The Problem of ‘Power’: Metacritical Implications of Aetonormativity for Children’s Literature Research

This article takes as its starting point the concept of aetonormativity (the adult normativity germane to the discourse of children’s literature), coined by Maria Nikolajeva ( 2010 ) in an attempt to unify the increasingly power-oriented theories of children’s literature criticism within the past few decades. Acknowledging the usefulness of this concept, but wary of the fact that it could imply an easy transference of “adult” power theory to the study of children’s literature, I argue that an aetonormativity-centred system of children’s literature criticism crucially needs to reconceptualise the notion of “power” which lies at its heart. Any automatic connection between adult normativity and adult “power” would thus be questioned and critiqued. I propose a first conceptual split of “power” into “authority” and “might”, and a consequent redistribution of these two concepts to the adult and child parties in the children’s book. I then investigate the critical and metacritical implications, within the framework of an aetonormativity-centred criticism of children’s literature, of an increased subtlety in the use and handling of the concept of power when referring to the complex medium of the children’s text.