Ambiguity, Uncertainty, and Staying With the Trouble: Linda Bondestam’s Picturebook My Life at the Bottom as Climate Fiction in Literary Education

Beskrivning

This study takes its starting point in previous research on undecidability and unpredictability in literature education as well as with the increasing interest in climate fiction in literary education. Thinking with (Jackson & Mazzei, 2022) Clementine Beauvais’ (2015) concept of didactic gaps and Donna Haraway’s (2016) staying with the trouble, the aim of this study is to explore what the ambiguity of the didactic gaps in a picturebook can produce in literature education. The material of the study is Linda Bondestam’s picturebook My Life at the Bottom: The Story of a Lonesome Axolotl (2020), in which human consumerism causes an apocalypse but the axolotl survives and thrives. The analysis shows that the complexity of My Life at the Bottom makes some of the didactic gaps unstable and thus open to interpretation. This makes the didactic discourse ambiguous—even though there are possibilities for interpretation, the message of the picturebook is clear and the reader is forced to face a possible apocalypse. Thinking with Donna Haraway’s staying with the trouble in relation to literature education, the complexity of the picturebook and the instability of the didactic gaps enable the reader to stay in the trouble in relation to both the picturebook and the environmental troubles we are facing. Consequently, the study calls attention to the potential of complex picturebooks in literary education—one that enables students to stay with the trouble.

Period	12 aug. 2023
Evenemangstitel	26th Biennial International Research Society for Children's Literature (IRSCL) 2023 Congress: Ecologies of Childhood
Typ av evenemang	Konferens
Plats	Santa Barbara, USAVisa på karta
Omfattning	Internationell