Haunting Issues: Children, Spectrality and Culture

困扰的问题：儿童、光谱和文化

• 批准号: AH/X004163/1
• 负责人: Lucy Arnold
• 金额: $ 4.52万
• 依托单位: University of Worcester
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FX004163%2F1
• 关键词: Haunting; Issues; Children; Spectrality; Culture

The present moment is in many respects a traumatic time to be a child. Children exist at the intersection of the Covid-19 pandemic which has restricted access to family, friends and education; armed conflicts which are displacing them from their homes; and a climate emergency which is threatening their future. At the same time, the years 2021 and 2022 bring significant landmarks for global thinking on the child. 2022 marks the twentieth anniversary of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child coming into force in the UK, while 2021 saw the launch of 'Children's Commission' on 'the future of childhood'. As such, this timely project, which has the potential to feed into the commission's findings, comes at a moment when the status of the child is both evidently on the international social and political agenda and subject to a variety of threats and destabilisations. Contemporary culture has for some decades interrogated the precarious nature of modern childhood, an interrogation which frequently registers a specific anxiety about the missing, displaced or otherwise 'spectral' child - the child who is, like a ghost, simultaneously absent and present. These concerns have reached a particular pitch in contemporary culture in recent years. However, to grasp their implications for the ways in which children are understood not only culturally, but socially is an interdisciplinary challenge within and beyond the UK. We propose that by instigating a humanities-orientated approach to areas of contention which are more conventionally considered in terms of social and political science it becomes possible to see the imaginative engagements which have always played a central role in shaping the policies and structures - educational, clinical, familial - which have had the effect of rendering multiple groups of children spectral subjects granted only a haunting presence within public and political discourse. These ghosts can be sensed across a diverse range of sources, including literature, cinema, and folklore, and demand analysis by humanities scholars skilled in drawing out the interplay between cultural constructions of the child and their real-world counterparts. The research network seeks to address three key questions provoked by the motif of the spectral child. The first of these concerns the child at the boundary of life and death. The second asks how, at a time when the political union of the United Kingdom appears increasingly fragile, conceptions of nationality are generative of certain kinds of spectral children. Finally, in the wake of the Irish Mother and Baby Homes Commission report (2021), the third interrogates the responsibility for care which exists between the State and the child, asking how particular modes of care-giving might occlude, compromise or otherwise allow the child to 'go missing'. To address these questions, the network brings together scholars from the fields of literature, film, history, sociology, and philosophy, to investigate the intersection between childhood states and states of spectrality as registered in imaginative or creative texts. This investigation will take place through three workshops, each taking as their opening session a contribution from a professional outside of arts and humanities scholarship. Three strands of engagement activity (a visual arts project with refugee and asylum-seeking children, a film festival, and a creative writing initiative with children in hard-to-reach constituencies) will run alongside these nodal points in the network's lifespan. The interdisciplinary approach proposed here facilitates a broader understanding of shifting attitudes to the figure of the child, both as emblematic of a previous state of being and as a problematic receptacle for various visions of futurity. In doing so, the network engages with the wider 'Care for the Future' theme, asking what failures of care, broadly understood, might generate such 'haunting issues'.

从许多方面来说，现在对一个孩子来说是一个痛苦的时刻。儿童处于COVID-19大流行的交叉点，这限制了他们与家人、朋友和教育的接触;武装冲突使他们流离失所;气候紧急情况威胁着他们的未来。与此同时，2021年和2022年将是全球思考儿童问题的重要里程碑。2022年是联合国《儿童权利公约》在英国生效20周年，而2021年则是关于“儿童未来”的“儿童委员会”的启动。因此，这一及时的项目有可能为委员会的调查结果提供资料，它是在儿童地位问题显然已列入国际社会和政治议程并受到各种威胁和不稳定因素影响的时刻提出的。几十年来，当代文化一直在质疑现代儿童的不稳定性，这种质疑经常表现出对失踪、流离失所或其他“幽灵”儿童的特定焦虑--这种儿童就像幽灵一样，既缺席又在场。近年来，这些关注在当代文化中达到了一个特殊的高度。然而，掌握他们的影响，在儿童不仅在文化上理解的方式，但社会是一个跨学科的挑战，在英国内外。我们建议，通过煽动一个以人文为导向的方法，以更传统的社会和政治科学方面考虑的争议领域，它成为可能看到的想象力的参与，一直发挥着核心作用，在塑造政策和结构-教育，临床，家庭-这种做法的效果是，使多个儿童群体成为幽灵般的主题，在公共和政治话语中只被赋予难以忘怀的存在。这些鬼魂可以通过各种来源感知到，包括文学，电影和民间传说，以及人文学者的需求分析，这些学者擅长绘制儿童文化结构与现实世界对应物之间的相互作用。该研究网络试图解决由光谱儿童的主题引起的三个关键问题。第一个问题涉及到处于生与死边缘的儿童。第二个问题是，在联合王国的政治联盟似乎越来越脆弱的时候，国籍的概念是如何产生某些类型的幽灵儿童的。最后，在爱尔兰母婴之家委员会的报告（2021年）之后，第三个问题质疑国家和儿童之间存在的照顾责任，询问特定的照顾模式如何可能会阻碍、损害或以其他方式允许儿童“失踪”。为了解决这些问题，该网络汇集了来自文学，电影，历史，社会学和哲学领域的学者，以调查童年状态和想象力或创造性文本中记录的幽灵状态之间的交叉点。这项调查将通过三个研讨会进行，每个研讨会的开幕式都是来自艺术和人文奖学金之外的专业人士的贡献。在该网络的生命周期中，将与这些节点一起开展三个方面的参与活动（与难民和寻求庇护儿童一起开展的视觉艺术项目、电影节以及与难以接触到的选区的儿童一起开展的创意写作倡议）。这里提出的跨学科方法有助于更广泛地理解对儿童形象的态度转变，既作为先前存在状态的象征，又作为对未来各种愿景的有问题的容器。在这样做的过程中，该网络参与了更广泛的“关心未来”主题，询问广泛理解的护理失败可能会产生这种“困扰问题”。