ABSTRACT
This chapter provides the book’s theoretical foundations. Questioning the assumption that the constructivist paradigm in the study of childhood is a homogenous academic practice, the author argues that many critics disagree over the extent to which childhood is constructed, rather than exhausting the intriguing implications of a constructivist approach. With recourse to deconstructivist impulses by Jacqueline Rose, Karín Lesnik-Oberstein and Chris Jenks, the chapter proposes that the reason why it is so difficult to conceive of childhood as a constructed identity is because it has been established as the exact opposite: a natural phase of life. The chapter then develops an approach to childhood that intends to evade this potential pitfall. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s concepts of discourse and dispositif, the chapter theorises childhood as a discursive construct. The final section of this chapter furthers these points with reference to Jürgen Link’s notions of interdiscourse and normalism, which make Foucault’s concepts applicable to literature and suggest how contemporary fiction adopts criticism’s constructivist paradigm and popularises it for wider audiences.
