From Participation to Entanglements: Relational Approaches in Children’s Literature Studies

The relational child-adult ontologies emerging recently in childhood
studies under the influence of feminist new materialism and posthumanism
posit children and adults as ontological becomings and childhood and
adulthood as constituted through their mutual entanglements within
broader human and non-human assemblages. Hence, these relational
ontologies question developmental frameworks and destabilize the
child/adult binary, which is increasingly acknowledged in research practice.
Children’s literature studies, which are focused on the circulation and
reception of diverse textual forms, seem especially open to developing
understandings of multiple temporalities and intergenerational
connectivities.

Having coordinated participatory research projects involving children
as her partners in the research process, Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak reflects
on the implications of the above ideas for a children’s literature scholar
wishing to develop relational ontologies in her research with, and not just
about, children and texts. She argues that the rethinking of the researcher
subjectivity as relational, connected, and immersed in the ongoing messy
reconfigurings of the world may stimulate innovative, creative, and collective
research practices in children’s literature studies.