Unruly Pictures: Queering Children’s Literature under Dictatorial Regimes in Brazil (1964-1985) and Argentina (1976-1983)

Abstract

This dissertation investigates how picturebooks from the Brazilian (1964–1985) and Argentinean (1976–1983) military dictatorships engage with sociopolitical realities through representations of everyday life. It introduces a novel methodological approach that integrates queer reading, critical content analysis, and multimodal literary analysis, positioning picturebooks as dynamic artifacts that challenge authoritarian ideologies and reimagine social possibilities. Historical contextualization of the military dictatorships and of children’s literature uses in Brazil and Argentina are provided, further situating the corpus and analysis within broader political and cultural frameworks. Inspired by an archival sensibility that echoes Jack Halberstam’s silly archive, this study treats each analytical chapter as a thematic collection, grouping picturebooks around the themes of precarity, unruliness, and prefigurative happy endings. This structure highlights how narratives grapple with exclusion, vulnerability, and systemic inequalities while imagining alternatives through humor, absurdity, and reconfigurations of relationships. Key concepts coming from queer scholarship, such as precarity (Gabriel Giorgi; Judith Butler), resistance (Judith Butler), educated hope (José Esteban Muñoz), and prefigurativism (Charles Boggs, Paul Raekstad and Sofa Saio Gradin), underpin the analysis. By positioning picturebooks as politically engaged cultural artifacts, this dissertation questions the conventional perception of children’s literature as solely didactic or entertaining. It also moves away from interpretations focusing on the child as the main reader of the genre, highlighting how picturebooks engage with broader sociopolitical discourses, functioning as tools for cultural critique, historical reflection, and radical imagination. By reconceptualizing the happy ending as an act of resistance and critique, this study expands the interpretative possibilities of the genre, demonstrating its capacity to subvert dominant narratives and envision alternative futures.