Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Fascinating--certainly not the way I percieve adolescence. For one thing, I don't think I believe there really any such thing as "adultness" as a category--although I suppose I could say that about most soi-disant categories. For me, I think it has to do more with the way their identity is interpellated: a teenager is someone who isn't fully treated as an adult.
After all, once a human creature is old enough to acquire language s/he is by necessity already a rational agent. So in that sense, can we ever really remember not being "adults"?
I'd be interested to read that Heinlein essay.
I found the essay; it's the Afterword to "Who Are the Heirs of Patrick Henry?" in Expanded Universe (Ace, 1980), pages 396-402.
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Date: 2009-10-24 01:22 am (UTC)Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Fascinating--certainly not the way I percieve adolescence. For one thing, I don't think I believe there really any such thing as "adultness" as a category--although I suppose I could say that about most soi-disant categories. For me, I think it has to do more with the way their identity is interpellated: a teenager is someone who isn't fully treated as an adult.
After all, once a human creature is old enough to acquire language s/he is by necessity already a rational agent. So in that sense, can we ever really remember not being "adults"?
I'd be interested to read that Heinlein essay.
I found the essay; it's the Afterword to "Who Are the Heirs of Patrick Henry?" in Expanded Universe (Ace, 1980), pages 396-402.