographical and theoretical positionalities in relation to the worlds within which words make sense. The birth of the central research question arises out of the embodied mind that arrived at articulating it in oral and written language. What is the scope for the philosophical blossoming of adults when they enter children’s playfully constructed worlds as guests? I did not simply wake up one day in Germany, go to my desk at the Depart- ment of Education at the University of Bayreuth and write down that question.