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.