A Queer History of Adolescence: Developmental Pasts, Relational Futures

by Gabrielle Owen

A Queer History of Adolescence reveals categories of age―and adolescence, specifically―as an undeniable and essential mechanism in the production of difference itself. Drawing from a dynamic and varied archive, including British and American newspapers, medical papers and pamphlets, and adolescent and children’s literature circulating on both sides of the Atlantic, Gabrielle Owen argues that adolescence has a logic, a way of thinking, that emerges over the course of the nineteenth century and that survives in various forms to this day. This logic makes the idea of adolescence possible and naturalizes our historically specific ways of conceptualizing time, development, social hierarchy, and the self.

Rich in intersectional analysis, this book offers a multifaceted and historicized theory for categories of age that challenges existing methodologies for studying the people called children and adolescents. Rather than offering critique as an end in and of itself, A Queer History of Adolescence imagines the world-making possibilities that critique enables and, in so doing, shines a necessary light on the question of relationality in the lived world. Owen exposes the profound presence of history in our current moment in order to transform the habits of mind shaping age relations, social hierarchy, and the politics of identity today.

266 pages, Paperback

Published December 15, 2020

Reviews

[Leslie Nettleton · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book of theory. It is certainly not pleasure reading--- so it is slow going. Nevertheless, it gives readers a great deal to think about. A Queer History of Adolescence describes the terms, definitions, and history of Adolescence-- focusing on how the term adolescence has been shaped by institutional forces and ideas in developmental psychology and education that infantilize and disempower adolescence. The prevailing belief, after looking at historical texts describing adolescence, seems to be that adolescents are defective and delinquent--- and that the role of adults should be to control adolescents until they are adults and productive members of society. Many who work with adolescence believe they are being advocates, but often, a closer look reveals that they are empowering themselves as advocates and adolescents as future leaders, rather than empowering adolescents where they are now. In the process. The adolescent of the present is too often erased. The goal of the book is to get people who work with adolescents to reexamine their relationship to adolescents and the power dynamic that continues to exist. There isn't really a proposal about how to make this happen. Owen provided much food for thought, especially in light of current political events, which are further infantilizing adolescence by claiming they need protection from ideas about Critical Race Theory, liberalism, and members of the LGBTQ community. Overall, this was a compelling and thoughtful theory, but while the idea seems to be to expand ideas about adolescents to include queer theory ideas of challenging the hierarchy and expanding ideas of social justice, the examples used to make the point often seemed reductive and limiting. I'm glad I read this-- I recommend others read it-- hopefully with a partner or study group that can discuss the important ideas and possible applications of this theory.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

While an academically "dense" writing style makes this somewhat less accessible than it deserves (it is the outcome of a PhD dissertation after all), the ideas of cataloging the historical development of "adolescence" as a term to critique its value as a concept is innovative and certainly useful. I particularly liked the problematizing of the developmental approach to growth and maturation, and the examination of the "liminal" nature of adolescence as neither "childhood" nor "adulthood."