Life Narratives and Youth Culture: Representation, Agency and Participation

271 Pages·2016·4.12 MB·English

by  Kate Douglas

STUDIES IN
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH
Life Narratives and
Youth Culture
Representation, Agency and Participation
Kate Douglas and Anna Poletti
Studies in Childhood and Youth
This series offers a multi-disciplinary perspective on exploring childhood
and youth as social phenomena that are culturally located, articulating
children’s and young people’s perspectives on their everyday lives. The
aim of the series will be to continue to develop these theoretical perspec-
tives through publishing both monographs and edited collections that
present cutting-edge research within the area of childhood studies. It will
provide a key locus for work within the field that is currently published
across a diverse range of outlets and will help consolidate and develop
childhood studies as a discrete field of scholarship.
More information about this series at
http://www.springer.com/series/14474
Kate Douglas • Anna Poletti
Life Narratives and
Youth Culture
Representation, Agency and Participation
Kate Douglas
Flinders University
Adelaide, Australia
Anna Poletti
Monash University
Clayton, Australia
Utrecht University
Utrecht, The Netherlands
Studies in Childhood and Youth
ISBN 978-1-137-55116-0 ISBN 978-1-137-55117-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-55117-7
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016957998
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016
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Acknowledgements
An earlier version of sections of the Introduction (Chap. 1) was pub-
lished as “Rethinking ‘Virtual’ Youth: Young People and Life Writing”
in Mediated Youth Cultures, Andy Griffiths and Brady Robards (eds).
New York: Palgrave. 77–94. A version of Chap. 4 was published as “Ethical
Dialogues: Youth, Memoir, Trauma” in a/b: Auto/Biography Studies 30.2
(2015): 271–288.
Materials from the Introduction and Chap. 6 were presented as con-
ference papers at International Auto/Biography Association Conference,
Australian National University (2012). Materials from Chaps. 4 and 7 were
presented at the International Auto/Biography Association Conference,
Banff (2014). Material from Chap. 8 was presented at the Auto/Biography
Association Americas Chapter Conference, Ann Arbor (2015).
We would like to acknowledge the supportive and rigorous environ-
ment of the International Auto/Biography Association, where many ele-
ments of this project were first explored. We thank our colleagues who
provided generous feedback on our presentations and support for the
project. We want to particularly thank Sarah Brophy, Kylie Cardell,
Leigh Gilmore, Craig Howes, Claire Lynch, Laurie McNeill, Aimée
Morrison, Julie Rak, Candida Rifkind, Sidonie Smith, Julia Watson,
Gillian Whitlock and John Zuern, who offered critique, useful advice
and tips that have proven invaluable to the project. The work of these
scholars has provided inspiration throughout.
v
vi Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the reviewers of the manuscript for their con-
sidered engagement with the project and its aims, and the staff at Palgrave
Macmillan, particularly Harriet Barker, for their support for the project.
Anna would like to thank Kate for proposing this collaboration, for
her generous questioning and her commitment to ethical scholarship.
Thank you to the archivists whose knowledge, expertise and patience
were fundamental to the research that informs this book: Lisa Darms
and Rachel Greer at the Fales Library at New York University, and Jenna
Freedman and Shannon O’Neill at Barnard College Library. Thanks also
to the artists who granted permission for their work to be reproduced:
Kathleen Hanna, Miriam Basilio, Emma D, Jami Sailor and Amanda. My
work on this project has benefited enormously from conversations with
and provocations from Paul Byron, Catherine Strong, Sara Rosa Espi,
Luke Sinclair, Shane McGrath, Thomas Blatchford, Jon Dale, Lauren
Berlant and Julie Rak. The support of my colleagues at Monash has been
vital; thank you to Ali Alizadeh, Robin Gerster, Sue Kossew, Melinda
Harvey and Simone Murray. Thanks must also go to the Faculty of Arts
at Monash University for financial support for this project.
A final thank you must go to Johannes Klabbers, who wrote his own
book alongside this one.
Kate would like to thank Anna for being a wonderful collaborator, and
generous and inspirational colleague throughout the development of this
project. Thank you to the Faculty of Education, Humanities and Law at
Flinders University for their financial support of this project. Thank you
to my Flinders colleagues and/or members of the Flinders Life Narrative
Research Group who have acted as readers, listened to presentations
or provided general encouragement along the way: Kylie Cardell, Lisa
Bennett, Pamela Graham, Tully Barnett, Emma Maguire, Hannah Kent,
Threasa Meads, Amy Matthews, Erin Sebo and Patrick Allington.
Finally, thank you to my partner Danni and to my children Ella, Josh
and Darcy who always provide the right dose of inspiration, distraction
and encouragement.
Contents
Part I Young Writers and Life Narrative Encounters 1
1 I ntroduction 3
Youth, Life Narrative and the Self(ie) 3
“Youth” and Young People: A Note on Terminology 9
Life Narrative as a Literary Form and Cultural Practice 11
Making Visible Young People’s Contribution to the Archive
of Life Writing: Three Spaces of Youth Life Writing 14
Private Written Forms 14
Public Literary Forms 19
Young People, Media and Identity 21
Life Narratives and Youth Cultures: Representation Agency
and Participation 25
A Brief Note on Method and the Ethics of Studying Youth 29
2 Youth and Revolutionary Romanticism: Young Writers
Within and Beyond the Literary Field 33
The Risky Business of Youth Life Narrative 34
Bourdieu and the Role of Generations in the Literary Field 37
The Contemporary Hierarchy of Genres: The Status of Life
Writing 44
vii
viii Contents
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius: Masculine
Position-Taking and Literary Revolution 48
Race, Class, Youth and the Literary Field: Gangsta Rap and
gangsta Memoir 56
Conclusion 59
Part II Writing War 61
3 War Diaries: Representation, Narration and Mediation 63
Children Writing the Holocaust: Youth and the Diary Form 65
Children of the Holocaust (1995); We Are Witnesses (1995);
and Salvaged Pages (2002) 70
Conclusion 87
4 Lost Boys: Child Soldier Memoirs and the Ethics of
Reading 89
Trauma and Ethical Scholarship 91
Life Writings of Trauma: African Child Soldier Memoirs 94
Mediated but Radical? Emmanuel Jal’s War Child 98
The Ethic of Verification: Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone 105
Memoir, Trauma and Youth: Towards an Ethics of
Scholarship 113
Part III Girlhoods Interrupted 119
5 The Riot Grrrl Epistolarium 121
Riot Grrrl: The Convergence of Youth, Gender and
Cultural Production 122
Letters as Life Writing 126
What Letters Can Tell Us About Riot Grrrl 127
Archiving Riot Grrrl: Positioning the Epistolarium 130
Contents ix
The Riot Grrrl Epistolarium 133
First Contact 135
Fan Grrrls 139
The Work of Articulation: Letters Between Friends 142
The Problem of Intimacy for/in Young Women’s Feminism 146
6 Impossible Subjects: Addiction and Redemption in
Memoirs of Girlhood 149
The “Bad Girls” of Memoir 149
Positioning “the Girl” 153
The Girl, the Memoir 157
Koren Zailckas: Smashed 158
Fury 167
Conclusion: Making the Impossible Subject Possible 171
Part IV Youth Publics 175
7 Zine Culture: A Youth Intimate Public 177
Zines: An Analogue Network 180
Materiality and Mediation: Reading Zine Culture as
a Public 181
Evidencing a World Online: The We Make Zines Ning 189
An Intimate Public: A Scene of Consolation and Discipline 190
Conclusion: Hope and the Juxtapolitical 200
8 Youth Activism Online: Publics, Practices and Archives 203
Malala Yousafzai 204
Gul Makai 208
Isadora Faber 214
Life Narrative and Participation: Controversy and Control 218
Conclusion 223