Joyful Aesthetics of Play in "Learn the Signs. Act Early": Affective Governance and Making Exclusion

• In Event: Constructing the (Ab)Normal: Development, Affect, and Sensory Experience in Teaching and Learning

Abstract

1. Objectives or purposes
The paper focuses on the nationwide program “Learn the signs. Act early” conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States to track developmental stages and screen out disabled children through the “developmental milestones” constructed by assorted scientific expertises since 2011. The paper explores how the resources of developmental milestones provided for educators in the program imply the joyful aesthetics inscribing the co-implication of play with happiness as a universal truth (Aliwood, 2003; Saltmarsh & Lee, 2021) to evaluate children’s developmental stages for “making kinds of people” (Popkewitz, 2013) and distributing differences through the affective signs associated with “good life”.

2. Theoretical framework
This paper draws on affect theory from critical theory perspectives. In this paper, happiness and joy characterized as naturality of play are tackled as affects beyond emotions. Affect is distinct from emotion (Deleuze, 1997); affect is something waiting for being read and existing in the shared textual and discursive sets (Brinkema, 2014). The implication of play with happiness inscribing the representational aesthetics (Rancière, 1999) in the program forms a homogenizing ecology of affective experience by associating this way of living with good-life genres as normality and stipulating “happiness duty” (Ahmed, 2010). And it sacrifices some populations outside of the prescription of norms and limits the creation of “thoughts in the act” (Manning & Massumi, 2014).

3. Methods
This paper uses discourse analysis (Foucault, 1971) from a poststructuralist perspective to investigate discourses and visualizations in the documents and webpages from the program “Learn the signs. Act early”.

4. Data sources and materials
The paper mainly analyzes textual and visual materials provided by the program: “Developmental Milestones Brochure”, “Milestones Moments Booklet”, “Watch Me! Celebrating Milestones and Sharing Concerns” and “Milestones Matter” on the webpage. These materials form an affective discursive ecology for making kinds of people and distributing differences through prioritizing certain ways of living and devaluing others.

5. Results
The paper demonstrates that the joyful aesthetics and affective signs (smile, laugh, showing affection when playing) emphasized in the visual representation of “Milestones Matter” and other textual documents are conducting the normality of developmental stages of children of different ages. The manifestations of positive affects through play are something that parents and educators should “celebrate” for their “bright future” or “show concern” for their developmental asynchronization. These demonstrations of happiness in play are attached to the discourses of good life and future success in the discursive ecology forming a homogenizing affective relation that children should and have to develop along with this trajectory as being normal. Those who fail to present the “normal” affective signs are regarded as abnormal and affect aliens (e.g., autism is regarded as having a dysfunctional sensory system).

6. Scholarly significance
The paper contributes to curriculum studies, early childhood education, and play theory in a case study demonstrating how the contemporary global creed of play with happiness governs affective experience and makes abject populations. Moreover, the paper invites people to re-generate new modalities of experiences through different affective attachments.

Author

• Chushan Wu, University of Wisconsin - Madison
  Presenting Author