Traversing and contesting the textuality of gender in mainstream children's fiction

• Published in: Acta Neophilologica
• Main Author: Burcar, Lilijana
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Znanstvena založba Filozofske fakulte / Ljubljana University Press, Faculty of Arts 2003
• Subjects: Children's literature / Gender Studies / Feminist literary criticism; otroška književnost / psihologija spolov / ženske študije / feministična kritika / literarne študije; sami
• Online Access: https://revije.ff.uni-lj.si/ActaNeophilologica/article/view/6420; https://doi.org/10.4312/an.36.1-2.153-162

The article first outlines the way in which mainstream children's fiction has traditionally sought to address and underrnine the artificiality of oppositional and hierarchical gender paradigms. Pro-ferninist texts that abound in mainstream children's literature have never really extricated themselves from the bonds of gender-related binarisations and hierarchizations because their approach in delineating girl protagonists hasbeen premised primarily upon a mere reverslil of masculine and ferninine defined attributes. By insisting only on the exarnination and reversal of attributes, mainstream children's fiction has fallen short of investigating narrative mechanisms which are essential to the understanding of how subjectivities, regardless of their feminine or masculine inflections, are constituted in the first place. To address this issue, it is argued that children's mainstream literature should embrace such literary devices as metafiction and genre mixing. The article goes on to demonstrate the kind of impact these devices have in challenging and underrnining the socially constructed notions of oppositional and hierarchical gender paradigms on those children who have been subject to traditionalliterary socialization. Za feministično naravnana ali vsaj proto-tipična feministična besedila znotraj osrednjih tokov otroške literature je značilno, da so skušala problem vsiljenih in umetno skonstruiranih binarično-hierarhičnih postulacij družbenega spola reševati na poenostavljeni način, in sicer tako da so se in se v veliki večini še vedno poslužujejo golega premeščanja in pripenjanja domnevno maskulinističnih lastnosti dekliškim likom. Na ta način stereotipne in družbeno konstruirane spolne binarizacije in hierarhizacije še zdaleč ne razblinjajo, marveč jih kvečjemu dodatno gostijo in utrjujejo. Predvsem pa tako zakrivajo razumevanje, da atributi maskulinosti in femininosti ne obstajajo sami po sebi, ampak nastopajo kot vnazajski vpisi, ki odsevajo družbeno začrtane oblike poustvarjenih razmejitev in domnevnih nasprotij. Z izključnim poudarkom na prečesavanju in premeščanju pripisanih lastnosti femininosti in maskulinosti, tovrstna besedila zanemarjajo proces besedilnega vzpostavljanja in gnetenja samih subjektivitet. Pri odpravljanju te slepe pege, bi se otroška literatura lahko naslonila na upovedovalne strategije kot so žanrska prepletenka in metafikcija. Članek preverja učinek, ki ga imajo te ubesedovalne strategije pri razkrajanju binarično-hierarhičnih postulacij družbenega spola med že tradicionalno literarno socializiranim mladim bralstvom.