8/14/2019 Review_ideologies of identity in adolescent fiction.pdf

1/4

Review Subjectivity and IdentityBakhtinian Readings of Texts for AdolescentsClare Bradford

Ideologies o dentity in Adolescent Fiction: TheDialogic,Construction o/Subjectivity, by RobynMcCallum. New York and London: GarlandPublishing, 1999;

Eharacteristically forthright terms. Robyn McCallumarticulates her intention in writing IdeologiesofldentitynAdolescent Fiction: to examine the representationof dialogic conceptions of subjectivity in adolescent andchildren s fiction using a Bakhtinian approach tosubjectivity language and narrative (p. 3). The measureof McCallum s success lies in the important insightswhich she provides into constructions of subjectivity ina substantial corpus of Australian, British and Americantexts for children and adolescents, and in the analyticalmodels which she formulates, which will be of lastingusefulness to scholars working in the field of children sliterature.Ideas about subjectivity and agency are slippery ones,caught between humanist and poststructuralistformulations of the relations between individuals and thecultures in which they develop as subjects. McCallum sdeploymentofBakhtinian frameworks allows her to tracerepresentations of subjectivity in the language andnarrative strategies of fictive texts, and this she doesmethodically and adroitly, so that in reading herdiscussions of many of he novels which she has selectedfor close analysis I found myself noticing features whichhad passed me by on other readings, and notinginterpretations to return to following a rereading of thefiction.A significant strength of McCallum s book is its carefulelucidationofthe language ofBakhtin s work on narrativeand representations of subjectivity; this is a crucialcontribution because Bakhtinian theory deploys aparticular set of terms, some of which will be familiar toreaders in other contexts but not as they are used withinBakhtinian frameworks. McCallum s definitionsof ermsand explanations ofconcepts are at their most informativewhen they directly inform her discussion of fiction, andthis is the second main strength of the book, for herjudicious textual analysis both sharpens one s reading ofa range of novels and suggests strategies for examiningother fictions for children and adolescents. A third strengthPapers 11 : 2 1 47

is the coherence and thoroughness with which McCallumconducts arguments, and the careful scholarship evidentin her writing.Ideologies 0/ Identity offers so much by way ofconceptualisation and analysis that it is a pity that itpresents such an unfriendly face to readers in itsintroductory chapter. As I read this chapter it seemed tome that its flavour was too strongly thatof he introductionto a thesis, with its delimitation of topics outside itspurview, its definition of key terms, its introduction totheorists and its outline of he contentof he eight chaptersof the book. Knowing that the book began its life as athesis, and thinking that my reaction was coloured by thisknowledge, I read the introduction again. but I found itdifficult to react to it except as to the beginning ofa thesis.This is partly because McCallum s writing, flexible anddirect in the body of the book, seems in the introductorychapter to strain after trying to say too much, withoutsaying quite enough. For instance, her discussion ofdifferent versions of subjectivity points out that whilehumanism often essentialises an individuality seen as thestable coreofa person s being, anti-humanist approachessuch as Marxism, structuralism and poststructuralismtend to overstate the power of social and cultural forces,to the extent that the very possibility of agency may bedenied. So far so good. But the sentence which concludesthe paragraph dealing with this contrast reads: However,it has been claimed by many theorists that Bakhtin sconcept of dialogism overcomes the opposition betweenindividuals and societies, and between humanism,structuralism, Marxism and poststructuralism (Holquist,1981 and 1983b; Polan, 1983; A White, 1984; Lodge,1990, p 21) (p. 6). What McCallum is talking about isa way ofconceptual ising how fiction represents relationsbetween individuals and societies; but in this sentence itseems as though she refers to a much larger claim, inwhich Bakhtin s concept of dialogism is invested with anoverriding capacity to overcome oppositions betweenconceptual and ideological systems. Of course the bookdoes not make such a grandiose claim; my point is thathere and elsewhere in the introduction McCallum slanguage seems unduly condensed and elliptical. In thesentence I have quoted it is not at all clear to which terms

8/14/2019 Review_ideologies of identity in adolescent fiction.pdf

2/4

the second

8/14/2019 Review_ideologies of identity in adolescent fiction.pdf

3/4

discussion, they do not often appear in the body ofMcCallum s analysis of narrative techniques andphilosophiclil issues. Moreover, modernism shades intothe postmodern in a number of features of the texts, sothat 'typically modernist' narrative strategies such as'unreliable first person narrators; extensive characterfocalization; indirect modes of discourse representation;and multiple narrative frames, strands and voices' (p.132) anticipate postmodern strategies which furtherdestabilise the tenets of liberal humanism. This is not tosay that Unleaving and ed Shift are postmodernist ratherthan modernist texts t h e y p r e d a t e J e a n - F r a n ~ o i s L y o t a r d sThe Postmodern Condition (1979), a major text ofpostmodernism); but that modernism and 'modernistnarrative strategies are categories not asunproblematically evident or watertight as McCallum'srepresentation of them might suggest.Questions about the relation of he present to the past, andspecifically about the place of history in the developmentof subjectivities, are imbricated within ideologicalformations which ascribe value to past events andpractices. The three chapters in which McCallum usesBakhtinian theory to explore how the past is representedin fiction for adolescents are, to me, the most successfulsectionof Ideologiesof dentity and represent a significantadvance in children's literature scholarship. It is difficultto choose from the array of approaches and modelsdeployed in these chapters, and I will make mention ofjust two: McCallum's discussion of the chronotope inhistorical fiction in Chapter Six; and her treatment ofdialogism and monologism in historiographic metafiction,in Chapter Eight.Bakhtin's concept of the chronotope is seldom utilised indiscussions of children 's literature, so that McCallum'sdescription of the idea and its application to textualanalysis constitutes a valuable model. The term'chronotope' means 'time-space', and refers to the'specific formal combinations of time and place (orchronotopes ) which structure a novel (p. 184).McCallum distinguishes the chronotope from thearchetypal plot types of structuralism, emphasising itscombination of the narratological and the ideological,and the function which it performs in narratives, which isPapers 11: 3 2 1 49

to provide structure and allow for the construction ofcharacters. To illustrate the workings of the chronotopein narrative, she considers the image of the 'driftway' inPenelope Lively's novel The Driftway identifying itsfour main functions: '(1) it thematically interconnects thenarrative strands; (2) it is a metaphor for historical andnarrative processes; (3) it implies a dialogical relationbetween the past and the present, and (4) it is a metaphorfor a child's development out of solipsism' (p. 189). Inshowing how intersections of time and space constructnarratological and ideological significances, McCallumboth enlarges on the concept of the chronotope and tracesits analytical functions, so providing a scaffolding whichinvites readers to consider its possibilities in relation toother texts.McCallum's treatment of dialogism and monologism intwo historiographic metafictions, Peter Hunt's Backtrackand Gary Crew's Strange Objects usefully distinguishesbetween the reading positions constructed by the twotexts. Both novels involve mysteries and both engage ingenre-mixing and frame-breaking strategies; bothincorporate historical material as well as texts using theconventions ofeveryday forms such as diaries, letters andexcerpts from newspapers. An important differencebetween the two lies in the extent to which the two authorsposition readers to interrogate not merely the veracity ofthe materials used in the narrative, but ideas about thepossibility of knowing the past. In order to develop hercomparison between the texts, McCallum conducts aperceptive and nuanced examination of the extraliterarydiscourses and narrative techniques deployed by Huntand Crew, and the interpretative positions which theyconstruct.In her conclusion to Ideologies of Identity McCallumsays that she has often 'found need to canvass difficultand rather complex ideas in order to find ways to defineand articulate the radical diversity in adolescent fiction'(p. 260). I do not believe that the Bakhtinian and otherconcepts explored in the book are in themsel ves difficult,since I agree with Peter Barry when he says that 'there arevery few inherently complex ideas in existence in literarytheory', but that 'what is difficult ... is the language oftheory' (1995, p. 7). Moreover, the extent to which

8/14/2019 Review_ideologies of identity in adolescent fiction.pdf

4/4

readers find discussionsofconcepts difficult to understanddepends largely on the knowledge which they bring to atext, so that what may be difficult to one person may bequite straightforward to another. Readers encounteringclaims of 'difficulty' in critical works are sometimespositioned as admiring observers ofanauthor' s clevernessin dealing with such difficuJtideas, a move which increasesthe distance between implied author and implied readersand creates the impression that any failure to understandan argument must surely be the faultof eaders and not thewriting. For just as readers of narrative 'infer from thetext a narrator, a voice which speaks' (Culler 1997,p. 88),so readers of critical writing infer from the text a voicewhich persuades or challenges or intervenes through theargument which it conducts.Finally, I make a similar observation to one which I madewhen I reviewed Stephens and McCallum's RetellingStories, Framing Culture for Papers, concerning the costof Ideologies of Identity, which like the earlier text sproduced by Garland, under the general editorship of

Papers 11: 3 2 1 5

Jack Zipes. y review copy offdeologies of dentity waspricedat 151.80(Australian), which places the book outof reach for most students, and even for institutionallibraries, which are increasingly reluctant to purchaseexpensive texts unless they are to be used by largenumbers of students. t is unfortunate that a book whichoffers much to researchers in children's literature isavailable only in an expensive, hard-cover edition.

REFERENCESCuller, Jonathan (1997) Literary Theory: A VeryShort Introduction. Oxford and NewYork, Oxford University Press.Barry, Peter (1995) Beginning Theory: n

Introductipn to Literary and CulturalTheory. Manchester, Manchester UniversityPress.