Liminal Spaces of Mundane Abjection

• In Event: 72.017 - Liminality and Twisted Normativity in Qualitative Inquiry

Abstract

Objectives: This research explored Kristeva’s notion of abjection as a productive force that shapes mundane childhoods (especially for recently immigrated children). More specifically, the theoretical lens of ‘abjection’ was used to examine how liminality looks and is performed in these mundane childhoods.

Perspective: Children are often considered to be cute and innocent, as well as in need of adult protection (Prout, 2008). Liminal spaces are temporal encounters with subjectivities that are not fixed nor stable or normalised, that do not fit subjectivities that are labelled cute, innocent, or in need of protection. Kristeva’s abjection allows for the exploration of otherness in the mundane from a different perspective, where the abject is “me that is not me” (Kristeva, 1982, p. 5). What is rejected, refused, subjugated and disturbed by society? Through the lens of abjection we can explore the liminal spaces which portray childhoods as neither cute nor dangerous. What happens if we explore the abject as an opportunity to engage with otherness, with strangeness (Kristeva, 1991), with thinking that challenges our deep narratives? How can we explore the limits, the threshold that places childhood on the verge of abjections, ontologically, epistemologically and ethically?

Methods and Data Sources: Post-structural and cultural theories linked otherness and the notion of being and becoming ‘an other’ in the methodological framework of this research. Data from a recent childhood studies project conducted in urban settings and a methodological abjection of the adult researcher-subject served as the foundation. The young under five-year-old children were the researchers, who collected data and designed the process with a focus on their lives. A number of data were evident in this performance of abjection, some related to notions of popular culture with which children engaged, others collected by children themselves included images, videos or their own artwork. The abjection in the research design allowed a twisting of the normality of inquiry itself and elevated subjugated discourses, particularly when working with children who are recent immigrants. The liminality of experiences was organised and produced within the spaces of clear governance of the subjects. The emerging analysis addresses the following questions: what are the boundaries of the subject? And, especially when dealing with immigrant children, how can we recognise the liminal inbetweenness of the ‘foreigner’ differently (Arndt, 2015)? Where are the liminal spaces of childhoods (through Kristeva’s lens) and what allows them to remain there?

Conclusions and Significance: In this research, children themselves performed acts of abjection. They questioned adults’ assumptions of childhoods as cute, for example, inserting subversive, liminal spaces of ‘cute and creepy’ (Baade & Hightower, 2011). Thinking with/through liminality and abjection results in productive spaces where childhoods are challenged, inbetween and re-imagined; the child-subject is no longer defined through the singularity of experiences. The liminal spaces of childhoods by their very nature remain undefinable. Researching them means to theorise their space rather than to define them. There is something both seductive and dangerous about liminal spaces and encounters; a Kristevan lens allows another iteration of how these spaces could look and be performed, in mundane urban childhood settings.

Authors

• Marek Tesar, The University of Auckland

• Sonja Arndt, University of Waikato