O Problema do “poder”: implicações metacríticas da aetonormatividade para a pesquisa em literatura infantil e juvenil: Metacritical Implications of Aetonormativity for Children’s Literature Research

Célia Maria Magalhães; Clémentine Beauvais

doi:10.12957/palimpsesto.2025.87947

Authors

Célia Maria Magalhães Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Faculdade de Letras.
Clémentine Beauvais Universidade de York https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5854-4866

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.12957/palimpsesto.2025.87947

Keywords:

aetonormativity, metacriticism, power, authority, children's literature

Abstract

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.

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Author Biographies

Célia Maria Magalhães, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Faculdade de Letras.

Atualmente é Professor Titular em Estudos Linguísticos da Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, pesquisadora nível 1D do CNPq, líder do grupo de pesquisa GPMET - Grupo de Pesquisa em Multimodalidade e Estudos da Tradução, do diretório de grupos do CNPq. Participa também como membro do COMPLETT - Corpus multilíngue para Pesquisa em Línguas Estrangeiras, Tradução e Terminologia, também do DGP/CNPq. É membro da Red Latinoamericana de Estudios en Multimodalidad. Orienta 3 teses de doutorado e supervisiona duas pesquisas de pós-doutorado. Tem publicado artigos em periódicos nacionais qualificados, além de capítulos de livros nacionais e internacionais. Entre as suas publicações de livros, destacam-se Traduzir com autonomia: estratégias para o tradutor em formação (Contexto 2000), Os monstros e a questão racial na narrativa modernista brasileira (Editora UFMG, 2003), Competência em tradução: cognição e discurso (Editora UFMG, 2005), Representação social em corpus de tradução e mídia (2013). Seu interesse de pesquisa é a leitura de imagens em geral e de narrativas visuais em livros ilustrados traduzidos ou não traduzidos, além da perspectiva da semântica do discurso da linguística sistêmico-funcional, aplicada à tradução. (Texto informado pelo autor)

Clémentine Beauvais, Universidade de York

É Professora Assistente da área de Educação na Universidade de York, com interesse nos usos da teoria política no entendimento da literatura infantil e juvenil politicamente engajada. É também autora de livros de literatura infantil e juvenil publicados na França e no Reino Unido.

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