Abstract
This chapter focuses on the resonance of nationalistic language in children’s everyday narratives exchanged in early childhood settings. Children as national subjects is a concept that is less explored especially within Australian early childhood settings, with a few exceptions (see MacNaughton 2001; MacNaughton and Davis 2001, 2009; Skattebol 2005). These works particularly reveal how young children use “race” and “colour” to classify the national subject as “Australian” and the “not Australian,” the outsider. I use some of the narratives from my doctoral thesis to introduce such “race”-based nationalism in children’s voices. Through these narratives, I highlight how the ownership of national identity is not available for all children, and its impact on the identities of those children who are “brown.” In the second part of the chapter I further the inquiry to the discourses of the early childhood educators (ECE) who supported and covertly fuelled children’s “race”-based nationalism. I particularly draw upon postcolonial and critical race theories to engage with and challenge these discourses, and to outline some of the counter discourses that can be made available for these educators.
That is to say there may be ‘knowledge’ of the body that is not exactly the science of its functioning… Of course this technology is diffuse, rarely formulated in continuous, systematic discourse; it is often made up of bits and pieces; it implements a disparate set of tools and methods… Moreover, it cannot be localized in a particular type of institution or state apparatus. (Foucault, 1977, p. 16)
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Srinivasan, P. (2016). “How Come Australians Are White”: Children’s Voice and Adults’ Silence. In: Millei, Z., Imre, R. (eds) Childhood and Nation. Critical Cultural Studies of Childhood. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137477835_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137477835_2
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