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Tidskrift för forskning om svensk och annan nordisk litteratur Årgång 139 2018

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Printed in Lithuania by Balto print, Vilnius 2019 Recensioner av doktorsavhandlingar · 241 vitet. Men om medier, med Marshall McLuhan, Kelly Hübben, A Genre of Hanky-panky? är proteser – vilket Gardfors skriver under på vid Animal Representations, Anthropomorphism, and några tillfällen – kommer frågan om subjektivi- Interspecies Relations in The Little Golden Books. tet och representation att ställas på sin spets. Ex- Institutionen för kultur och estetik, Stockholms akt vad innebär denna ontologiska distinktion i universitet. Stockholm 2017. ett sammanhang där relationen mellan medier och materialitet, verklighet och representation proble- How should the success of the marketing of sto- matiseras radikalt? Denna fråga inställer sig delvis, ries to children be judged? The numbers alone of skulle jag hävda, mot bakgrund av att mediebegrep- the world’s most popular children’s book series are aldrig utreds ordentligt. Om McLuhans tanke staggering. Within four months of their initial re- hade förts vidare, som den har gjorts på andra håll, lease, the Little Golden Books were in their third bortom den protetiska logik som förutsätter ett printing, with one-and-a-half million total copies redan existerande subjekt, för att i stället bearbe- in print. Today the series is still going strong, featur- tas i termer av ekologier och assemblage av agenser ing over 1,200 titles and two billion copies in print. och krafter hade kanske analysen av ”subjektivite- Twelve of the most popular titles have never gone ter” i Hodells verk komplexifierats och fått ytter- out of print. While histories of the Little Golden ligare en dimension. Tudelningen mellan subjekt Books’ success sharply focus on the cleverly calcu- och representation framstår som jämförelsevis sta- lated marketing strategy behind them, the poten- tisk och begränsande. Vad hade hänt om det ho- tially profound and widespread social impact on a dellska verket hade beskrivits och analyserats som highly impressionable population of readers has yet en medieekologi? to be accounted for. Jag har haft ytterligare spörsmål kringÅke Ho- Kelly Hübben’s thesis pursues an original angle dell – Art and Writing in the Neo-Avant-Garde. by taking as its focus the prominent role of non- Till exempel kring de litteratur- och konsthisto- in this incredibly popular, interna- riska skrivningarna – det är märkligt att sextiota- tional, and lucrative children’s picture book series. lets found poetry inte nämns – eller kring detaljer Her central concern is to track how a selection of i diskussioner av sådant som skrivande, informa- titles represent nonhuman animals and interspe- tion och ”radikal formalism” (Craig Dworkin). cies relations with an eye to understanding how the Dessutom skiftar kvaliteten på kapitlen litet (det stories and images that the works convey influence fjärde är inte lika starkt som de övriga). Men dessa young readers in their understanding of their own funderingar såväl som de kritiska frågor som ställts and other ’ places in our world. At the heart ovan vittnar främst om en sak: hur rik på perspek- of the matter is the question of how children might tiv, idéer och betydelser Gardfors studie är. Utan enlist critical literacy mechanisms in the struggle to tvekan är det en mycket stark och tankeväckande build empathy for the of animals, an endeavor avhandling, som på ett nyanserat, teoretiskt drivet that has only intensified throughout the of the och genomreflekterat sätt argumenterar för sin sak. Little Golden Books. The thesis thus contributes Dessutom rymmer den en del fynd ur arkivet, vilka to robust and growing bodies of research that dem- skapar extra resonans. onstrate how picture books serve important social- Och slutligen – inte minst viktigt är att Gard- izing functions for young children and that con- fors öppnar Hodells verk för en förståelse som inte sider how representations of human-animal rela- bara eller främst bygger på den hodellska biografin tions become volatile sites where dominant ideol- och självbilden. Med Åke Hodell – Art and Writing ogies of social difference can be reinforced as well in the Neo-Avant-Garde har en färgstark och mång- as challenged. formig pusselbit lagts i den svenska litteratur- och Hübben begins with a primal scene familiar to konsthistorieskrivningen. Den kompletterar även those of us who grew up with the Little Golden – och därför är det viktigt att den är skriven på eng- Books in our homes. She takes readers back to her elska – den internationella berättelsen om avant- own fond childhood memories of reading one of gardets tradition under 1900-talet. Dit hör tvek- the earliest and most popular Little Golden Book löst både Hodell och den svenska konkreta poesin. titles, Poes Pinkie, a 1953 translation by legendary Dutch children’s author Annie M.G. Schmidt of Kathryn Jackson’s 1949 classic, Katie the Kitten. Jesper Olsson Her anecdotal experience captures much of what 242 · Recensioner av doktorsavhandlingar makes the series so memorable: its enlistment of “merchandise books,” they profoundly challenged high-quality artists and authors, its engaging ani- assumptions about what it means to read a “prod- mal characters, its vivid and lush illustrations, and, uct in book form […, that is,] something that is perhaps most important of all, the concrete features intended not to inform or instruct, or even to that make these picture books so distinctive. Her amuse, but [strictly] to sell” (42). The primacy of recollections remind readers of how children en- their commodity status prompts a larger question: counter more than stories in their pages: “The […] what is the value of non-didactic children’s reading Little Golden Books [are …] material objects: the material? Hübben seems to say that, while the Lit- cardboard covers, the golden spines through which tle Golden Books are not overtly educational, they you could feel the staples, the structure and smell do teach more than initially meets the eye. of the paper all contributed to the unique Golden The success of Little Golden Books is not with- Book experience” (6). out controversy. Librarians instantly questioned Growing up with Little Golden Books entails their educational value for beginning readers. Ob- sharing them with relatives and friends. As adults jections centered on the primacy of images at the we buy and read them to still more children, join- expense of stories. Hübben clarifies: “[N]o matter ing millions of people in a marketing phenomenon how charming the story, the images are what ul- that has insinuated itself deeply into the cultures of timately establishes their lasting impression. The the industrialized world by the early twenty-first playful qualities that are so characteristic of the il- century. As Hübben’s sketch history of the series lustrations captivate young imaginations and never clarifies, none of this is accidental. let go” (6). She goes on to explain that many of First offered to the public in 1942 at twenty- their stories were recycled from other media forms five cents per copy — nearly ten times cheaper than like movies and television series, deeply entangling the average picture book at the time — the Little the Little Golden Books in advertising and other Golden Books moved owning picture books from forces working to transform children into a niche a rare luxury to an ordinary mainstay of bourgeois population of consumers through the power of vis- youth. Designed on an economy of scale, titles ual media. turned a tidy profit only after they sold in the hun- Less predictably, Hübben posits, the visual di- dreds of thousands of copies, so they could easily mension also enables animals to become pivotal fig- have gone out of print if they were not so carefully ures in the life of the series. Fictional animal char- introduced to the right audience. An even bolder acters are central to perennial bestsellers like Katie aspect of the Little Golden Books’ marketing plan the Kitten and The Poky Little Puppy. Their frequent was that bookstores with their holiday shoppers lack of originality — rather, their efficiency in recy- were not their target venue. Initially offered instead cling or remediating stories and characters “from in nontraditional book-retail sites like department other picture books, novels, films, [even …] televi- stores and supermarkets — places specifically cho- sion” (13) — virtually ensured a Little Golden Book sen for their being frequented by parents of young devoted to each popular animal celebrity who had children — they have been continuously stocked as garnered a following among children. Situating the year-round goods ever since. series amid discussions of the socializing role of an- From their early wartime days, the Little Golden thropomorphized animal representations in early Books attracted an international crew of talented childhood psychology, Hübben maps several di- writers and illustrators, including many of the top mensions through which Little Golden Books re- names at the height of their careers, which also alize potentials to shape not only human but also helps to explain their lasting appeal in translation nonhuman lives. from originals in English. Colorful and otherwise The emergence of human-animal studies as an eye-catching, their uniform design made them in- interdisciplinary academic subject in recent dec- stantly recognizable, appealing as collectables, and ades enables Hübben to apply the of es- eventually — perhaps the greatest sign of their cul- pecially literary scholars and art historians to the tural success — ripe for parody. Despite their high question of what animals are doing in the Little cultural impact, Hübben notes, they have received Golden Books, and to what effects. As Hübben comparatively “little critical or academic attention” recognizes, “[i]t is perhaps a truism that animals (11–12), which makes them an ideal subject for her are ubiquitous in children’s books,” yet scholars in thesis. Because they were primarily conceived as the past all too often have focused strictly on their Recensioner av doktorsavhandlingar · 243 childish behaviors, childlike looks, escapist fanta- strate that they do all this with startling frequency sies, moral values — in short, “the humanity of these as well as intensity in the service of political agen- characters” (6) — at the expense of elaborating why das that change radically across the decades. and how they are deliberately cast as nonhuman These political potentials pivot on a double animals. A major obstacle to this approach within standard that is often at work in the texts, a dy- literary studies has been the focus on the formal namic through which children are both encour- ideals of metaphor, which enables animals to be aged to feel for animal characters while at the same read all too conveniently as stand-ins for . time to accept ethically dubious norms through Hübben joins a fast-growing group of literary ani- which the same animals are systematically domi- mal studies scholars who seek to identify alternate nated, exploited, and killed for human conveni- narrative potentials and reading practices in ence. Hübben asks, “When young readers pick up to address how animals come to be seen as actors on these complexities — and they do — how can in their own right, having their own stories, largely they not be confused?” (10). Clarifying exactly through integrations with visual media. what the books say is important to understand- The thesis also directly addresses a related prob- ing what young readers can get from reading Lit- lem plaguing the Little Golden Books’ animal rep- tle Golden Books. resentations, namely, the expectation that there Through the method of close reading, the the- should be no political controversies in children’s sis identifies the formal properties through which picture books. Questions of animal welfare and these picture books as a whole complicate the very rights might be seen by some to be inimical to a ideologies that they ostensibly promote. Rather genre that historically has lent itself to promoting than tracking the intentions of their producers or human-centered ways of thinking. For precisely the reactions of readers, the thesis examines a se- this reason, however, animals in the Little Golden lection of the books themselves in order to iden- Books provide blunt illustrations of how species tify how they represent “diverse interspecies inter- differences and hierarchies are visually and narra- actions and relationships” (11). Moreover, she ar- tively constructed, and so emerge as important sites gues, the insights that ensue apply far beyond the for studying what Cary Wolfe argues in Animal scholarly realm, providing a foundation for adults Rites: American Culture, the Discourse of Species, to instill critical-reading practices in children from and Posthumanist Theory is the production of the their earliest experiences with Little Golden Books. foundational albeit also most repressed social dif- Following the introduction, the thesis is struc- ference, made manifest in the discourse of specie- tured by three pairings of case studies. The first sism. Hübben explains: chapter focuses on the Little Golden Books’ de- pictions of animals welcomed into middle-class Reading these books critically means that we have households in narratives of pet-keeping. Several to ask ourselves questions such as: to what extent Little Golden Book dog stories ground the initial are animals like us? How does our own animality case study, and appear to be organized by a logic of inform our responses to other animals — fictional and real? How does our empathy for animals in domination, quietly imposing masculinist ideals by culture affect our behavior towards animals in na- enforcing male-female, human-animal, and adult- ture or society? (27) child hierarchical dualisms. An intriguing contrast emerges through analysis of their feline counter- At a metaphorical level, the struggles of characters parts in the second case study, in stories that in- with their “animal urges” those of young stead foreground negotiations of familial relations children, an audience that “does not yet qualify as that include quite different potentials for reciproc- fully human either” in Eurowestern history (28). ity, if not equality. Pet-keeping therefore highlights But their very different journeys to extend empa- domestication as a site of converging social dynam- thy to other animal characters are also a stock for- ics, shaped through the dialectic foregrounded by mula whereby the books’ model behaviors coded Yi-fu Tuan in Dominance and Affection: The Mak- as good or bad. The uniquely interspecies politics ing of . become particularly apparent when the stories the- The next chapter traces the intertwined develop- matize training, domesticating, hunting, killing, ments of discourses of domestication, taming, and and eating other animals. The selection of Little wildness through stories of animals transitioning Golden Books at the center of the thesis demon- between relationships with humans, including fe- 244 · Recensioner av doktorsavhandlingar ral-cum-working or pet horses as well as wild-cum- stories analyzed throughout, and how they might entertainment-industry animals. Quite differently be guided by critical-literacy questions about them. from the first two case studies, horse stories in the As a strong thesis should do, it raises more ques- third case study “are permeated by the idea that a tions than it can answer, and I highlight a few by true, authentic interspecies understanding can be way of concluding this review. more readily achieved by a child than an adult” The focus on the interplay of story and im- (137). The home in books about children’s taming age in animal representations itself has a history. of horses more blatantly signals a transitional space Since literary animal studies began to take shape or contact zone, seemingly more effectively for the in the 1980s, they have shifted away from empha- male rather than the female children that they de- sizing Derridean deconstructive analysis — includ- pict. A bit harder to characterize, the fourth case ing Margot Norris’s Beasts of the Modern Imagina- study compares stories of animals in circuses, tele- tion published over a decade before Wolfe’s Animal vision shows, and propaganda campaigns, the latter Rites, and Carrie Rohman’s Stalking the Subject, two starting from the lives of historical figures en- published nearly a decade after — and toward what listed in entertainment industries, in order to show David Herman terms “postclassical narratology,” how anthropomorphism can be enlisted “to ques- the study of narrative across literary and less storied tion and even overturn power relations,” perhaps forms. Herman’s Narratology beyond the Human: most surprisingly in stories that promote dodgy Storytelling and Animal Life offers a model for an- ideological assumptions about the operations of alyzing animal narratives in order to outline what power (153). For members of subjugated groups, a their story worlds make not only in/visible but also stark political message emerges: resistance becomes im/possible for human, animal, and shared human- more effective in the public sphere. animal lives. Hübben’s methodological decision to The third section then turns to the question of focus on the texts themselves follows in this trajec- explicit violence committed by and against animals tory, assuming both the primacy of animal stories in the Little Golden Books. It features a fifth case and the necessity of taking stock of the special com- study of animals who are represented as consum- plexity in their combinations of words and images. ing others as well as protesting the consumption of Still, that begs the question: where might the art- themselves, which is where the potentials for criti- ists’ or authors’ intentions fit into the larger picture cal literacy come to the fore. For a book series fo- of the Little Golden Books’ social impact? cused on selling as many copies as possible, it is in- A related concern is the tendency of the books triguing to see consumerism emerging as the focus under discussion to privilege fantasy over realistic of its food politics, let alone the privileging of per- elements. Hübben’s introduction outlines a con- spectives that articulate ethical concerns, if only be- cern largely expressed by early childhood psychol- cause vegans and vegetarians historically have been ogists that anthropomorphic representations of an- among the smallest minority populations. Temper- imals in picture books essentially amount to child ing enthusiasm for progressive politics in the Little abuse by preventing children from learning “true Golden Books, however, is their long and ongoing facts” (18) about animals. The question then arises: history of trading in racist and ethnocentric stere- How does approaching the child-reader dynamic as otypes. The last case study offers postcolonial read- a literary scholar challenge the assumptions of child ings of particular Little Golden Books by show- psychologists? Is anthropocentrism a developmen- ing how their tales travel from around the world tal goal for readers of picture books, or a Eurowest- only to ultimately be used to reinforce Eurowest- ern worldview that permeates the books themselves ern imperialist worldviews in which animals nat- as cultural constructions? Why is such a question uralize racism and colonialism. What seems more on the radar of a literary scholar, but not necessar- hopeful in Hübben’s analysis is that human and ily a problem for social scientists? How might these animal politics prove difficult to separate through disciplinary perspectives be reconciled? these case studies. One obstacle to answering such questions is The thesis concludes with some speculations clarified by Hübben’s history of the Little Golden about anthropomorphism and ethics, and iden- Books, which emphasizes that their “literary qual- tifies opportunities for further research. What ity [… has been] highly disputed by literary critics strikes me as most promising is the potential move and [other] gatekeepers” (43). Again, at the time toward analysis of young readers’ responses to the of their initial publication librarians vehemently Recensioner av doktorsavhandlingar · 245 objected to them. Over time, these early critiques Yet what accounts for such an abrupt turn by the only gain more validity as the recycling of racist 1940s concerning cultural sentiments about ani- stories appears to be a growing problem. For in- mals in children’s fiction? Does it reflect the estab- stance, Hübben notes, many disturbing elements lishment of the authority of the natural sciences, or from the 1948 Little Golden Book version of Lit- the philosophical crisis of “the human” coming to tle Black Sambo have been problematically recy- a head in the twentieth century? And how might cled in 2004’s contribution to the series entitled children’s picture books illuminate convergences The Boy and the Tigers, not least of which is the of these academic phenomena? Eileen Crist’s Im- basic premise that naturalizes harm to brown chil- ages of Animals, Philip Armstrong’s What Animals dren through the threat of being eaten by tigers. Mean in the Fictions of Modernity, and my own Ani- Even more pervasively, Hübben’s examples as a mal Stories: Narrating across Species Lines offer very whole would appear to promote sexist and cisheter- different accounts of how animal stories to var- onormative visions of life, as demonstrated ying degrees influence and reflect changing per- through patterns in representations of boys versus ceptions of nonhuman life in academic and public girls with puppies, kittens, and horses. With such spheres, which might help to supply greater con- socially retrograde politics, I wonder, why do these text for Hübben’s claims. books persist? A more precise historical argument is implied in In Hübben’s analysis, the series’ concept and tar- the thesis’s conclusion, where Hübben notes that get audience together help to explain certain pat- most of the examples analyzed throughout are terns in the Little Golden Books’ representations of from the first couple of decades of Little Golden animals. She identifies their target audience as “pre- Books. This begs the question: has the anthropo- school children from a middle class background” morphic sentiment stayed the same or become (13), which prescribes a nuclear family’s suburban more virulent, diffuse, or reversed in recent dec- or urban home as the most popular setting for the ades? Are there any indications in the Little Golden books, and therefore small-animal pets like kittens Books that the movement, gaining and puppies as the most popular animals. These significant steam from 1975 onward with the pub- patterns relate also to the history of moral edu- lication of Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation, leads cation in children’s literature, which as Katherine to or reflects any persistent, meaningful changes in Grier has shown in Pets in America: A History be- perceptions of animal life? comes inextricable from historic changes in percep- Circling back to the first chapter, the effects of tions of the educational value of pet-keeping. Was these books on nonhuman lives are flagged with this true for other cultures as well? an amazing image: , the celebrity American In the US, the timing and setting of the Little sign--literate lowland mountain , Golden Books’ introduction certainly invite com- being read the Little Golden Book version of The parisons with Ralph Lutts’s analysis in The Three Little Kittens. Hübben’s reading of the scene Fakers of the very different “war of the naturalists” unpacks its many “unsettling” qualities, showing controversy that erupted forty years earlier in the how the idealized domestic arrangement of bod- US news media, pitting writers of popular senti- ies in the photo is enclosed by a wire fence. The mental animal fictions against self-styled scientists photo moreover infantilizes Koko by casting her in who desired more realism and brutality especially the position of a child being read to. Hübben asks, in primary-school textbook depictions of animal “Is [Koko] communicating or refusing to commu- life. Lutts concludes that the war, waged largely nicate? Is she seeing or not seeing? And what is in newspaper editorials, was symbolically won she, this gorilla who has been introduced to hu- when then sitting President Theodore Roosevelt man language […]? How does she imagine herself weighed in strongly against what he termed the in relation to the fictional animals in the picture “nature fakers,” all writers of bestselling anthropo- book” (36)? morphic fictions such as Ernest Thompson Seton Such questions are in keeping with the theory- and William J. Long. The rampant anthropomor- of-mind speculations about great involved in phism that Hübben identifies in the Little Golden similar language experiments, yet Hübben offers a Books might be seen to register a profound swing very literary answer: “We may even wonder to what in the other direction, that is, toward an embrace extent Koko is herself a fiction, a product of the of anthropomorphic animals that persists today. all too human desire to bring nonhuman animals 246 · Recensioner av doktorsavhandlingar under our sphere of influence,” or, in other words, Little Golden Books — which invites children to that Koko is “almost as much a fiction as the cats write their own names to assert ownership of the in the picture book she is reading, [for] she herself book as property — as a sign of their “appeal to mid- disappears in this entanglement” (36). These are dle-class ideology,” buttressed by the aristocratic great speculations, and ripe for extension to the pretention of owning a library. Thinking of how the Little Golden Book that thematizes the life of an- books circulate beyond the point of sale, it seems other celebrity, the television star J. important to ask what happens when the books Fred Muggs, which Hübben discusses later. Can the are borrowed or handed down from others who animal ever precede its representation? Reflecting have already inscribed them. Is the previously in- back on the questions of moral education in chil- scribed emblem, signaling prior ownership, then al- dren’s literature, child readers likewise might be fic- ienating, challenging, or otherwise troubling mid- tions co-constituted by the Little Golden Books. dle-class identification? That the Great Depression Especially in the case of books that Hübben identi- would have been an immediate memory for adults fies as instilling pet-keeping standards, it seems nec- experiencing the first Little Golden Books fur- essary to ask: does the child — or the animal for that ther suggests ways in which the books might have matter — who requires the book for proper social- a formative effect on class consciousness. Would ization precede its own projection by the author/ people who have not necessarily experienced food artists? I would add that the succession of pet kit- security or stable home lives themselves find reas- tens provided to Koko throughout her life adds still surance in their visions of women, girls, and femi- more complications to what the photo says about nized animals kept in middle-class security? How how the Little Golden Books shape the lives of hu- might this relate to the feline mothering family dy- man children and other animals. namics as opposed to canine dominating relations More can be said, too, about how Hübben’s of ownership that the first chapter locates at the methodological turn away from both reader-re- heart of so many of the best-loved Little Golden sponse analysis and detailed consumer-data studies Books? And to the racist and imperialist fantasies allows for uncertainty in the thesis about who actu- with which some but not all readers feel “at home” ally buys Little Golden Books and for what purpose. in the racially segregated US, especially in the early Do they reach the targeted middle-class audience? decades of their publication history as the nation What might others make of them? Especially at the rises to a dominant global power? time of their emergence in mid-century America, Their collective power is another important as- they would seem to have metonymic potentials that pect, for, as Hübben observes, the Little Golden do not necessarily cancel out the metaphoric func- Books “are not like other books in the sense that tions of animal characters cast in suburban idylls in they are often described as a collective” (49). As a the Little Golden Books. What about adult buy- US-based scholar, I could not help but think im- ers who use them in order to learn how to read, or mediately of another book collective, namely, the to aspire to upward class mobility? Who would be Harlequin Romance and the role of publishers’ im- most anxious about their own or their children’s lit- prints more generally in the romance genre. What eracy and class status? It stands to reason that work- conclusions might we draw about literature and so- ing-class, immigrant, or non-literate parents would ciety from the fact that Little Golden Books and find multiple uses in these books beyond entertain- Harlequin Romances are the literary genres most ing their kids. On a related note, the depiction of reliably found in grocery stores? Can we conclude suburbia as attractive and desirable also seems to that their audiences are being conceived similarly, say as much about the desires of buyers themselves following Janice Radway’s findings inReading the as it does about what they want for the next gen- Romance about how books can be aggressively mar- eration. Adults coming to cities from rural child- keted to adult female consumers doing the shop- hoods themselves conceivably have a special inter- ping for their families, becoming successful despite est in sharing stories of farm animals and pets with all the signs that their creators are disparaging their children that they are raising in urban and subur- consumers? The similarly colorful covers and ques- ban environments that increasingly put constraints tionable literary qualities, never mind their shared on everyday interactions with nonhuman animals. presumption that leisure time is effectively man- Hübben points to the distinctive “this book be- aged through engagements with mass-marketed longs to …” emblem facing the title page in all the fantasy fictions, all seem to beg further inquiry Recensioner av doktorsavhandlingar · 247 into the mapping of class, gender, and other iden- as hybrids they can also potentially challenge hu- tity categories into the discourses of high/low cul- man supremacy” (10). They are also not best seen ture. But what of species? as points along a developmental continuum. In a Human-animal studies scholarship more gener- spot-on reading of John Rowe Townsend’s Written ally has gravitated toward “an animal-centered per- for Children, Hübben makes the important point spective” (11), albeit also notoriously frustrated at- that “[i]deas of kinship between humans and ani- tempts to define how that relates to ethical prac- mals are not unique to children’s literature and they tice in scholarship. Some see it as advocacy, but should not be treated as if they belong to a primi- Hübben’s examples clearly complicate such meas- tive phase in either humanity’s or the child’s devel- ures by identifying how “messages that the animals opment” (31). Yet, in the sixth case study, she points send out can be complex, sometimes conservative, to some examples that do just that. How does this and often contradictory” (14). It is a challenging dynamic relate to a sense of some Little Golden context in which to navigate reading practices that Books as requiring postcolonial and antiracist cri- are, in Hübben’s words, “ ‘for animals’ […in order tique? Are some examples more dangerously prof- to] help both adult and young readers to under- fering questionably “true facts” about people than stand how species difference is constructed in pop- animals? Can the two be separated? ular culture” (31). For instance, zoos depicted with I also wanted to hear more from Hübben about “less bars and cages and more ‘natural’ habitats” how the childhood-nostalgic value of the Little might strike contemporary readers as “reflect[ing] Golden Books for many generations of readers by an in thinking and living with animals” now makes them ripe for parody. The 2013 publi- (15), but zoo histories like Nigel Rothfels’s Savages cation of the bestseller Everything I Need to Know and Beasts: The Birth of the Modern Zoo make the in Life I Learned from the Little Golden Books by case that these changes can only ever be about the their longtime editor and children’s book author aesthetics of animal representation when the con- Diane Muldrow initiated what promises to be a ditions of captivity remain in place. Indeed, Hüb- meta-series with subsequent titles that replace “in ben’s comparison of the 2002 title How the Zebra Life” with “about Love” and “about Family” and so Got Its Stripes and the similarly titled but very dif- on. Their formula recycles images from the most ferently conceived 2004 title How the Camel Got iconic Little Golden Books, revising them only by Its Hump would appear to suggest that more can substitutions of words for messages geared toward be made of these two books’ being published so re- adult humor (i.e., “Sweatpants are bad for morale”). cently, and authored by the same couple, while yet Their very existence suggests an evolutionary leap coming to remarkably different conclusions about into a new kind of commodity, selling the very nos- the politics of animal captivity. talgia for nostalgia that Frederic Jameson warned At times the thesis uses the terms “humanist” marks the erasure of history in postmodern culture. and “anthropocentrist” interchangeably, while at It probably says too much about me that I was other moments seems to be identifying “a human- surprised not to find in the thesis any mention of ist worldview” in a more nuanced way, for instance, how the Little Golden Books have become an in- as “built on the primacy of language and [animals’] ternet meme through satirically retitled covers. No likeness with humans” (34). In their variability on one can un-see the title illustrated by a dog in a hos- this point, an uneven intellectual legacy of human- pital bed morphed from Good-bye Tonsils to Good- ism might be teased out as having been material- bye Testicles. Admittedly, my quick search just now ized in the pages of the Little Golden Books, along turned up comparatively little animal content in with the implications for the future of them. Al- these exploitations (or are they celebrations?) of though Hübben doesn’t use the term, I think the the Little Golden Books’ current camp value. In case could be made that her reading of the Little those that did, however, I think I see some of the Golden Books reflects the kind of posthumanist resistant politics that Hübben envisions. Is Good- perspective articulated by such diverse animal stud- bye Testicles making me giggle nervously by invit- ies scholars as Wolfe, Nicole Shukin, and Kalpana ing criticism of the everyday violence of spay/neu- Seshadri. ter practice as becoming dogma in US veterinary I certainly agree with Hübben’s statement that practice? Can such re-uses more broadly serve a “[a]nthropomorphic animals are not always a critical purpose in the discussion of animals in Lit- sign of anthropocentrism; because of their status tle Golden Books? 248 · Recensioner av doktorsavhandlingar

Admittedly, my questions are thorough and og dens forfatter honnør: Ikke mange tør å gripe maybe even tough because the thesis is so very sug- fatt i et slik stort og viktig tema. Spørsmålet om fri- gestive. Resisting easy reductions of animal char- het er et grunnleggende menneskelig spørsmål og acters to mere metaphor, Hübben advances the det er viktig at vi – selv i Nordens rike og fredelige insights of human-animal studies scholarship in hjørne av verden – tar spørsmålet opp til vurdering. children’s literature by asking how nonhuman be- Avhandlingen er utarbeidet ved Linköpings ings operate as animals in the Little Golden Books. Tema Q, Kultur och samhälle, ved Institusjonen As Hübben puts it in her conclusion, “children’s for studier av samhällsutveckling och kultur – books can be simultaneously unorthodox and con- altså fra en forskningsenhet som har gjort tema- servative” (219), especially when it comes to repre- basert forskning til sitt program. I en tid hvor aka- senting violence against animals, and these aspects demisk suksess synes å bli knyttet til stadig snevrere might be seen as academically and politically inspi- forskningsområder, er det oppmuntrende at litte- rational: “These books provide models for interac- raturvitenskapen kan trekkes inn i utforskningen tions with animals and therefore I feel that when av større samfunnsutfordringer. Dette er også en we read them, either in an academic context or with avhandling som på godt og vondt ikke lar seg be- young readers, we owe it to the animals to take their grense av tradisjoner og etablerte arbeidsformer, presence seriously” (16). Her thorough knowledge men fritt og ubundet nærmer seg et stort spørs- of the Little Golden Books persuades me by and mål. Innledningsvis kan vi si at det utvilsomt er large to concur with many of her thoughtful spec- positivt at litteraturen kan brukes som inngang til ulations. frihetstematikken. Det er også en avhandling som er basert på en bred lesning og som gir reelle inn- Susan McHugh sikter i viktige deler av den svenske litteraturen. Den peker også fremover og viser at andre store sosiale tema – som miljø, aldring, helse og sport Svante Landgraf, Fångenskap och flykt. Om frihets- – kan undersøkes gjennom litteraturen. Den har temat i svensk barndomsskildring, reseskildring och imidlertid også viktige metodiske og utvalgsmes- decennierna kring 1970. Linköping sige problemer som fortsatt er uløste. Dette skal vi Studies in Arts and Science 699, Linköpings uni- se nærmere på etter hvert. versitet. Linköping 2016. Avhandlingen har tre hoveddeler: Etter en inn- ledende redegjørelse for det forskningsmessige ut- Avhandlingens mål er å studere ”[…] hur frihetens gangspunktet, følger først en del som handler om hinder och möjligheter skildras och diskuteras i barndomsskildringer – med Jan Myrdal, Sun Axels- svensk litteratur från sextiotalet och framåt” (9). son, P. C. Jersild, Sven Lindgren og Lars Gustafs- Frihet, intet mindre! Kan man tenke seg et større son som eksempler. Deretter følger en del om rei- tema? Finnes det noen deler av et menneskes liv seskildringer, med tekster av Lars Gustafsson, Sven som ikke kan ses på som en form for frihetsutøvelse Lindqvist, Per Olof Sundman, Per Wästberg, Sara eller mangel på frihet? Med en slik problemstilling Lidman og Jan Myrdal. Deretter er det en del om har Svante Landgraf gitt seg selv en stor oppgave. science fiction, med tekster av Lars Gustafsson, Sam La oss se hvordan han har løst den. J. Lundwall og Peter Nilson. Til sist avsluttes av- Selv om dette åpenbar er en monumental opp- handlingen med en oppsummering av funnene, gave, fortjener den også respekt: Hvorfor skal man men hvor det også trekkes inn en helt ny sjanger, ikke gå til litteraturen for å undersøke opplevelsen fremtidsstudier, det vil si sakprosatekster som - av frihet? Er det ikke nettopp naturlig å lese lit- ler om hvordan man tror framtiden kommer til å teratur – utvilsomt en av de beste uttrykkene for bli i Sverige. menneskelig erfaring – for å finne ut hvordan fri- For å gjennomføre denne dristige ambisjonen het oppleves, begrenses og utøves? Selv om andre om å analysere frihetstemaet i litteraturen, har vitenskaper og uttrykksformer (for eksempel filo- Landgraf nemlig valgt en analysemodell som for- sofi, sosiologi, rettsvitenskap og statsvitenskap) kan søker å avgrense det svært uhåndterlige frihetsbe- bidra til å forstå deler av frihetsbegrepet, er vel sær- grepet. For det første undersøker han tre sjangre lig litteraturen en god kilde til å forstå en slik grunn- som han mener er naturlig knyttet til ulike arkety- leggende menneskelig erfaring, selv om det meto- piske menneskelige erfaringer: For det første barn- disk er vanskelig. Her fortjener altså avhandlingen domsskildringer, som jo ofte kan inneholde en opp-