My Feelings: Power, politics and childhood

subjectivities

MAREK TESAR

Faculty of Education, The University of Auckland

Abstract

This article focuses on the production of children’s literature in New Zealand. It problematizes

the current practices of releasing and distributing children’s literature, and explores these prac-

tices as technologies of control through processes of censorship and classification set by govern-

ment agencies such as the Office for Film and Literature. Decisions about what is and what is

not acceptable for children’s development, it is argued, are not neutral and are instead driven

by a neoliberal image of the ‘happy’ uncomplicated child. The article takes the example of the

state-funded and distributed My Feelings series as a widely accessible text that is embedded in

neoliberal ideology. As this series is distributed to all New Zealand early childhood centres and

kindergartens, this article explores understandings of how politics of government influence chil-

dren’s literature. The work of Vaclav Havel and Michel Foucault are drawn upon to demon-

strate the mechanisms of ideologically driven forms of governmental power that directly impact

on the constitution of certain types of childhoods. An example from a contrasting historical

and political discourse in the form of communist Czechoslovakia suggests unexpected synergies

between neoliberal and socialist ideological frameworks. This analysis further problematizes

notions of power in the distribution of children’s literature, and illustrates the influence that

political agendas have on the production of idealized political childhood subjectivities.

Keywords: childhood subjectivities, children’s literature, neoliberalism,

governmentality, censorship, Havel

Introduction

The exercise of power is determined by thousands of interactions between

the world of the powerful and that of the powerless, all the more so because

these worlds are never divided by a sharp line: everyone has a small part of

himself in both. (Havel, 1990, p. 182)

This article problematizes and complicates the relationships between childhood

subjectivities and political contexts by identifying and analysing the officially approved

Educational Philosophy and Theory, 2014

Vol. 46, No. 8, 860–872, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2013.781496

� 2013 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia

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stories in the My Feelings series as technologies of government. My Feelings is the

name of a series of New Zealand Ministry of Education approved, produced and pub-

lished picture books distributed to all licensed early childhood settings to support

teachers in dealing with the difficult situations in children’s lives. The ideas of Vaclav

Havel and Michel Foucault serve as underpinnings for this philosophical enquiry into

constructions of childhoods, through an analysis of power and politics within the

notion of care and protection in early childhood education. Government agencies are

analysed in terms of how they conceptualize happy childhoods and how they govern

children as citizens through a politics of care. It is argued that childhoods are politi-

cally constructed, and that the ideologies of political rationalities govern childhoods

and produce childhood subjectivities through technologies of government. Officially

endorsed children’s literature published through the New Zealand Ministry of Educa-

tion, such as the My Feelings series, are examples of these technologies of government

and will be the focus of this article.

Furthermore, this article problematizes current practices in the publishing and dis-

tribution of children’s literature to early childhood settings. The main concern is how

the politics of the New Zealand Ministry of Education, as a government agency, sup-

ports the current neoliberal condition through children’s literature such as the My

Feelings series. Children’s literature from totalitarian Czechoslovakia is used to illus-

trate the power relations between a government agency and children’s literature from

a different ideological context. This will be contrasted to the neoliberal ideological

context of My Feelings so that comparisons can be made between different forms of

governmental rationality that perform similar functions of control. The notions of

power and truth in this article are positioned next to the official statements of censor-

ship and classification of the New Zealand Ministry of Education and the New Zea-

land Office for Film and Literature. Intentions in publishing and distributing the

stories, and in the way in which childhoods are governed through complex power rela-

tions in the production of children’s literature, will be explored in the context of both

neoliberal New Zealand and communist Czechoslovakia.

Genealogy of Power Relations

The complexities of power relations in children’s literature are analysed in this article

by drawing on the work of Havel (1985) and Foucault (1980), who both formulated

philosophies that were influenced by their experiences dealing with the ideologies and

political contexts they lived in (Pontuso, 2004; Marshall, 2008). While Havel is argu-

ably more widely recognized by southern hemisphere readers as the first elected presi-

dent of Czechoslovakia after the fall of communism, this article concentrates on his

philosophical writings that engage primarily with the complexities of governmental

systems of control. Foucault’s interpretation of Nietzsche’s concept of genealogy is

used to analyse the power structures which are the subject of this inquiry (Locke,

2004), and his genealogical method that has a ‘unique interest in the power of prac-

tice, not subjects, to determine the form of discourse’ (Bastalich, 2004). Ailwood

(2004) suggests that genealogies search for unexpected relationships, and non-linear,

accidental origins that focus on complexities and contradictive productions of

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childhoods through power/knowledge relationships. Within this framework of geneal-

ogy, Foucault’s notion of govermentality underpins this research of the construction

childhoods. As Duhn (2006, p. 21) argues, governmentality ‘emphasises a double

focus on large political structures as well as on micropolitics to develop a sense of

how political power produces subjects in contemporary society’. This notion of gov-

ernmentality enables the exposure of alternative, non-linear ways of how political

rationalities govern childhood subjectivities.

Governmentality also leads to an exploration of how government agencies, and the

creation of administrative systems (Rose, 1993), impact on the formations of child-

hood subjectivities within political frameworks. Rose (1993, p. 286) focuses on ‘the

forms of power that subject us, the systems of rule that administer us, the types of

authority that master us’ in neoliberal society, and this notion is used in relation to

the production of childhood subjectivities. Larner and Walters (2004, p. 496) argue

that governmentality is ‘how governing always involves particular representations,

knowledges, and expertise’, and what Rose (1993, p. 288) calls ‘problematizing life

and seeking to act upon it’. Furthermore, Foucault’s (1980) questioning of ‘how’ and

techniques and instruments allow governmental agencies operate guide the inquiry.

Foucault focused on the question of ‘how’ in relation to the historic perspectives of

power and, as Marshall (2000) argues, this represents a question to which govern-

mentality is an answer.

Living Within the Truth, Living Within a Lie

Both Havel and Foucault have devoted significant texts to the notions of power and

power relations. Foucault (1975/1991) argues that power is exercised, and not pos-

sessed by any particular group or institution, while its nature is productive and not

repressive. Therefore, power cannot be studied on its own, but needs to be analysed

in relation to particular institutions, political constructs, ideologies and governments,

and to the way in which it is utilized in political contexts and ideologies as a disciplin-

ary and productive force. Rose (1993, p. 287) addresses issues of authority and power

relations, claiming that in neoliberal society there is ‘no simple distinction between

those who have power and who are subject to it’. Havel’s (1985) theoretical concern,

on the other hand, is grounded in theorizing totalitarian ideologies and societies, as

he deconstructs the power relations in the shifts from the top–down model of a tradi-

tional dictatorship to what he refers to as ‘post-totalitarianism’. He further analyses

how these shifts produced changes in public and private discourses in an example of

socialist Czechoslovakia in the 1970s and 1980s.

Citizens in the post-totalitarian era needed to publicly conform with the ruling

political rationalities and requirements, if they wanted to live comfortably without ten-

sions, and therefore, as Havel claims, they accepted to ‘live within a lie’ (Havel,

1989). Unlike in the totalitarian system, the private lives of citizens in the post-totali-

tarian era remained intact and undisturbed, as long as they did not interfere with the

public arena. These power relations were produced by way of a social contract, under

which citizens needed to govern themselves in order to comply publicly with and

support the governing agencies. In return, their private lives remained uninterrupted.

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It is central to the Havelian notion of living within a lie, Havel (1985) argues, that

every citizen, adult and child, contributes to the ideology of political rationalities, and

that therefore in these power relations everyone suffers and is a victim at the same

time, and everyone simultaneously supports and follows the leading ideology of the

governing rationalities. Havel claims then that all citizens ‘confirm the system, fulfil

the system, make the system, are the system’ (1985, p. 31, emphasis in original), and

he argues for ‘living within the truth’1 as opposed to the notion where social contracts

produce ‘lives within a lie’. Havel argues:

Because the regime is captive to its own lies, it must falsify everything. It

falsifies the past. It falsifies the present, and it falsifies the future. It falsifies

statistics. It pretends not to possess an omnipotent and unprincipled police

apparatus. It pretends to respect human rights. It pretends to persecute no

one. It pretends to fear nothing. It pretends to pretend nothing (Havel,

1985, p. 31).

Havel’s analysis of ‘living within the truth’ and ‘living in a lie’ is seminal to his phi-

losophy. Like Havel, Foucault’s relationship with the truth is very complex and is

concerned with particular historical discourses where it gains a different meaning

(Foucault, 1980). The truth, for Foucault, is linked to the concept of power/knowl-

edge and authority (such as institutions, states or governments). Power can thus be

considered as productive, and as influencing the way in which knowledge, and there-

fore truth, is produced. Truth is thus linked to each discourse, debated and con-

structed within power relations. As Foucault notes:

My intention was not to deal with the problem of truth, but with the problem

of truth-teller or truth-telling as an activity … issue for me was rather the

attempt to consider truth-telling as a specific activity, or as a role. (Foucault,

2001, p. 169)

Foucault’s relationship with the dominant discourse is problematic as he argues for

the ‘insurrection of subjugated knowledges’ (Foucault, 2003, p. 7). What Foucault

calls subjugated knowledge is not knowledge on the same level as scientific knowl-

edge, but knowledge that is not officially approved or recognized and that sometimes

has not even surfaced. Foucault’s (2003, p. 9) comment that ‘genealogies are, quite

specifically, antisciences’ emphasizes his position on subjugated knowledge as a per-

spective of thinking of genealogies as a means not only to research subjugated knowl-

edges but to ‘fight the power-effects characteristic of any discourse that is regarded as

scientific’. So, Foucault’s relationship with the discourse of dominance is the perspec-

tive of research and support of knowledges on the fringes of scientific, officially

approved knowledge.

Arac (1994) sees both Foucault’s and Havel’s texts as political debates, in which

notions of government agencies, technologies of government and the production of

subjectivities are central to some of their seminal work. Foucault refers to government

as an agency concerned with the ‘conduct of conduct’ (Foucault, in Dean, 1999,

p. 10), while Larner and Walters (2004, p. 496) note that ‘the practice of government

involves the production of particular “truths” about these entities. Seeking out the

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history of these truths affords us critical insights concerning the constitution of our

societies and ourselves’.

American Beetles

The construct of the ‘American beetle’,2 which was the subject of stories in Czecho-

slovakia under Communist governance (1948–1989), is used to illustrate how govern-

ing agencies under non-neoliberal ideologies produce children’s literature. After

World War II, Europe was infected with the Colorado potato beetle, a yellow-

and-black striped bug. With the high demand for potatoes during World War II, and

the increased transportation of food products in a globalizing Europe, infestations of

Colorado potato beetles spread quickly. In the early 1950s this issue was politicized,

resulting in all citizens in Czechoslovakia becoming engaged in the ‘fight’ to eliminate

this pest.

The government agencies3 issued guidance about how to deal with areas infected

by the beetle, and outlined a complex process of reporting the beetle to the local

council, together with evidence in the form of a bug or an infested plant (Forman-

kova, 2008). This evidence was forwarded to a specialist government branch, which

sought verification from the agricultural committee. If the presence of the pest was

confirmed, the farm raised warning signs about the epidemic, and restrictions on the

transportation of goods were imposed. If an outbreak was considered to be a mild

case, children from the local area were sent to the farm to pick up beetles and larvae,

and to kill them by drowning them in a jar of kerosene. In cases of serious or wide-

spread infestations, adults and the militia were called to provide support. In the

1950s the Czechoslovak government published a manifesto, which appeared on the

front page of newspapers, declaring that this pest had been found in most of the farms

close to the borders of Western Germany and Austria. The manifesto stated that ‘the

dangerous pest has been artificially implemented, purposely, through the winds and

clouds, by Western imperialists and secret agents’ and that governing agencies would

make sure that the working class responds with ‘a total, mass fight against the beetle’

(Sokol, 2009, p. 3). This meant that the whole nation, including children, was asked

to defend Czechoslovakia against this ‘invasion’. The stories of the American beetle

thus constructed aspects of childhoods; and particular childhood subjectivities were

produced through flyers, pamphlets, children’s literature and motion pictures about

this threat.

Teachers shared the latest news on the fight against the beetle with children to pro-

vide ideological support to the task, as instructed by the government agencies. They

went with the children into the fields, picking up beetles and larvae, and dropping

them into bottles filled with kerosene that were tied around their waists. After the

search, the children reported to the local government office where they handed in the

dead American beetles. The celebration ended with the honouring of the most

effective search parties, rewarding them with pens or balls (Formankova, 2008). This

process was emphasized in a children’s book which graphically portrays happy children

with kerosene bottles full of dead American beetles, holding banners stating: ‘We will

not surrender’ (Sekora, 1950b, p. 12). Children picking up and killing American

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beetles from potato fields even appeared on the front cover of the preschool children’s

magazine Wild Thyme.4

The graphic stories published in Wild Thyme also produced important illustra-

tions of how children were supposed to act and behave. The last page of Wild

Thyme was devoted to the adventures of Ferda the Ant, a famous cartoon ant

character, and the way in which he engaged with political and societal concerns.

The series was called ‘Adventures of young Ferda the Ant’. In one such colourful

cartoon story, Ferda encounters American beetles (Sekora, 1950a). As he spots

them, Ferda gathers his comrade-ants. He suggests beating the American beetles

up, so it would be easier for children to collect them. Ferda calls on children and

leads them to the injured American beetles, where children pick them up and drop

them into their kerosene jars. In the final scene, the children put American flags

into the jars filled with dead American beetles, while Ferda sings the final victory

lines: ‘They are already in the bottle, already dead. They have fallen under the

flag of their masters’ (Sekora, 1950a, p. 16).

Further children’s literature was produced on this topic, such as Sekora’s (1950b)

picture book About a bad potato beetle——About an American beetle, that wanted to eat

from our plates. The American beetle is beautifully illustrated in this book, and the

message is very clear: the American beetle has invaded the country to attack not only

the fields, but also children’s homes, to eat off children’s plates and to destroy their

happy childhoods. It conveyed that not only the fields needed to be protected; but

the childhoods themselves, in their homes and at the dining table. This book provides

clear guidance on how to act, and uses a collective ‘we’: ‘We must do, we will fight,

and we will prevail’. The book contains detailed and magnified pictures of both eggs

and larvae, so that children could learn how to recognize various forms of the Ameri-

can beetle, and how to search for, spot and report this enemy. Childhoods were con-

structed by the knowledge imparted about how to report these foreign, strange

elements to government agencies. They learnt to find an adult and seek support:

‘Children will not miss a single leaf. They will find every spot where larvae sit. Chil-

dren will collect every beetle and put it into the bottle. They will report and signpost

every infected spot’ (Sekora, 1950, p. 9). At the end of the book childhoods were

assured: do not worry, your plates will be saved, as long as ‘we extinguish the last

potato bug’ (p. 11). So the purpose was not to prevent epidemics of American beetles

or to have them under control, but to ensure that the pest was fully eradicated. Chil-

dren were told that the whole world not only would agree with this, but would be cel-

ebrating, as the ‘last enemies of peace will also be extinct’ (p. 11). The accompanying

picture features a full plate of saved potatoes, and an American beetle pinned inside a

box, alongside a warplane painted in the colours of the flag of the USA, at a victori-

ous 1:1 ratio with the American beetle. This children’s literature was instrumental in

producing loyal, supportive childhood subjectivities, knowledgeable about what con-

stitutes good and bad in the governing ideologies,5 so as to protect (and produce)

happy childhoods.

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Protecting Happy Childhoods

During the totalitarian Czechoslovakia of the 1950s strong centralized censorship

practices determined which literature, themes and topics, including those for children,

could and could not be published.6 This system of governance was exercised by a

governing censorship agency (Kaplan & Tomasek, 1994; Tomasek, 1994). However,

controlling all the citizens and institutions in the country through daily observation

and surveillance became an overly difficult and expensive task. What occurred instead

in the post-totalitarian Czechoslovakia of 1970s was an attempt to produce self-

reflective, self-accountable bodies, who followed rules and fulfilled tasks, and were

able to conduct themselves appropriately (with respect to the expectations of the

governing agencies and ideology) in public. Writers and publishers were to know what

could be published and what could not, what would be considered to be ‘crossing the

boundaries’ or ‘getting into trouble’. Citizens were living in a Foucauldian panopti-

con, where they were no longer continuously reminded and told what they could or

could not do, but they were now required to manage their behaviour in public, not

knowing when they would be checked and evaluated. Citizens thus became self-cen-

soring docile bodies.

Whilst censorship is an overarching technology of government that directly or indi-

rectly infiltrates the stories and texts that children read and watch, stories themselves

are charged with educational and political messages, and are also technologies of gov-

ernment. Zornado (2001) argues that the production and censorship of stories has an

extensive influence on the formation of childhoods. In New Zealand the governing

agency that regulates what is and what is not published is called the Office for Film

and Literature (hereinafter referred to as the Office). The majority of video and com-

puter gaming releases are scrutinized by this governing agency to determine what is

good, and what is not good, for public consumption. However, printed media are

usually only considered if challenged by members of the public, or if there is already

a suggestion that their release may compromise the public interest as identified by the

governing agency. While the Office recognizes the difference between classification

and censorship, and claims that its mission and aim is to avoid censorship, its website

is www.censorship.govt.nz. Through this governing agency, acts of classification and

censorship serve as significant tools in the way childhoods are protected, by allowing

and banning certain themes, topics and illustrations from stories, and by presenting

and distributing them in ways that cause shifts in the production of childhood subjec-

tivities.

In protecting childhood, and its innocence, censorship itself is presented publicly

and determined by what is deemed to be appropriate by society and government-

funded experts such as child psychologists. The intention is to protect children, and

consequently childhoods. The Office claims to have the best interests of children in

mind, a statement that if problematized, demonstrates an intention to produce child-

hoods in ideologically charged political contexts, and relates to the constantly shifting

parameters of what governing agencies believe is or is not appropriate for children.

So, in order for children’s literature to avoid being challenged by the public, and

therefore to avoid being assessed by the Office, authors and publishers must carefully

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consider the themes and topics raised in their stories. On the one hand, children’s

literature needs to attract children, parents, early childhood centres and the publish-

ers, while on the other hand it must fulfil the criteria of not being potentially harmful

to children or childhoods. A series such as My Feelings, published in New Zealand

and disseminated to all New Zealand early childhood settings, is categorized in this

way. The authors and publishers must therefore apply notions of self-censorship, in

the sense of self-regulating their selection of themes and topics. Authors govern them-

selves, similarly to the self-regulation to which writers in the post-totalitarian society

had to subject themselves when publishing children’s literature. This self-censorship

can be implemented on a conscious or an automatic level, as it deals with concerns

and recommendations of themes that are, or are not appropriate, as produced within

the dominant ideology of the political rationality. These acts of self-censorship result

in certain children’s books and stories being selected over others, and therefore certain

truths are produced. Related to this, certain themes are privileged, while others are

excluded.

The Office aims to protect children from harm and to produce certain types of

childhood subjectivities through classification and censorship. The Office states its

intentions to protect children and childhoods through censorship, and that is about

protecting the public interest. It goes on to say:

To a greater or lesser degree, censorship in New Zealand has always

focused on protecting children from the harmful effects of certain types of

material. Under the Classification Act, a publication (such as a film or video

game) has to be judged to be injurious to the public good before it can be

restricted or banned. In addition, under the Bill of Rights Act 1990, the

Classification Office has to show in its decisions that any restriction is a jus-

tified limit on New Zealanders’ freedom of expression. (Office of Film and

Literature Classification, 2011a)

The Office recognizes the tension between the freedom to publish and the protec-

tion of the consumer. This act of government protects children by ensuring minimal

exposure to risks and harm, and by implementing this form of censorship produces

happy, positive childhoods. The Office claims that sometimes ‘making the publication

available to everyone would be harmful, or injurious to the public good’ (Office of

Film and Literature Classification, 2011b), and that children need to be protected

first and foremost. However, as Christensen (2003, p. 238) argues, what may actually

be ‘protected is not a possible child audience but the adult critic’. In this sense, I now

turn to analyse how the My Feelings stories fulfil this task of producing childhood sub-

jectivities, while minimizing harm, by portraying happy childhoods where every ten-

sion is resolved and all endings are ‘happy’.

My Feelings

Technologies of government, such as censorship and classification, are visible touches,

controls and points of interest that are applied directly by a governing agency, in this

case The Office of Film and Literature, to various audiovisual releases and publications

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in New Zealand. However, other decisions are made by the Ministry of Education in

its official capacity as the government publishing agency, about which children’s litera-

ture is selected, how it is advertised and supported, and the way in which it will be dis-

seminated. Christensen (2003, p. 238) claims that ‘picture books are produced under

specific historical and ideological conditions’. The publications in the My Feelings ser-

ies are made available to all early childhood settings as they are distributed cost-free by

the New Zealand Ministry of Education. The Ministry in its information to the public

(as a potential consumer) claims that this series has been produced ‘to support adults

in early childhood education services to help children recognize everyday feelings and

emotions and learn positive ways of expressing and dealing with them’ (Ministry of

Education, 2009). In the past 15 years over 30 stories have been published within this

series and distributed to early childhood settings and junior schools. These books and

stories do not go through the approval process of the Office, but instead they are

approved by another government agency, the Ministry of Education, to become the

official flagship series dealing with children’s feelings and emotions. As official docu-

ments recommended by the Ministry, they suggest through picture stories the ‘right’

behaviours for dealing with difficult situations, and the ‘correct’ solutions to children’s

issues and concerns. These stories thus support the production of happy childhoods

and childhood subjectivities, producing the ‘right’ childhood tools to know and under-

stand how to act upon the difficult situations arising within neoliberal ideologies.

The My Feelings series presents the official, desired outcomes of neoliberal child-

hoods and how children should think about their feelings. In the story Mum’s grumpy

clothes (McMillan, 2009), Rory does not want to attend the childcare centre. He

wants to stay at home with his mum, and he is very unhappy that she is returning

back to the workforce——an action promoted by the neoliberal political discourse and

policies. In this colourful picture book, Rory blames his mum’s work costume for his

misery, and claims that every time she has it on, she gets really grumpy. Rory wants

his mum to stay at home with him, and not to wear her grumpy clothes. When they

drive together to the childcare centre in the car, and mum tries to hug Rory, he com-

ments resentfully: ‘Watch out. Your grumpy clothes might get messy’ (McMillan,

2009, p. 9). However, in the childcare centre the teacher recognizes the problem, as

Rory draws pictures of what his mum wears when she is happy and when she is not.

His teacher supports their relationship, and uses the available technology to commu-

nicate with Rory’s mum. Together with Rory, she scans his picture and emails it to

her. Rory’s mum realizes what is happening, and changes her behaviour when she

wears her ‘grumpy clothes’. The happy, positive outcome of the story is promoted by

achieving the desired outcomes for a child, parent, early childhood centre and govern-

ing agency, as the child settles into the centre and mum returns to the workforce in

her corporate outfit.

Another book in the My Feelings series, Almost five, deals with a child’s transition

from the early childhood setting into school (Holt, 2009). The story revolves around

a girl, Isabella, who does not want to leave kindergarten. In her own words, despite

her family being excited about her birthday, she ‘liked being almost five’ (Holt, p. 3).

Isabella understands what being five means. Like other children, she does not want to

be going away from her friends and kindergarten to start school. She wants to stay at

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kindergarten, as she ‘didn’t want to grow up fast’ (p. 3). The compulsory school age

in New Zealand is not five but six; however, the majority of children begin school on

the day after their fifth birthday. Isabella’s teachers and parents support her by taking

her to visit the new school, and when she comes back to the kindergarten she feels

happy to transition to the school setting. On her return from her school visit, Isabella

tells the other children in the kindergarten not to worry about this big step. Her friend

Hinewai seeks confirmation of what she experienced, and Isabella confirms to her that

school is ‘just like kindergarten’ (Holt, 2009, p. 16). The Ministry states that the My

Feelings series enables children to express themselves with respect to their feelings, in

line with ‘the principles, strands and goals in Te Whariki: He Whariki Matauranga mo

nga Mokopuna o Aotearoa/Early Childhood Curriculum’ (Ministry of Education, 2011).

These My Feelings publications produce a certain public discourse of neoliberal

childhoods, and at the same time they produce childhood subjectivities in early child-

hood education settings. They use notions of the everyday (in this sense ‘neoliberal’)

feelings of a child to affirm the expectations of a neoliberal childhood and to model

desired ways of behaving within it. The Ministry of Education enacts its ideologically

charged politics of care in publishing and distributing the My Feelings literature, pro-

ducing political childhood subjectivities that are good, content and happy, through

the public discourse of early childhood education. My Feelings stories resolve the ten-

sions identified in ways that do not challenge the neoliberal discourse of political

rationalities and instead produce clean, smooth language and solutions. What, on the

other hand, if children were given the agency to act on and be part of the solution?

For instance, what if Rory’s mum were to decide to stay at home with him, and work

from home? What if Isabella were to stay a year longer in the kindergarten, instead of

transitioning to school at five? These complications are not addressed in the My Feel-

ings series; however, some of these subversive, less desirable notions are considered in

other literature found in early childhood settings. The My Feelings series, however,

represents children’s stories that have been prepared, produced, recommended,

shipped and delivered for free to all early childhood centres in New Zealand. The

concern therefore is not whether they are actually being read and used, but that the

publisher, governed by the Ministry, believes that these particular books contain mes-

sages of such importance that they should be promoted in such an influential way to

impact on children and their childhoods.

Concluding Comments

Havel identifies three points that construct the modern threat to humanity in every

political construct: consumerism, apathy and living a private life (Alexandru, 2006).

While Havel’s writing focuses on analysing living within the post-totalitarian condition

and Western power structures of the 1980s, his ideas are relevant to the current New

Zealand neoliberal discourse. He writes:

It would appear that the traditional parliamentary democracies can offer no

fundamental opposition to the automatism of technological civilization and

the industrial-consumer society, for they, too, are being dragged helplessly

along by it. People are manipulated in ways that are infinitely more subtle

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and refined than the brutal methods used in post-totalitarian societies …

and all that flood of information: all of it, so often analyzed and described,

can only with great difficulty be imagined as the source of humanity’s redis-

covery of itself. (Havel, 1985, p. 91)

In Havel’s post-totalitarian construct the exchange for a comfortable existence is

the social contract, obliging people to become disinterested subjects allowed only to

live publicly with apathy and placidity. All governing ideologies can offer human

beings a certain level of satisfactory living conditions, allowing existence and survival.

It is through the commodities satisfying the subjects’ desires that political subjectivi-

ties, including childhood subjectivities, are produced.

The positive outcomes of the government-funded My Feelings stories contain a

fairytale context in which each tension that children experience is positively resolved

in an effort to protect the innocence of childhood, and to produce happy and con-

tent childhood subjectivities. Bauman (2008) claims, from his perspective on neolib-

eral consumerism, that private happiness is directly linked to dealing with anxiety,

and its achievement is a very temporary, unstable moment, unlike the fairytale end-

ings described. He states that ‘… universal vulnerability, together with the universal

temptation of one-upmanship, with which it is intimately related, reflects the irre-

solvable inner contradiction of a society that sets a standard of happiness for all its

members which most are unable to match’ (Bauman, 2008, p. 27). Extending

Bauman’s idea raises the concern of whether it is possible for governing agencies to

produce happy, resolved, tension-less, predictable childhoods, as the My Feelings sto-

ries suggest and model. Alternatively, perhaps the notion of happy, political child-

hood subjectivities is more effectively produced by recognizing the tensions between

happiness and anxiety, which are reduced, but never satisfied, by short-term or

superficially happy solutions.

The production of political childhood subjectivities through children’s literature in

New Zealand thus responds positively to the concerns of the neoliberal ideologies of

government rationalities. The complexities and layers of neoliberalism need to be fur-

ther unpeeled in order to understand how each of these stories produces childhood

subjectivities through their across-the-board distribution throughout the New Zealand

landscape of childhoods. A similar notion is represented by the across-the-board

promotion of the campaign against the American beetle in communist Czechoslova-

kia, which aimed, in a more direct and overt way, at producing certain childhood

subjectivities. Affirming Havel’s (1985) claim that all citizens construct and produce

the discourse in which they participate, and that they simultaneously contribute to its

development, the My Feelings series intends that all teachers, parents and children are

producers of the system, and victims and supporters of the public, official discourse.

The neoliberal ideology of government thus shapes the way that childhoods are

perceived as a mouldable commodity, to be produced through carefully selected,

publicly funded and distributed stories, protected by the umbrella of a neoliberal

politics of care. Perhaps New Zealand, in its current neoliberal guise, is in danger of

having more in common with the technologies of government mobilized in Havel’s

critique of societies of control than we might suppose.

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Notes

1. Havel’s notion of the ‘truth’ is not of a Cartesian nature; he does not seek the ultimate

truth. His writing is mostly concerned with the overall understanding of openness and hon-

esty (Havel, 1985); and truth is an existential statement underlying his experience within

the ideology of the ruling political rationalities. Havel emphasizes the importance of truth

as a subversive story, and not as an ultimate positivistic truth. Truth in Havel’s writing can

be seen as something unidentifiable without understanding a ‘lie’, as for example in Havel’s

opinion, in the public discourse of the ideological statements of governing agencies (Havel,

1985). Therefore, Havel is more concerned with the tension between the truth and the lie,

than with what necessarily constitutes the truth itself.

2. All citizens in Czechoslovakia, including children, were engaged into the ‘fight’ against this

enemy: Colorado potato beetle, labelled as the American beetle. This was prevalent in what

in Havel’s term is the totalitarian period, despite American beetles prevailing in much

milder form into the post-totalitarian era of the 1970s and 1980s.

3. In the American Beetle story government agencies refers to the Ministry of Education, and

other national and local government bodies influenced by the Czechoslovak Communist

Party and its ideology.

4. Materıdouska in original.

5. I do not claim that children have become objects; they were subjects, and in the Havelian

sense subjectified as both victims and supporters. I am not concerned in this article with

how many children actually believed, supported or were victims of this propaganda or sto-

ries. I am concerned with the production of the literature, and how it produced certain

truths and subjectified children into subject positions where they were supposed to become

someone and believe in something.

6. Sometimes it was not the theme that was banned, but the author.

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