The Virtual Child, or Six Provocations on Children’s Literature and (Pre-) Digital Culture

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dc.contributor.authorMason, Derritt
dc.date.accessioned2022-03-02T22:50:10Z
dc.date.available2022-03-02T22:50:10Z
dc.date.issued2021-01
dc.descriptionOriginally published in The Lion and the Unicorn 45.1 (Jan 2021)en_US
dc.description.abstractAnxieties about children and the virtual might feel unique to the digital age, but as this essay clarifies, a longer, pre-digital history of “the virtual child” demonstrates that the child itself has long been “virtual,” not merely—and only recently—confronted by the perils of virtual space. Such a history illuminates the peculiarity of our current cultural moment, wherein worries about the digital virtual collide with the child’s enduring construction (by adults) as a virtual being that is, simultaneously and paradoxically, both promising and threatening. Children’s literature often aims to instill virtue, or moral quality, in the child, while mapping and regulating their Virtù, or power, creativity, and possible lack of morality. The child’s virtuality has been the subject of adult concern for centuries, such that worried attempts to manage the child’s virtuality end up producing virtual spaces for this management to take place. Frequently, these virtual spaces take shape inside imperialist narratives of colonial exploitation that assign distinctly gendered tasks to its participants, grooming them for heterosexual adulthood. Such narratives survive today, yielding not only apprehensions about and hopes for the virtual child in a digital era, but also new forms of resistance to these enduring conventions.en_US
dc.description.grantingagencySocial Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)en_US
dc.identifier.citationMason, D. (2021). The Virtual Child, or Six Provocations on Children's Literature and (Pre-) Digital Culture. The Lion and the Unicorn, 45(1), 1-24.en_US
dc.identifier.doihttp://dx.doi.org/10.1353/uni.2021.0001en_US
dc.identifier.grantnumber430-2019-00178en_US
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1880/114443
dc.language.isoengen_US
dc.publisherJohn's Hopkins University Pressen_US
dc.publisher.departmentEnglishen_US
dc.publisher.facultyArtsen_US
dc.publisher.hasversionpublishedVersionen_US
dc.publisher.institutionUniversity of Calgaryen_US
dc.rightsUnless otherwise indicated, this material is protected by copyright and has been made available with authorization from the copyright owner. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission.en_US
dc.subjectdigitalen_US
dc.subjectchildren's literatureen_US
dc.subjectvirtualen_US
dc.subjectchildhood studiesen_US
dc.subjectBildungsromanen_US
dc.titleThe Virtual Child, or Six Provocations on Children’s Literature and (Pre-) Digital Cultureen_US
dc.typejournal articleen_US
ucalgary.item.requestcopytrueen_US
ucalgary.scholar.levelFacultyen_US
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