Feb 4, 2025 09:32 PM
(This post was last modified: Feb 4, 2025 09:41 PM by C C.)
https://asteriskmag.com/issues/09/where-...ings-arent
EXCERPTS: Where once children were instructed to be saintly, or at least virtuous, or at least ordinary, now they are invited to be weird. [...] We have finally liberated children from the shackles of our preconceived assumptions about who they are supposed to be, and now they can develop toward their true and authentic selves. But there is something that complicates this simple narrative about children’s literature...
[...] It is during the 20th century that a variety of thinkers from a variety of disciplines ... start calling the very idea of a true or authentic self into doubt. This is the period during which the Enlightenment ideal of freedom and autonomy and self-determination fell from grace, accused of fundamentally misrepresenting humanity, of disguising the fact that we are creatures thoroughly shaped by the contingencies of the culture in which we are embedded.
Given the collapse of individualism, why celebrate weirdness?
In 1960 the historian Philippe Ariès argued, famously and controversially, that “child” is a relatively new concept, emerging around the 16th and 17th centuries. Before this period, he claims, children in Europe were seen as miniature adults: "In medieval society, the idea of childhood did not exist."
[...] some will object to the claim that categories such as “gender” or “childhood” or “obesity” or “autism” are substantially socially constructed. It is important to see that with respect to many categories, there is no controversy at all.
A time traveler from the distant past would be perplexed by our world of digital nomads, social media influencers, soccer moms, vegans, homeschoolers, nerds, climate activists, gamers, graduate students, flat-earthers, anti-vaxxers, and so on. If our traveler came from ninth-century Norway, where everyone believed that the Earth was flat and schooled their kids at home and no one was vaccinated, he would still find our flat-earthers and homeschoolers and anti-vaxxers weird.
Back in medieval Norway, neither “flat-earther” nor “homeschooler” was a kind of person you could be. These days, everyone believes in social constructions. This is obvious from the media, which is eager to report to us about new ones. Here are two recent examples.
The Nov. 19 issue of New York Magazine featured an essay by Katy Schneider on the dull movement: a group of people who embrace the fact that they are not especially unique, lead unexciting lives, and are given to mundane observations. [...] All of a sudden, there is a right way to be dull. For instance, you are to call yourself a “dullster,” not a “dullard.”
On Dec. 3, the New York Times published an interview with the fashion model and actress Julia Fox titled “Julia Fox’s Guide to Being a Freak,” in which Fox positions herself as a model for other freaks [...] From this we learn that in order to be a freak, you need to be either a woman or queer.
Fox also tells you how to talk if you are a freak. You say things such as, “I’m going to be myself and live my truth” and describe yourself as “exhausted from trying to pretend to be normal all the time.” More rules for being a freak: Freaks wear clothing from designers who have fewer than 1,000 Instagram followers, they congregate at St. Mark’s Place in NYC, and they prefer to read stories “written from the point of view of an outsider, someone who’s struggling.”
Fox has a “sixth sense” for finding other freaks just like herself, and the existence of this category, of people who are, on the one hand, not “normal” or “straight,” yet are, on the other hand, just like each other is presupposed in the interview, which is framed as “a tutorial on being yourself and finding your fellow freaks.”
If you assumed that the one category that would never be normalized was “abnormality,” you underestimated humans.... (MORE - details)
EXCERPTS: Where once children were instructed to be saintly, or at least virtuous, or at least ordinary, now they are invited to be weird. [...] We have finally liberated children from the shackles of our preconceived assumptions about who they are supposed to be, and now they can develop toward their true and authentic selves. But there is something that complicates this simple narrative about children’s literature...
[...] It is during the 20th century that a variety of thinkers from a variety of disciplines ... start calling the very idea of a true or authentic self into doubt. This is the period during which the Enlightenment ideal of freedom and autonomy and self-determination fell from grace, accused of fundamentally misrepresenting humanity, of disguising the fact that we are creatures thoroughly shaped by the contingencies of the culture in which we are embedded.
Given the collapse of individualism, why celebrate weirdness?
In 1960 the historian Philippe Ariès argued, famously and controversially, that “child” is a relatively new concept, emerging around the 16th and 17th centuries. Before this period, he claims, children in Europe were seen as miniature adults: "In medieval society, the idea of childhood did not exist."
[...] some will object to the claim that categories such as “gender” or “childhood” or “obesity” or “autism” are substantially socially constructed. It is important to see that with respect to many categories, there is no controversy at all.
A time traveler from the distant past would be perplexed by our world of digital nomads, social media influencers, soccer moms, vegans, homeschoolers, nerds, climate activists, gamers, graduate students, flat-earthers, anti-vaxxers, and so on. If our traveler came from ninth-century Norway, where everyone believed that the Earth was flat and schooled their kids at home and no one was vaccinated, he would still find our flat-earthers and homeschoolers and anti-vaxxers weird.
Back in medieval Norway, neither “flat-earther” nor “homeschooler” was a kind of person you could be. These days, everyone believes in social constructions. This is obvious from the media, which is eager to report to us about new ones. Here are two recent examples.
The Nov. 19 issue of New York Magazine featured an essay by Katy Schneider on the dull movement: a group of people who embrace the fact that they are not especially unique, lead unexciting lives, and are given to mundane observations. [...] All of a sudden, there is a right way to be dull. For instance, you are to call yourself a “dullster,” not a “dullard.”
On Dec. 3, the New York Times published an interview with the fashion model and actress Julia Fox titled “Julia Fox’s Guide to Being a Freak,” in which Fox positions herself as a model for other freaks [...] From this we learn that in order to be a freak, you need to be either a woman or queer.
Fox also tells you how to talk if you are a freak. You say things such as, “I’m going to be myself and live my truth” and describe yourself as “exhausted from trying to pretend to be normal all the time.” More rules for being a freak: Freaks wear clothing from designers who have fewer than 1,000 Instagram followers, they congregate at St. Mark’s Place in NYC, and they prefer to read stories “written from the point of view of an outsider, someone who’s struggling.”
Fox has a “sixth sense” for finding other freaks just like herself, and the existence of this category, of people who are, on the one hand, not “normal” or “straight,” yet are, on the other hand, just like each other is presupposed in the interview, which is framed as “a tutorial on being yourself and finding your fellow freaks.”
If you assumed that the one category that would never be normalized was “abnormality,” you underestimated humans.... (MORE - details)
