Crush: mapping historical, material and affective force relations in young children's hetero-sexual playground play

ABSTRACT

Drawing on ethnographic multi-modal data of the gendered and sexual dynamics of pre-school play (age 6) in a rapidly declining fishing and farming community in North Finland, this paper offers a glimpse into our sense-making of a short video-recorded episode in which three boys repeatedly pile up on and demand a kiss from one of their girl classmates. Our analyses resonate with a wider community of feminist and queer scholars who are bringing affective methodologies and posthuman approaches to re-invigorate how we might understand the complexities of gender and sexual power relations in the early years. Inspired by the writings of Guattari and his concept of ‘existential refrains’, we create three ‘crush’ assemblages to map the more-than-human territorialising and de-territorialising force relations at play. Each assemblage offers a thinking Otherwise about gender, sexuality, violence and consent in which place, space, objects, affect and history entangle in predictable and unpredictable ways.

KEYWORDS:

• Consent: gender
• posthuman
• affect
• violence
• sexuality

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. In the research project in question, the first author works as PI and the second author works as research partner. The two authors have come together through a shared history of collaboration in earlier research and development projects (From Violence to Caring, The Academy of Finland, 2007–2010; ALLiES – Developing teachers’ and parents’ alliance for early violence prevention in pre-school, EC Daphne III, 2010–2012.)

2. The concept of de- and re-territorialisation stem from Guattari's (1989/2013, 1995/2005) posthuman ontology of subjectification, where humans are criss-crossed by semiotic, material and affective forces that hold and/or block (territorialise) and rupture and/or release (de-territorialise) modes of being in the world (see Genosko, 2009).

3. Isla called Tuija her ‘mum’ several times during this recorded episode.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Academy of Finland 2012–2016 [grant number 257319].