Spinning Plates: Re/imaginings of Play in More-Than-Human Worlds

• In Event: Reimagining Play: Critical Examinations of Gender, Race, and the More Than Human

Abstract

In this paper, I employ autobiographical narrative methods through a self-reflexive engagement with my own teaching practice and experiences working with toddlers and preschoolers who were diagnosed with autism. Returning to the story of one specific child and his spinning plates play, I utilize my situated memories to deconstruct the developmental and intervention-focused discourses that constitute the autistic child and set the parameters around what we understand “play” to be. Further, I draw on the work of autistic adults to imagine young children’s experiences with schooling otherwise looking towards theories in posthumanism and the new materialisms as a way to see “play” differently and value children’s engagements with the world beyond the developmental, interventionist expectations.

Author

• Emmanuelle Fincham, Teachers College, Columbia University