Refusing perpetual mediation: playing in the undercommons
Book chapter
Osgood, J., de Rijke, V. and Maxwell, M. 2025. Refusing perpetual mediation: playing in the undercommons. in: Osgood, J. and de Rijke, V. (ed.) Postdevelopmental Approaches to Play London, UK Bloomsbury Publishing. pp. 117-135
| Chapter title | Refusing perpetual mediation: playing in the undercommons |
|---|---|
| Authors | Osgood, J., de Rijke, V. and Maxwell, M. |
| Abstract | This chapter proposes that playful approaches in childhood research can operate as subversive acts of refusal. Insights from a current research project are presented within the broader context of contemporary schooling which is shaped by intensified regulation of young child body-minds in the name of developmental progress. Bringing playful interventions into the classrooms of four-year-olds, to explore multispecies interdependencies and relationalities, caused all manner of trouble. The ultimate aim was to playfully pursue less anthropocentric narratives concerning ways to live together on a dying planet. Haraway’s practice of 'serious play' provided a mode of getting caught up in the knots and tangles of life in the Anthropocene without clear direction, prescribed outcomes or a firm agenda. Yet the chaotic wildness that ensued generated acute discomfort for adults caught up in this praxis. We argue that reconfiguring play - as serious, nonsensical and not the exclusive preserve of children - relies upon a close attunement to what else play can potentiate when it is (permitted to be) emergent and unbounded. In this chapter we take up Harney & Moten’s (2013) invitation to join ‘the undercommons’ by illustrating how open-ended, exploratory, playful encounters have capacities to simultaneously turn attention to the mechanisms of control that regulate and govern body-minds, and highlight the activist potential for play to reach alternative ways of being, seeing and relating. |
| Keywords | play; postdevelopmentalism; arts-based research; environment |
| Sustainable Development Goals | 4 Quality education |
| Middlesex University Theme | Sustainability |
| Creativity, Culture & Enterprise | |
| Research Group | Centre for Education Research and Scholarship (CERS) |
| Page range | 117-135 |
| Book title | Postdevelopmental Approaches to Play |
| Editors | Osgood, J. and de Rijke, V. |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
| Place of publication | London, UK |
| Series | Postdevelopmental Approaches to Childhood |
| ISBN | |
| Hardcover | 9781350439474 |
| Electronic | 9781350439498 |
| Electronic | 9781350439504 |
| Electronic | 9781350439528 |
| Publication dates | |
| Online | 26 Feb 2025 |
| 24 Apr 2025 | |
| Publication process dates | |
| Accepted | 07 May 2024 |
| Deposited | 20 May 2024 |
| Output status | Published |
| Accepted author manuscript | File Access Level Open |
| Web address (URL) | https://www.minibeasts.org |
| Digital Object Identifier (DOI) | https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350439528.0013 |
| Related Output | |
| Is part of | https://bloomsbury.com/9781350439474 |
| Is part of | https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350439528 |
| Language | English |
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