gogy and proletarian children’sliterature. In line with the expanded definitionof
culturepresented in this book, the turn towardtwocategories often excluded
from aesthetic discourse, namelythe useful and the instructional, is bound
also to expand the discussion of aesthetic and political emotions and establish
new connections between the concrete proposals for socialist education and the
fictional solutionsto the problems of proletarianyouth. ThewritingsbyAustrian
psychologist AlfredAdler (18 70 – 1937) on class society and feelingsofinferiority
will consequentlybeusedtoidentify the prevailing modes of identification,
forms of attachments, and values and beliefs associated with the project of so-
cialist education and proletarian mobilization during the 1920sand early
1930s. The chapter’ssecond part presents types of literary texts–an agitprop
skit foryouth groups,apuppet playfor small children, andanovel foryoung
adults–to reconstruct the didactic elements ofathus defined emotional culture
of classwith aspecial emphasis on the therapeutic functions and agitational ef-
fects of fictional solutions.
At least since the publication ofJean JacquesRousseau’sEmile,the child in
western culturehas functioned as an embodiment of the innate potential in
human beingsand aconduit to the emancipatory project of humanism. No mat-
ter whether childhood is treated asapreparatory or exceptional life stageor
whether it is seen asaperiod of freedom or discipline, thevery concept has
giveneducators, writers, and philosophersagenerative framework fortesting
competingideasabout human nature and the civilizing effect of education. Ed-
ucating the nextgeneration has been inseparable from broader discourses of
folk, community,society,and nation (or empire) and often been enlistedin
the imagination of different societies and better worlds.However,these changing
conceptions of childhood cannot be analyzed outside the official institutions of
family, church, and nation and the historical articulations of class,gender,and
race.Whereas the idealization of childhood asastate of innocenceisinseparable
from the rise of the middle class and the culture of bourgeois individualism after
theFrench Revolution, the making of the modernmasses duringthe industrial
revolution cannot be understood without the public policies, social services,
and educational models that conceive of youth as the beneficiary of discipline
as well as punishment.The connections betweenyouth and power are nowhere
moreapparent than in the coordinated efforts by state and local agenciessince
theWilhelmine Empire to at once protect and control poor children through
272 Chapter 15