A politics of the toilet: poop, pee, and power in early childhood

In this viewpoint article, I examine geographies of the bathroom as a critical site where institutional power, biopolitical governance, and early childhood social life intersect. Drawing on vignettes from a New York City preschool, as well as secondary data from an image-based study in which a 3-year-old photographed his own poop, I analyze how early childhood institutions use toileting schedules and spatial design to produce ‘docile subjects’ through corporeal regularization, as well as how this apparatus disproportionately surveils and pathologizes children from minoritized communities. Simultaneously, I argue that poop and potty talk constitutes a form of re-spatialization; through their uninhibited engagements with scatological matter, children reclaim the validity of their bodily productions, contest adult-imposed shame, and assert authority over their own embodied realities.