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Discplacing identity – placing aesthetics: early childhood literacy in a globalized world

ABSTRACT ‘How to give brain and body to the multiple pack that we already are or are becoming: how, in other words, are we to make sensible (auditory, visually and affectively) the time before “I think” and “We think” that we cannot plan, control or know, but simply experiment with, which is the “time of the city” and nothing else?’ (Rajchman, 2010, p. 39) These powerful words constitute the starting point for this article that argues that, within the context of early childhood literacy in a globalized and ‘multicultural’ world, we need to experiment with new ways of understanding identity and language through amalgamating early childhood pedagogy and didactics with aesthetics. Such an endeavour needs to take place beyond ‘the indignity of speaking for the other’ (Deleuze, 2004, p. 208) and beyond the constructed categories that have been attributed to children in the name of one or another minority group. Through vivid examples and theoretical movements taking place within the research project ‘The Magic of Language’ we propose to shift focus – from the identifying and categorizing of individuals, as well as from the epistemological violence performed in the name of recognition and linguistic representation – to aesthetic experimentation and to the place of experiments. A ‘time of the city’ is also a ‘time of the place’ and in this article we are arguing for the importance of aesthetic experimenting with that place.