Troubling the Child as Individual: The Queer Performativity of Child-Pet-Dog Entanglements

• In Event: Queering Educational Subjectivities

Abstract

This paper works at the intersection of queer, feminist, and more-than-human studies to consider the performative effects of a series of child-pet-dog entanglements. These include events observed in a Hong Kong dog park and an Australian early childhood education setting, and the dog-child-nature figures that feature in William Wegman’s North American art and film productions. Through focussing upon these diverse child-animal entanglements, the authors set out to challenge the normativity of western education’s human-centrism, which is manifest in the fixation on the developmental and learning needs of the individual child. They argue that these child-animal imbroglios, like all natureculture entanglements (Haraway, 2008), are inherently queer and reveal some of the complex layering of our co-shaped multispecies worlds.

Authors

• Affrica Taylor, University of Canberra

• Mindy Blaise, The Hong Kong Institute of Education