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When stories are shaped by power, entwinement gives way to entanglement. These stories remain distinct; however, their intersections are often marked by friction, contradiction, and uneven influence. Some stories become dominant, presenting themselves as the only way of knowing and imposing a “regime of truth” (Foucault as cited in Moss, 2019, p.5). These entanglements are not abstract; they live within me, within my practice, and within the systems of early childhood education. By insisting on a single truth, dominant discourses hold power over which threads are amplified and which are silenced, entangling identity, power, and practice in ways that

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Photo from Unsplash, Greg Rosenke

marginalize alternative stories (Moss, 2019). Moss describes how “encounters with difference can provoke experimentation, movement, and new thinking” (p. 7).

Within entanglement we are offered opportunities “to creatively grapple with, interruptively respond to, and work through the doubts, complicated frictions, discomforts, knots, and silences that… throw up in research and pedagogical practices” (Nxumalo, 20190, p. 39).

 

Attending to entanglement, then, becomes an act of ethical and political resistance; choosing which  narratives will guide our practice (Moss, 2019), making space for counter-narratives that disrupt the dominant discourse, and reasserting multiple ways of knowing, being, doing, and becoming.

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