”När han är arg är han turkisk”

Abstract

With a background in current theories of identification and indentifying processes, our aim is to study how ideologies of identity interpellate children in narrative texts such as Lin Hallberg’s trilogy of Kompisboken, Bästisboken and Svikarboken. We study how the texts offer, mirror and perform various identities in their characterization of children and adults in a multicultural context. The issue is how the different characters are created through chains of articulation, of equivalence and difference, of properties, actions and performances. The four main child characters are construed around two dyads – male and female, native and foreign – and as well as the minor characters – parents and teachers – they display subject positions which are restricted and basically locked in a normative matrix. Thus, these texts do not afford children alternative identity constructions or resistance to stereotypical identities of gender or ethnicity.

Keywords

• Identity
• interpellation
• performance
• children’s literature
• gender
• ethnicity