Abstract

I problematise a particular play episode of my research with three-year-old children and staff of a Chilean nursery by, first, exposing practices of interaction between adults (parents) and children and their regulation; second, illustrating how discursive practices of discipline materialise through violent actions towards children, and; third, uncovering (my) naturalised (re)production of children’s roles within adult-child relationships, in spite of my overt attempt to disrupt them. I argue that in the play episode we created a heterotopic emplacement (Foucault, 1967) by (re)producing contradicting and overlapping discourses about children and children’s play. This incident unsettled my~our subjectivities, because it exposed our hybrid~ambiguous positions within the inter-play of the (un)familiar (and naturalised) roles we played (with). I suggest that although this episode might have subversive effects; the unquestioned perpetuation of family constitution, everyday family practices and disciplining actions over children; are not necessarily challenged, but rather legitimised.