Philosophy of Childhood Today
Exploring the Boundaries
Contributions by Thomas J. J. Storme, Giuseppe Ferraro, Walter Omar Kohan, Andrew Komasinski, Karin Fry, Tyson Lewis, Daniel Contage, Stefano Oliverio, Joshua M. Hall, Natalie M. Fletcher, James Stillwaggon, Bernardina Leal, Nancy Vansieleghem, Karin Murris Edited by Brock Bahler, David Kennedy Montclair State Universit
Publication date:
28 October 2016Length of book:
238 pagesPublisher
Lexington BooksDimensions:
235x162mm6x9"
ISBN-13: 9781498542609
Although philosophy of childhood has always played some part in philosophical discourse, its emergence as a field of postmodern theory follows the rise, in the late nineteenth century, of psychoanalysis, for which childhood is a key signifier. Then in the mid-twentiethcentury Philipe Aries’s seminal Centuries of Childhood introduced the master-concept of childhood as a social and cultural invention, thereby weakening the strong grip of biological metaphors on imagining childhood. Today, while philosophy of childhood per se is a relatively boundaryless field of inquiry, it is one that has clear distinctions from history, anthropology, sociology, and even psychology of childhood. This volume of essays, which represents the work of a diverse, international set of scholars, explores the shapes and boundaries of the emergent field, and the possibilities for mediating encounters between its multiple sectors, including history of philosophy, philosophy of education, pedagogy, literature and film, psychoanalysis, family studies, developmental theory, ethics, history of subjectivity, history of culture, and evolutionary theory. The resultis an engaging introduction to philosophy of childhood for those unfamiliar with this area of scholarship, and a timely compendium and resource for those for whom it is a new disciplinary articulation.
For too long, conceptions of childhood have been in thrall to linear, teleological, normative, developmental notions of child growth. Educational prescriptions are often built on this narrow epistemological foundation, further narrowed by disciplinary regimes focused on compliance, and curriculum regimes focused on mastery of testable factoids of information. This book with its diverse, multidisciplinary scholarship, and searching inquiry into the meaning and experiences of children, offers a powerful counter-narrative, and opens up a space for thinking of children in terms that refuse fixity and binaries, and offers up powerful metaphors for how we might assist children in coming to be and in experiencing the liberatory possibilities of expansive subjectivity and critical imagination.