ABSTRACT
This chapter moves on from the reflexive and disciplinary-specific concerns of Chapter 2 to critically explicate a specific theme: the relationship between models of childhood and modernity as mobilised, parodied and-it is argued-ultimately reconstructed within postmodern accounts. Lyotard’s (1992) The Postmodern Explained to Children is juxtaposed with a reading of Benjamin’s ideas (drawn together from a variety of his writings-since this piece was first written before the publication in 2006 of the English translation of Benjamin’s Berlin Childhood Around 1900). It is argued that Benjamin’s conceptualisation of children and childhood anticipates postmodern discussions but avoids some of their pitfalls. However, the ‘romance’ surrounding the child remains discernible both in Benjamin’s own writing and in the ways his commentators take this up. It seems that recourse to the child as a utopian or dystopian figure is irresistible, even to theorists whose accounts speak to the significant disenchantment with the project of societal development and revolutionary change.
