Looking glasses and neverlands : Lacan, desire, and subjectivity in children's literature

This groundbreaking study introduces and explores Lacan’s complex theories of subjectivity and desire through close readings of canonical children’s books such as Charlotte’s Web, Stellaluna, Holes, Tangerine, and The Chocolate War. Looking Glasses and Neverlands thus provides an introduction to an increasingly influential body of difficult work while making the claim that children’s textual encounters are as significant as their existential ones in constituting their subjectivities and giving shape to their desires. The texts render lucid Lacan’s theory, and the theory helps explain why the texts remain so profoundly influential in constructing a child’s sense of self. Coats shows how our literate culture has come to define and cope with the inevitable losses and separations of childhood, and how discourses of race, gender, and desire get written on our bodies, transforming us into the subjects we are. The book offers a comprehensive introduction to Lacan’s theories of subjectivity, gender, and ethics and also extends those theories into discussions of race and the distinctions between modernist and postmodernist subjectivity. Coats explains Lacanian concepts such as the registers of the real, the imaginary, and the symbolic, alienation and separation, and the nature of desire, the objet a, and jouissance; she also takes up Lacan’s concept of logical rather than chronological time, showing how picture books facilitate the child’s emerging sense of boundaries and otherness and help her establish the imaginary ideals that will foster her growth. Finally, Coats looks at how children’s books help a child situate himself with respect to language in the symbolic order, acquire a preferred psychic structure, adopt a gendered public identity, and develop a sense of ethics that may or may not respect the space between the self and other. Looking Glasses and Neverlands will be of great interest to students and scholars of children’s and adolescent literature and readers interested in Lacanian psychoanalytic theory and the psychoanalytic study of culture and society. "This study introduces and explores Lacan's complex theories of subjectivity and desire through close readings of canonical children's books such as Charlotte's Web, Stella-luna, Holes, Tangerine, the The Chocolate War. Looking Glasses and Neverlands thus provides an introduction to an increasingly influential body of difficult work while making the claim that children's textual encounters are as significant as their existential ones in constituting their subjectivities and giving shape to their desires. The texts render lucid Lacan's theory, and the theory helps explain why the texts remain so profoundly influential in constructing a child's sense of self." Contents......Page 8 Introduction......Page 12 How to save your life : lessons from a runt pig......Page 26 A time to mourn : the loss of the mother......Page 48 Mourning into dancing : recuperating the loss of the mother......Page 70 Looking glasses and neverlands : beyond the symbolic......Page 88 "I never explain anything" : children's literature and sexuation......Page 108 Blinded by the white : the responsibilities of race......Page 132 Abjection and adolescent fiction : ways out......Page 148 Conclusion : postmoderns at the gates of dawn......Page 172 Notes......Page 184 Bibliography......Page 190 Index......Page 198 Annotation. A "Choice" Outstanding Academic Title This groundbreaking study introduces and explores Lacan's complex theories of subjectivity and desire through close readings of canonical children's books such asCharlotte's Web, Stellaluna, Holes, Tangerine, andThe Chocolate War, providing an introduction to an increasingly influential body of difficult work while making the claim that children's textual encounters are as significant as their existential ones in constituting their subjectivities and giving shape to their desires A “Choice” Outstanding Academic TitleThis groundbreaking study introduces and explores Lacan's complex theories of subjectivity and desire through close readings of canonical children's books such as Charlotte's Web, Stellaluna, Holes, Tangerine, and The Chocolate War, providing an introduction to an increasingly influential body of difficult work while making the claim that children's textual encounters are as significant as their existential ones in constituting their subjectivities and giving shape to their desires. "Looking Glasses and Neverlands will be of interest to students and scholars of children's and adolescent literature and readers interested in Lacanian psychoanalytic theory and the psychoanalytic study of culture and society."--Jacket