How modernity's futurism puts children in the front line

Jessop, Sharon (2018) How modernity's futurism puts children in the front line. Childhood, 25 (4). pp. 443-457. ISSN 1461-7013 (https://doi.org/10.1177/0907568218778753)

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Abstract

What conceptualisations of the child might explain the communicative and rhetorical significance of their selection as targets in acts of terror? It is argued that the child as an embodiment of modernity's enthralment to the future’s promises of progress or redemption puts them on this front line. As an alternative to modernity’s futurism, Surrealism presents us with a conceptualisation of the child that anticipates contemporary ideas of ‘queerness’. The recognition of the child’s profane attitude to the credo of modernity can be a way of resisting increasingly instrumentalized ways of thinking about children.

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