Ties that Bind: Reconceptualising Home and Family

Abstract

The subject of ‘families’ has long been a dominant topic of children’s literature and films. While literary and filmic representations of families are impossible to catalogue, they invariably align with other contemporary social and political discourses which position the institution of ‘the family’ as both a problematic and an ideal social construction: problematic in that ‘the family’ is not a fixed, known entity, but a formation that is always in the process of construction; and ideal in that families carry the burden of the utopian promises of a better future promulgated by governments, nations, and religious idealists. Thus, family is often metonymic of the State and other forms of governmentality in that it stands for the collective desires, dreams, and political visions of a new social order of the future.

We have to go where we most need to be, to follow our hearts to where they take us. Perhaps we travel there in fear and in unknown darkness, yet maybe we journey towards the light.

Shearer, The Speed of the Dark, 2003, p. 280