Roberta Trites: "Disturbing the Universe"
Importance/meaning of title: making active choices, "disturbing" the world as it is.
-Power: institutional, question in all novels.
-Trifecta: reader, text, and outside world or culture.
-Universal question for adolescence: what is my role in the world?
-"The Chocolate War": disturbing the universe, rebelling, complicated workings of power
-Adolescence as liminal space: both empowered and disempowered
Themes/elements in most Young Adult literature:
-school
-boys, relationships, parents
-sexuality
-religion
All of these lead to social institutions
-Adolescence is also about how adolescents learn about power, not just rite of passages.
-Trites to change typical approach to Young Adult literature: ideas of power from Althuser, Foucault, Butler, and Lacan.
Althuser: Hegemony imbedded in this Ideological State Apparatus
can see his ideas in school: what you are learning- how to be successful in life
Foucault: Power as action- something you do, not something you have.
Power is everywhere, not just possessed by individuals
Butler: Relies heavily on Foucault (power more of a process)
Creates subject and subordinates subject
Lacan: "Assomption" - individual power and recognition of social forces that require them to change- based on their role in society.
Struggle between external and internal forces that compete to empower/repress individual power
Mary Pipher: "Reviving Ophelia"
-Reaches wider audience - not solely academics
-From 1994 but doesn't feel that dated. Written during the 90's- time of deregulation of children's TV; media's large effect on children and girls
As you read...
What are you getting from this book?
What are you giving to this book?
Ideas from this section:
-Girls pulling away from parents and toward their peers.
-Weight issues- perfection, influence of media, pop culture
-Creation of "false selves"
No comments:
Post a Comment