The case of 'The Case of Peter Pan or the Impossibility of Children’s Fiction': deconstruction, psychoanalysis, childhood, animality

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Jacqueline Rose, The Case of Peter Pan or the Impossibility of Children’s Fiction (Philadelphia. PA, Pennsylvania University Press, 1992 (1984)). Key, closely related, psychoanalytic and/ or deconstructive readings of the child in developmental psychology include: Erica Burman, Deconstructing Developmental Psychology (London, Routledge, third edition 2016 (1994)); in neuroscience: Jan De Vos, The Metamorphoses of the Brain: Neurologisation and its Discontents (Houndmills, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) and Karín Lesnik-Oberstein, ‘Children’s Literature, Cognitivism and Neuroscience’ in Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Childhood in Contemporary Britain: Literature, Media and Society, edited by Ralf Schneider and Sandra Dinter (London, Routledge, 2017), 67-85; in evolutionary psychology and theory of language acquisition: Karín Lesnik-Oberstein and Neil Cocks, ‘Back to Where We Came From, Evolutionary Psychology and Children’s Literature and Media’, in Reinventing Childhood Nostalgia: Books, Toys and Contemporary Media Culture, edited by Elisabeth Wesseling (London, Routledge, 2017), 318-37. These works all offer a different understanding of the implications of neuroscience and evolutionary psychology for thinking about childhood and children’s literature than much recent work in children’s literature studies on neuroscience such as that of, for instance, Maria Nikolajeva, in, ‘What is it Like to be a Child? Childness in the Age of Neuroscience’, Children’s Literature in Education, 50: 1 (2019), 23-37. Some of my prior analyses of such mis-readings of Rose’s The Case of Peter Pan include: Karín Lesnik-Oberstein, Children’s Literature: Criticism and the Fictional Child (Oxford, Clarendon Press of Oxford University Press, 1994); Karín Lesnik-Oberstein, ‘The Psychopathology of Everyday Children’s Literature Criticism’, Cultural Critique, 45, (Spring 2000), 222-43; Karín Lesnik-Oberstein, ‘Introduction. Children’s Literature, New Approaches’ in Children’s Literature: New Approaches, edited by Karín Lesnik-Oberstein, (Houndmills, Palgrave, 2004), 1-25; Karín Lesnik-Oberstein, ‘Childhood, Queer Theory, and Feminism’, Feminist Theory, 11:3 (2010), 309-21; Karín Lesnik-Oberstein, ‘Introduction, Voice, Agency and the Child’ in Children in Culture, Revisited: Further Approaches to Childhood edited by Karín Lesnik-Oberstein (Houndmills, Palgrave, 2011), 1-18; Karín Lesnik-Oberstein, ‘Gender, Childhood and Children’s Literature, the CIRCL Approach’, Asian Women, 32:2 (2016), 1-26; Karín Lesnik-Oberstein, ‘Children’s Literature, Sexual Identity, Gender and Childhood’, BREAC: An Online Journal of Irish Studies (2016), https://breac.nd.edu/articles/childrens-literature-sexual-identity-gender-and-childhood/, consulted 13 June 2019, 5.20 m. Clifford Geertz, ‘Common Sense as a Cultural System’, The Antioch Review, 33:1 (1975), 5-26, provides an alternative, classic, critique of ‘common sense’. Sigmund Freud, ‘Preface to the Fourth Edition’ in Sigmund Freud, ‘Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality’, in Sigmund Freud, A Case of Hysteria, Three Essays on Sexuality and Other Works, SE, vol. VII (1901-1905), translated by and general editor James Strachey (Toronto, The Hogarth Press Ltd, 1968), 133-135, 133. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore, MA., Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), 244-5. Italics in original. In relation specifically to issues on (sexual) identity in connection to Derrida’s arguments, the key theorist for issues on (sexual) identity read deconstructively is Judith Butler, for instance in her book Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (London, Routledge, 1990). I analyse the same mis-readings of Butler’s work as that of Jacqueline Rose in: Karín Lesnik-Oberstein and Stephen Thomson, ‘What is Queer Theory Doing With the Child?’, Parallax, 8: 1 (2002), 35-46; Lesnik-Oberstein, ‘Childhood, Queer Theory, and Feminism’; Lesnik-Oberstein, ‘Children’s Literature, Sexual Identity, Gender and Childhood’; Lesnik-Oberstein, ‘Gender, Childhood and Children’s Literature, the CIRCL Approach’; Karín Lesnik-Oberstein, On Having an Own Child: Reproductive Technologies and the Cultural Construction of Childhood (London, Karnac, 2008). David Valentine’s Imagining Transgender: An Ethnography of a Category (Durham, N.C., Duke University Press, 2007) and David Valentine, ‘Sue E. Generous, Toward a Theory of Non-Transexuality’, Feminist Studies 38: 1 (2012), 185-211, offer non-essentialist analyses of transgender. For psychoanalytic and deconstructive readings of the ‘animal’ specifically in relation to the child and children’s literature, see: Sue Walsh, ‘Animal/ Child, It’s the “Real” Thing’ in Yearbook of English Studies on ‘Children in Literature’, edited by Karín Lesnik-Oberstein, 32 (2002), 151-63; Sue Walsh, Kipling’s Children’s Literature: Language, Identity and Constructions of Childhood (London, Routledge, 2010); Sue Walsh, ‘The Child in Wolf’s Clothing, The Meanings of the “Wolf” and Questions of Identity in Jack London’s White Fang’, European Journal of American Culture, 32:1 (2013), 55-77. In relation to my discussions here of the mis-readings of Rose and Butler’s arguments, the same mis-readings occur also of Walsh’s arguments on children’s literature and animals; some of the most recent examples of this include Amy Ratelle, Animality and Children’s Literature and Film (Houndmills, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), Anna Feuerstein and Carmen Nolte-Odhiambo, Childhood and Pethood in Literature and Culture: New Perspectives in Childhood Studies and Animal Studies (London, Routledge, 2017), Zoe Jaques, Children’s Literature and the Posthuman: Animal, Environment, Cyborg (London, Routledge, 2015). Rose, The Case of Peter Pan, 13. Jacques Derrida, ‘The Animal That Therefore I Am (More To Follow)’, translated by David Wills, Critical Inquiry, 28: 2 (Winter, 2002), 369-418, 398. Rose, The Case of Peter Pan, 12. Rose, The Case of Peter Pan, 1. David Rudd and Anthony Pavlik (eds.), ‘The (Im)Possibility of Children’s Fiction, Rose Twenty-Five Years On’, Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, 35: 3 (2010), 223-229, 225. Jessica Love, Julian is a Mermaid (London, Walker Books, 2018) and Jessica Love, Julián is a Mermaid (Somerville, Mass., Candlewick Publishers, 2018). In my discussion I will follow the edition used in the texts I am reading and include page references in parentheses. I wish to thank here all my CIRCL colleagues and students who inspire me by reading with me, but in terms of this text especially: Neil Cocks, Yuna Nam, Natalie England, Sara Zadrozny and Alexander Hellens. I also wish to thank the guest, co-editor of this issue of the Oxford Literary Review, Jennifer Ford, for all her very helpful suggestions. Jacques Derrida, The Truth in Painting, translated by Geoffrey Bennington and Ian McLeod (Chicago, Ill., University of Chicago Press, 1987 (1978)), 12. Rose, The Case of Peter Pan, 16. ‘Abuela’ (here pluralised by Linda Sue Park) is the Spanish in the American edition, translated in the English edition as ‘Nana’. The implications of the Spanish word in an otherwise English language text in the American edition and the translation in the English edition are touched on later in this article in relation to issues of ethnic identity. Linda Sue Park, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/16/books/review/childrens-picture-anxiety-kindness-kerascoet-jessica-love.html, consulted 10 January 2019, 2:15 pm. It might be claimed that in using reviews I am not engaging with academic children’s literature criticism, but in fact I read in both a reliance on the same structural assumptions (the same ‘various dualisms’) as I explain further throughout this article. Maria Popova, https://www.brainpickings.org/2018/06/07/julian-is-a-mermaid-jessica-love/, consulted 10 January 2019, 3:18 p.m. Elizabeth Bird, http://blogs.slj.com/afuse8production/2018/01/05/review-of-the-day-julian-is-a-mermaid-by-jessica-love/, consulted 10 January 2019, 3:46 p.m. Laura Jiménez, https://booktoss.blog/2018/09/24/trans-people-arent-mythical-creatures/, consulted 13 June 2019, 4:33 p.m. For another review reflecting on how Jiménez’s review challenged her initial, positive, reception of Julián is a Mermaid: Beverly Slapin, http://decoloresreviews.blogspot.com/2018/09/another-look-at-julian-is-mermaid.html, consulted 13 June 2019, 4:55 p.m. I will discuss issues around pronouns and gender specifically later on, including why I write ‘himself’ here. Derrida, The Truth in Painting, 8-9. I write this fully aware of the fact that very many children’s literature critics have written extensively about childhood as ‘constructed’ or ‘idealised’, but this in no way detracts from my reading of those claims as in turn always resting on a child underneath or behind all that construction or idealisation who is, after all, not constructed, but simply true and real. My extensive analyses of this are referenced under footnote 1, but other relevant analyses are: Neil Cocks, Student Centred: Education, Freedom and the Idea of Audience (Ashby de la Zouch, Inkermen Press/ Axis Series, 2009); Neil Cocks, The Peripheral Child in Nineteenth-Century Literature and its Criticism (Houndmills, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); Sue Walsh, Kipling’s Children’s Literature. Derrida, The Truth in Painting, 2 I would like to stress here again that as part and parcel of reading psychoanalytically and deconstructively, I am not claiming that ‘perspectives’ here are the authors’ (and reviewers’) intentions, I cannot know their intentions in this sense. Neither are authorship or reviewership any the more exempt from the psychoanalytic and deconstructive disruptions of ‘identity’ as unitary and autonomous ‘objects’ as with any other ‘identity’, including the child. Robbie Voss, ‘Mermaid Musings, or, “There is Not Enough Woman to Make Love to, and Too Much Fish to Fry.’” Amsterdam Social Science, 4:1 (2012), 67-72, 68. It may be noted that the more critical views with respect to LGBTQ+ issues, such as those of Jiménez, nevertheless again rely on the same, underpinning, critical assumptions. Josh Jackman, https://www.Jackman.co.uk/2019/02/17/trans-kids-book-julian-is-a-mermaid-awards/, consulted 12 April 2019, 10:24 a.m. https://www.Jackman.co.uk/2019/02/17/trans-kids-book-julian-is-a-mermaid-awards/, consulted 12 April 2019, 11:28 a.m. My more extensive analyses of perspectives on queer identities, transexuality (sic), transgender and childhood and children’s literature include:Lesnik-Oberstein and Thomson, ‘What is Queer Theory Doing With the Child?’; Lesnik-Oberstein, ‘Childhood, Queer Theory, and Feminism’; Lesnik-Oberstein, ‘Children’s Literature, Sexual Identity, Gender and Childhood’. Valentine, ‘Sue E. Generous, Toward a Theory of Non-Transexuality’, 199. Daniel Monk, ‘Homophobic Bullying, A Queer Tale of Childhood Politics’ in Children in Culture, Revisited: Further Approaches to Childhood, edited by Karín Lesnik-Oberstein (Houndmills, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 55-73, 61. Italics in original. Julián is a Mermaid, 1. Julián is a Mermaid has no page numbers, but I will count pages myself as starting at page 1 from this page with ‘This is a boy named Julián’. Julián is a Mermaid, 2. Park, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/16/books/review/childrens-picture-anxiety-kindness-kerascoet-jessica-love.html Julián is a Mermaid, back cover blurb. Park, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/16/books/review/childrens-picture-anxiety-kindness-kerascoet-jessica-love.html Jackman, https://www.Jackman.co.uk/2019/02/17/trans-kids-book-julian-is-a-mermaid-awards/ Julián is a Mermaid, in what Linda Sue Park calls the ‘initial spread’ and ‘final illustration’, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/16/books/review/childrens-picture-anxiety-kindness-kerascoet-jessica-love.html Park, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/16/books/review/childrens-picture-anxiety-kindness-kerascoet-jessica-love.html ; Bird, http://blogs.slj.com/afuse8production/2018/01/05/review-of-the-day-julian-is-a-mermaid-by-jessica-love/; Popova, http://blogs.slj.com/afuse8production/2018/01/05/review-of-the-day-julian-is-a-mermaid-by-jessica-love/ Julián is a Mermaid, back cover blurb. Park, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/16/books/review/childrens-picture-anxiety-kindness-kerascoet-jessica-love.html