Ready Made for the Market: Producing Charitable Subjects in Dystopian and Voluntourist Young Adult Novels

Abstract

The passages that function as epigraphs to this paper may seem strange bedfellows, not least because the genres of the young adult (YA) novels from which they are taken – dystopian literature and ‘voluntourism literature’ respectively – seem so unrelated. Yet if nothing else these passages indicate that dystopian and voluntourist YA literatures invest equally in the politics of charity and attendant spectacles of rescue. Dystopian YA almost always depicts and therefore models for its readership young people saving the world. For example, Neal Shusterman’s ‘Unwind’ – a series of four novels set in a dystopian United States where the surgical division or ‘unwinding’ of unwanted teens between the ages of 13 and 18 has become an accepted practice – celebrates those who rescue and harbour unwind AWOLs, a strategic act that ultimately contributes to eliminating unwinding. Similarly, voluntourist YA literature, so named for its preoccupation with travel and volunteering, celebrates those who help others in need, usually through development work. As a genre that tends toward social realism, it i s radically different from dystopian literature, yet it too aims to cultivate an other-regarding ethic for the benefit of young readers. Both genres urge readers to adopt a sensibility and outlook that would most facilitate their transformation from ordinary teens into charitable saviours of the world.