Otherness may be the predilection of postmodernist priorities but remains the ongoing dilemma of postcolonial childhoods and their subjugated realities. The ‘other’ stands against a distant ‘self’, often emphasising dominant, western imaginaries and agendas grounded in the logics of modernity. This singular vantage point from where the other is defined, categorised or even investigated, often persists unchallenged, is essentialised and frequently de-politicised. This simultaneously ‘exotifies’ the lifeworlds of children from the emerging economies, albeit with magnificent details, and sequesters their lives within exclusionary discourses and practices. Given this call to investigate the realm of otherness, the chapter first interrogates the normative ‘ideal’ types that flatten the particularities of ‘other’ children’s lived worlds and diminish their ontologies across the rich peripheral countries (Connell, Southern Theory. Polity Press, 2007) in favour of prescriptive, ‘hypermasculine, competitive and predatory values’ (Giroux & Aronowitz, Hearts of darkness: Torturing children in the war on terror. Routledge, 2010) of the neoliberal systems including education. In recent years, post-development, postcolonial and posthuman scholars have demanded an epistemic shift critiquing the universalisation of childhoods and education in highlighting the distinct material, social, geographical, discursive and political contexts within which a myriad of ‘other’ childhoods occur. Accordingly, this chapter urges a (re-)imagining of childhoods espousing ‘other’ ways of being, doing and knowing. It locates ‘peripheral’ childhoods within such priorities, employing Chakrabarty’s influential text, Provincialising Europe, as an analytical and methodological tool to interrogate theoretical framings that delineate childhoods, today. In particular, the chapter draws on distinct lived worlds of two children named Boka, from India, and such a device emphasises the subject position of these subaltern ‘Indian’ childhoods as a variation to the master narrative (whether Euro-American or dominant Indian). On the one hand, it centres on the children’s lived experiences of otherness and on the other, it foregrounds how in undergoing the process of otherness led, first, to the othering of their othered-self before othering the dominant-self. Their individual yet entangled stories disrupt the habitual constructions of ‘other’ children, drive a revaluation of the nature and scope of other-ing within societal, educational and wider systems, and enables a reframing of the ‘singularity of stories’ (Balagopalan, ‘Afterschool and during vacations’: On Labor and Schooling in the Postcolony. Children’s Geographies, 17(2), 231–245, 2019) intended by universalist agendas, dominant philosophies and elite institutions.

Othering Otherness: The Entangled Stories of Boka and Boka

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发表日期：

2025年

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Pallawi Sinha

摘要

Otherness may be the predilection of postmodernist priorities but remains the ongoing dilemma of postcolonial childhoods and their subjugated realities. The ‘other’ stands against a distant ‘self’, often emphasising dominant, western imaginaries and agendas grounded in the logics of modernity. This singular vantage point from where the other is defined, categorised or even investigated, often persists unchallenged, is essentialised and frequently de-politicised. This simultaneously ‘exotifies’ the lifeworlds of children from the emerging economies, albeit with magnificent details, and sequesters their lives within exclusionary discourses and practices. Given this call to investigate the realm of otherness, the chapter first interrogates the normative ‘ideal’ types that flatten the particularities of ‘other’ children’s lived worlds and diminish their ontologies across the rich peripheral countries (Connell, Southern Theory. Polity Press, 2007) in favour of prescriptive, ‘hypermasculine, competitive and predatory values’ (Giroux & Aronowitz, Hearts of darkness: Torturing children in the war on terror. Routledge, 2010) of the neoliberal systems including education. In recent years, post-development, postcolonial and posthuman scholars have demanded an epistemic shift critiquing the universalisation of childhoods and education in highlighting the distinct material, social, geographical, discursive and political contexts within which a myriad of ‘other’ childhoods occur. Accordingly, this chapter urges a (re-)imagining of childhoods espousing ‘other’ ways of being, doing and knowing. It locates ‘peripheral’ childhoods within such priorities, employing Chakrabarty’s influential text, Provincialising Europe, as an analytical and methodological tool to interrogate theoretical framings that delineate childhoods, today. In particular, the chapter draws on distinct lived worlds of two children named Boka, from India, and such a device emphasises the subject position of these subaltern ‘Indian’ childhoods as a variation to the master narrative (whether Euro-American or dominant Indian). On the one hand, it centres on the children’s lived experiences of otherness and on the other, it foregrounds how in undergoing the process of otherness led, first, to the othering of their othered-self before othering the dominant-self. Their individual yet entangled stories disrupt the habitual constructions of ‘other’ children, drive a revaluation of the nature and scope of other-ing within societal, educational and wider systems, and enables a reframing of the ‘singularity of stories’ (Balagopalan, ‘Afterschool and during vacations’: On Labor and Schooling in the Postcolony. Children’s Geographies, 17(2), 231–245, 2019) intended by universalist agendas, dominant philosophies and elite institutions.