A Meta-critical Reflection on Academic Writing with Child Researchers

Deszcz-Tryhubczak, Justyna; Marecki, Mateusz

doi:10.1108/s2398-601820210000007019

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…As Deszcz-Tryhubczak and Marecki (2021) and Biswas (2020) argue, if we are to challenge adultism, we need new methodological practices. Childism, as a difference-inclusive social imagination, provides an orientation towards more inclusive approaches, but holds a threat in its abstraction, in the essentializing that appears to be at the core of all terms that propose the emancipation of a determined social group.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards an Affective Childist Literary Criticism

García-González

2022

Child Lit Educ

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A long-asked question in children's literature studies is how the child reads the very same book we (adults) have read. In 1984, Peter Hunt argued for a "childist criticism" proposing that young readers' multiple individual responses to literature should inform adults' critical practice. In this article, I propose that affect theory and new materialist epistemologies could reorient our critical practice in and with children's literature. Using the concept of childist criticism (Hunt 1984(Hunt , 1991 and Maggie MacLure's (2013) notion of the "wonder of data," I follow different encounters between children (and researchers) and the book La madre y la muerte/La partida (Laiseca et al., 2016). This book tells a macabre story about a mother that cannot bear to have her child taken away by Death. By following the book's agency (García-González & Deszcz-Tryhubczak, 2020) in the research assemblage of different projects, I propose possible affective methodological orientations to post-representational research for children's literature criticism.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards an Affective Childist Literary Criticism

García-González

2022

Child Lit Educ

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“…As Deszcz‐Tryhubczak and Marecki conclude, without reconceiving children's literature scholarship as promoting intergenerational dialogue, we risk missing productive opportunities to work with children and books for the benefit of all generations as children's literature itself ‘represents, embodies and enables a cultural, socioeconomic and political network of bonds, interactions, allegiances and commitments among children and adults’ (Chawar et al, 2018, p. 112). However, as they also realize, ‘[d]espite best efforts, participatory research with children may be questioned as not valid and rigorous enough, according to academic (read adult) conventions’ (Deszcz‐Tryhubczak & Marecki, 2021, p. 222). Summarizing their experience gained in both projects, they propose that although there are no universal solutions to the ethical and methodological challenges of participatory research with children, the key to the potential of this approach to destabilize adultist assumptions in academia lies in accepting the ‘messiness’ of participatory research as a work‐in‐progress rather than as a final outcome or product.…”

Section: Participatory Approaches In Children's Literature Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Thinking and doing with childism in children's literature studies

Deszcz-Tryhubczak

García-González

2022

Children & Society

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In this article we share our reflections on how childism has enabled us to navigate theoretical assumptions shaping our field and develop new positions and research practices fostering child–adult interdependencies. Justyna Deszcz‐Tryhubczak has relied on childism as a framework for the introduction of participatory research with young readers as a way for advancing child–adult collaboration. Macarena García‐González has deployed childism to think about adultism and its analogies to sexism. Although we offer a critique of childism as an essentializing concept, we also show how for both of us it has served as a gateway towards other approaches, and especially post‐anthropocentric understandings both of texts, readers and the world and of our critical engagements. Finally, we argue that childism may remain a productive starting point for further openings in children's literature and culture studies and childhood studies if it becomes a plural and messy notion that questions the discourse of hope for a better future as defining children's lives.

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A Meta-critical Reflection on Academic Writing with Child Researchers

Cited by 2 publications

References 12 publications

Towards an Affective Childist Literary Criticism

Towards an Affective Childist Literary Criticism

Thinking and doing with childism in children's literature studies

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