Fabricating Abjection in Playfulness: The Affective Governmentality of Joy in Children’s Play

• In Event: International Studies of the Sociologies of the Knowledge of Science, Visual Cultures and Affective Economies in Education, Part I

Proposal

This paper is part of a larger study of children’s play as an educational object in governing of conduct. This paper problematizes the co-implication of play with “joy” that appears as an innate quality of the child’s body and soul through the lens of the psychological concept of “playfulness”. The paper’s focus is on how play and joy become cultural and historical principles inscribed as “playfulness” in educational empirical studies utilizing the Test of Playfulness (ToP, Bundy 1991) and Children’s Playfulness Scale (CPS, Barnett 1990) since the 1990s. It explores how "playfulness" is a construction of a normalized trait that implies metrics and regulation by the affective signifier of joy in play. Employing affect theory and Foucauldian discourse analysis, the paper explores how this psychological and empirical research problem in early childhood education is made into phenomena, viewed as an inherent aspect of children's interiority, potentiality, and aspirations toward normalcy and future success, embodying a form of governmentality in educational settings.

By scrutinizing the intricacies of these discourses, the study initially explores the naturalization of joy translated into children’s play as "playfulness," how it is interiorized as the child's inner being and expressed through educational practices. It then elucidates how joy, when scientized and psychologized within the context of children’s play, becomes entwined with notions of ability, learning, and development that frame certain traits as normative and desirable. The traits that categorize individuals are not descriptive of the present but expressive in governing of what should be- and the potentiality-to-be, such as problem-solvers, creative thinkers, emotionally regulated beings, and socially adept learners, among others, making the ideal and desirable child.

By framing playfulness as an innate disposition and anticipatory rationale of childhood development, this discourse invokes a double gesture of hope and danger as space for action--intervention and control. This portrayal inadvertently invents populations deemed as abject, including the disabled, at-risk, and disadvantaged and excludes those who do not conform to the prescribed parameters by the inscribed societal ideals and aspirations.

Author

• Chushan Wu, The University of Wisconsin-Madison