Imagining Children Otherwise

Researchers in a range of fields have acknowledged that childhood is a construct emerging from modernist perspectives that have not always benefited those who are younger. The purposes of the Rethinking Childhood series are to provide critical locations for scholarship that challenges the universalization of childhood and introduces new, reconceptualized, and critical spaces from which opportunities and possibilities are generated for those who are younger. Diverse histories and cultures are considered of major importance, as well as issues of critical social justice.

The purpose of this book is to imagine things otherwise in theorizing childhood subjectivity. The work brings together influential thinkers who are forthright in their refusal to be seduced by simplistic binaries, who are willing to address the notion of childhood subjectivity in ways that are complex and critical, and whose arguments lead to practical advances in our thinking about child policy, child-rearing, pedagogy, and curriculum. The contributors, distinguished authors from across the English-speaking world, are concerned about the ways in which teachers' practices are increasingly boundaried and policed, and they grieve for the stifling consequences for future generations of children. Postcolonial and poststructural theories, psychoanalysis, critical theory, personal narrative, and indigenous epistemologies are used creatively to pose the question of childhood subjectivity and to engage the promise of the question-child. This work contributes to a reconsideration of childhood and a rethinking of how we might enhance each child's journey toward becoming.