ABSTRACT
Academic studies vis a vis ‘childhood’ and its various facets has grown considerably over the last few decades. Yet, the scholarship available in this domain is far from being comprehensive or complete. The realization that children unlike adults possess nascent coping mechanisms, rudimentary grasp of language and liminal power of expression became evident in the twentieth century. That children’s psyches are adversely and uniquely affected in wars waged by adults began to be envisaged as more and more children started becoming victims of multiple instances of wars, riots, ethnic hostilities, civil war across the globe in twentieth century. These disruptive and invasive events bring to the fore the vulnerability of a child while also reinforcing the discourse that a child’s consciousness differs from an adult, that childhood is not an unproblematic biological qualifier but a particular cultural phrasing, historically and politically contingent.
This study enquires how children’s losses and traumas have been addressed and represented. Using discourses from different genres like literature, cinema, television series, animation, graphic novels and paintings etc., these essays focus on the representations of children as victims, transgressors or witnesses to horrific instances that have destroyed or threaten to destroy their childhood. It substantiates the relatively extant scholarship on child and childhood, child and trauma, and the politics of representation of attending childhood trauma. Collectively the essays in this volume in variant ways offer a rich and intense insight into childhood trauma and the attendant politics of representation. While a few essays focus on narratives by children themselves, others constitute the category of retrospective literature that has been written by adults who have experienced trauma as a child. Again, some essays look into the complicity attending any attempts at reconstruction. The project is an attempt to address the lacunae in children’s studies and also hopes to open channels for further intervention and debate.
