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C O N C L U S I O N Postmoderns at the Gates of Dawn I have argued throughout this book that most of the literature read to and by children and adolescents tends to participate in the construction and reinforcement of a modernist subjectivity. Alasdair MacIntyre argues in AfterVirtue that “man is in his actions and practice, as well as in his fictions, essentially a story-telling animal,” but he adds that “I can only answer the question ‘What am I to do?’ if I can answer the prior question ‘Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?’” (216). This study has been an attempt to answer that prior question at the level of how we become a part of those stories which shape us. In The Novel as Family Romance, Christine van Boheemen says that the “significance of our stories derives from their relation to the models of signification operative in our society—causality, centrism, linearity, and teleology—which are our inescapable unconscious heritage” (13). Underlying her claims of an “inescapable unconscious heritage” is the assumption of both a novel form and a subject that have fairly stable structures. But what happens if the models of signification she lists are no longer operative or are articulated as malleable rather than inescapable? If we take subjectivity to be constructed on the model of the narrative, we are called upon to inquire into any significant changes in the form of narrative that might work themselves out as changes in the structures or at least in the contents of subjectivity itself . This is an especially important inquiry when it regards children’s literature , as the child is much more vulnerable to the vicissitudes of language than is the adult. When postmodern narrative forms are presented to adults, they may be regarded as interesting, weird, unsettling, or liberating, but they will rarely change an adult’s fundamental outlook on the relations between, j say, language and the world, representation and authority, meaning and interpretation . The adult tends to approach the text with an eye toward whether it matches his version of reality (in which case it is true or insightful) or doesn’t (in which case it is false or wrongheaded). But for the child, that “prodigiously open” creature who is using the textual Other to organize his inner as well as his outer world, everything the text tells him about the world is at some level true, because it is what generates the conditions for truth. By way of conclusion, then, I briefly outline some trends in postmodern children’s literature that may have a significant impact on the kinds of subjects our children become. To further clarify the terms presented in my introduction , I will note that most of the literature I have discussed bears the mark of the modernist subject. Where the traditional subject is thought to be whole, transparent to himself, and oriented toward some external standard of good or evil, the modernist subject is split. She has an unconscious that is inaccessible, and she regards this with a great deal of angst. Not to know herself is a violation of the traditional Aristotelian maxim, and she experiences guilt and anxiety over not being able to live up to it. Her fantasy is therefore directed toward the goal of self-knowledge. Implicit in that aim is the goal of being known by the Other, or especially by one or two privileged others with whom she has developed intimacy and trust. She values closure, even if it is fantasmatic. She insists on the possibility of a stable referent, even if it is ultimately unknowable. She believes in the world and yet represses the fact that it is a belief. Yet because of her split she can imagine a world other than the one she believes in, and she can produce that world in her arts, making them the carriers of her unconscious residue. The truly postmodern subject is, at this point in time, only a postulate. Part of the reason for this, I think, is because children’s literature has only recently begun to adopt the narrative conventions of postmodern literature. Perhaps the ambivalence felt by many writers toward postmodern techniques has prohibited them from enacting those techniques for an audience we feel deserves our protection from undue stress and anxiety. On the other hand, could it be said that the child’s perceived delight in and celebration of...

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