Think difference differently? Knowing/becoming/doing with picturebooks

ABSTRACT

In this article, we explore ways in which arts-based approaches may be deployed to educate ways of knowing/becoming/doing difference differently, particularly when issues of racism and xenophobia come to the front. We present a school research intervention with students and in-service teachers in Santiago, Chile. In this study, we use The Island, a picturebook that produces a narrative of exclusion and fear, instead of promoting tolerance and conviviality. From a new materialist approach, we show engagements or makings of children and adults, sketching out how they defy simplistic ways of thinking and feeling about normative difference. We frame this study as a diffractive research-intervention in which the intertwined and productive relation ‘books and readers’ allow us to problematize rather than simplify what knowing/becoming/doing with arts may do to the production of difference within school contexts.

KEYWORDS:

• Arts-based practices
• diffractive analysis
• new materialisms
• contemporary racism
• children’s literature

Acknowledgments

This study has been supported by CONICYT PIA 160007, FONDECYT 11800700, and SOC 180023.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. ‘Un cuento que relata una historia cotidiana: el miedo al extraño, el temor al extranjero. Los habitantes de la Isla, presas de un pánico injustificado al hombre que allí ha ido a parar, terminan por devolverlo al mar, para construir luego una fortaleza con el objetivo de que nadie más los encuentre. El autor de La Isla se compromete con un bien preciado de nuestro tiempo, no tan utilizado como sería necesario: la tolerancia. Las semejanzas de este cuento con la realidad no son mera coincidencia’.

2. This condition of the students was noted by the librarian, who identified foreign students because of their accent in Spanish. She would highlight that at least in two of them no longer had a ‘sonsonete,’ which would literally mean a ‘monotonous rhythm’.

3. a Chilean Spanish slang used to define urban youth of low-socioeconomic background who are linked to vulgar habits and crime (definition from Wikipedia).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Comisión Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica [PIA 160007];Comisión Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica [SOC 180023];Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo Científico y Tecnológico [11800700].