Płynna aetonormatywność
Fluid Aethonormativity

Summary/Abstract: Among the dominant themes of the multi-author narrative on aethonormativity and generationality in the 2025 issue of the annual „AUPC. Studia Poetica” (Studia Poetica), certain ideas and assumptions emerge and are repeated, sometimes formulated not only as beliefs but also as concerns. Firstly, no manifestation of normativity (with any prefixes: aeto- / neuro- / meta- / hetero-, etc.) can be separated from reflections on the mechanisms of social production, the usefulness and disutility of norms in general. Secondly, norms always have a differentiating and demarcating nature, and as such, they operate most powerfully on the borders of established order and anomie, radicalization and democratization, exclusion and inclusion. Thirdly, reflection on normativity today is intersectional in nature (with a tendency towards materialist analysis), as it is difficult to isolate the problems of chronological age or to treat reflection on periods of life (such as childhood or old age) as separate fields and directions of research, unconnected with the categories of generation, family, gender identity, racial, class, ethnic, national, etc. Fourthly, there is a noticeable tendency towards revisionary or revindicative analysis of these areas as a counterweight to cultural neglect (e.g. visible in narratives of groups or communities regaining their voice, anti-discrimination narratives), as well as the tendency to semantically liquefy and not sharpen analytical categories and concepts, which then do not propose description through analogies, appropriateness, suitability, or even statistical majority, appear as dynamic, complex research areas, or even their intertwining. Every norm is a theory; life as biopractice reveals a series of deviations, anomalies, and disruptions—however oppressive these terms may sound. The parameters of age and life spans also fluctuate, shift, and even collapse as a result of social progress and regression. Reading the articles in this issue also highlights important research areas. These include representations of women’s old age, culturally shaped and modified images of grandmothers, women, witches, and sorceresses in fantasy literature (e.g., Slavic fantasy), children’s and young adult literature, the literary practice of autobiography for adults, and family sagas—in their identity, ethnicity, and intergenerational dimensions. Experiences related to illness, death, migration, and war resonate strongly in the studies and essays, as individual and collective, personal and civilizational crises that equalize the „rights” of age, tragically and traumaticly annihilating childhood, youth, maturity, and old age. Researchers have devoted considerable attention to the edge states of human existence: childhood and old age, as well as to situations of role reversal in parentification processes, motivated by illness and frailty in older people, generating limitations that are also perceived as childishness. Reflections on infantilization in many articles also addressed the state of culture. The area where generational representations converge is invariably shared reading (e.g., reading to children), but also the creation and promotion of children’s literature. Iconic messages always operate across cultures and generations—including the comics, maps, and picture books analyzed in this issue. Aetonormativity, as an analytical and communicative framework, appears most frequently in studies of children’s and young adult literature. Researchers point to the risk of relating it solely to categories of growth, guided development, and social formation „toward adulthood.” They are far from viewing childhood as a non-normative state and adulthood as the norm. Aetonormativity cannot today be a standalone socially classifying parameter. In diachronic and synchronic approaches, it comprises a set of cultural phenomena— dynamic, shifting, and fluid. The cooperative nature of collective life presupposes the coexistence and collaboration of generations, individuals, and groups differing in age, gender, racial, class, and so on. An intersectional model of society (and thus of scientific practice) therefore mitigates the risk of instrumental exploitation of these differences, the thoughtless reproduction of stereotypes, or the implementation of existing sociocultural scenarios.

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