Q is for queer.
It has been a fashionable word for a while. Some of my students had
been using it extensively before I decided to find out what it meant.
You know, one day everything is liminal, next day everything is
queer, and you have no time to catch up. I have repeatedly stated
that for me a theory that is only valid for a limited range of texts
is of less interest. If queer theory was only applicable to discuss gender identity I would probably not have delved any deeper into it.
Some rigid versions of feminist theory try to replace one dominance
by another. Queer theory is inclusive: plurality rather than positive
discrimination. A children's book cannot replace adult hegemony by a
child one; yet it is possible to address childhood and adulthood as
equally valuable. At least in theory.
I published my first
article on the subject, titled “Pippi, queer and carnival”, in
2003 in a non-children's literature journal. I then tested it in
several talks, including my Grimm Award acceptance speech in 2005. It
was finally developed into a book, Power,
Voice and Subjectivity in Literature for Young People,
where aetonormativity was launched.
Q is also for quest,
a popular, not to say omnipresent motif in children's literature.
Ill. Ingrid Vang Nyman
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