Search

This article begins by situating the semi-autobiographical narrator of George Lamming's In the Castle of My Skin amid modernist representations of child philosophers at the imperial 'periphery' and in relation to the figure of the 'scholarship boy' elaborated by Richard Hoggart. It then examines the relation between modernism and exile in Lamming's writing in light of recent work on how Lamming's rise as an author was facilitated by a contest between modernism and rival modes in mid-century British literary life. It further shows that in Castle and related writings, Lamming sets up an opposition in which the scholarship boy, the Caribbean middle classes, British culture, and contempt for blackness appear on the other side of a divide of death from the philosophizing child, the Caribbean peasant, non-British culture, and blackness. It concludes by arguing that Lamming's rendering of this opposition exemplifies how fictions of decolonization could extend and modify the paradigm of thwarted bildung whose centrality to modernist fictions of empire has been illuminated by Jed Esty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Libri & Liberi is the property of Croatian Association of Researchers in Children's Literature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This text attempts to problematize if philosophy can be practiced by the youngest disciples taking into account that, starting with the current school year 2013-2014, the Ministry of National Education management has decided to introduce Philosophy for children, as an optional discipline in 3rd and 4st grade. If philosophy is regarded as a subject meant to develop the children's thinking and their personality, then we can philosophize at this level, too. But philosophy as an aspiration for wisdom cannot be supported only by the discursive exercise of reason. It needs a revealed background of knowledge to start from and to come back to in its own reflection. Therefore, philosophy means a particular state of mind grafted onto self-knowledge to which the young schoolchild cannot accede yet because he does not have the necessary cognitive experience of decoding the esoteric and consciousness philosophy, regarded as a spiritual phenomenon. The philosophical education in the sense of paideia may begin in childhood and continue throughout life for the development of a harmonious personality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]