Ideologies of Identity in Adolescent Fiction examines the representation of selfhood in adolescent and children's fiction, using a Bakhtinian approach to subjectivity, language, and narrative. The ideological frames within which identities are formed are inextricably bound up with ideas about subjectivity, ideas which pervade and underpin adolescent fictions. Although the humanist subject has been systematically interrogated by recent philosophy and criticism, the question which lies at the heart of fiction for young people is not whether a coherent self exists but what kind of self it is and what are the conditions of its coming into being. Ideologiesof Identity in Adolescent Fiction has a double focus: first, the images of selfhood that the fictions offer their readers, especially the interactions between selfhood, social and cultural forces, ideologies, and other selves; and second, the strategies used to structure narrative and to represent subjectivity and intersubjectivity.
Über den Autor Robyn McCallum
Robyn McCallum is an independent scholar in the area of children's and youth literature, film and culture. She taught at Macquarie University, Australia, for twenty-five years, and is author of Ideologies of Identity in Adolescent Fiction (1999), and co-author of Retelling Stories, Framing Culture (1998; with John Stephens) and New World Orders in Contemporary Children's Literature (2008; with Clare Bradford, Kerry Mallan and John Stephens).