Embodiment, Philosophy with Children, and The Tunnel

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Department of Educational Administration and Planning Faculty of Education and Psychology Alzahra University Tehran, Iran

2 Department of Educational Administration and Planning, Faculty of Education and Psychology, Alzahra University, Tehran, Iran

3 Department of Education Faculty of Humanities Tarbiat Modares University Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Posthumanism has opened up a new paradigm shift towards philosophy for children (P4C) in order to provide a liberating response to the dominance of mind over body, adulthood over childhood, and formation over emergence. Concurrently, Mark Johnson has added his three proposed Es: emotional, evolutionary, and exaptation, to the already cognitive sciences’ 4Es: embodied, embedded, extended, and enacted. Johnson believes that these 7Es are fundamental features of cognition. The convergence of these two perspectives (posthumanism and Johnson's theory) can lead to ten concepts: critique of dualistic logic, critique of hierarchical structure in anthropocentric ontology and epistemology, non-human agency, relational onto-epistemology, human and non-human bodies, imagination, emotion, intra-action (instead of interaction), philosophy of animism, and metaphor. Thus, the relationship between children's embodied experiences with other beings within the world shapes their perception of the world. This phenomenon is reflected in some contemporary picturebooks. This study employs interpretive-abstract and comparative methods to investigate how embodiment is represented in The Tunnel by Anthony Browne. By considering the ten aforementioned concepts and their intra-actions, this research aims to explore how meaning is constructed through embodiment representation in this picturebook and in philosophical inquiry with children. In this study, embodied co-thinking with the picturebook is discussed in four sections: images, audience participation in shaping the work, verbal-visual-motion intra-actions in the work as a whole, and the use of hypertext. This study proposes that PWC facilitators pay attention to the ten proposed concepts and employ them as criteria for selecting appropriate picturebooks to accompany their philosophical inquiries with children. In doing so, it is hoped that by providing liberating responses, the circles of philosophical inquiry with children will move toward more empowerment.

Keywords

References

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Iranian Children's Literature Studies
Volume 15, Issue 1 - Serial Number 29
September 2024
Pages 195-230

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History

  • Receive Date: 02 September 2023
  • Revise Date: 25 September 2023
  • Accept Date: 26 September 2023

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