Thinking and doing with childism in children's literature studies

Abstract

In this article we share our reflections on how childism has enabled us to navigate theoretical assumptions shaping our field and develop new positions and research practices fostering child–adult interdependencies. Justyna Deszcz‐Tryhubczak has relied on childism as a framework for the introduction of participatory research with young readers as a way for advancing child–adult collaboration. Macarena García‐González has deployed childism to think about adultism and its analogies to sexism. Although we offer a critique of childism as an essentializing concept, we also show how for both of us it has served as a gateway towards other approaches, and especially post‐anthropocentric understandings both of texts, readers and the world and of our critical engagements. Finally, we argue that childism may remain a productive starting point for further openings in children's literature and culture studies and childhood studies if it becomes a plural and messy notion that questions the discourse of hope for a better future as defining children's lives.