Reviewed by: Justice in Young Adult Speculative Fiction: A Cognitive Reading by Marek C. Oziewicz Michael Levy (bio) Justice in Young Adult Speculative Fiction: A Cognitive Reading. By Marek C. Oziewicz. New York: Routledge, 2015. Marek C. Oziewicz is the Marguerite Henry Professor of Children’s and Young Adult Literature at the University of Minnesota and author of the award-winning scholarly volume One Earth, One People (2008). His newest book is a difficult and highly theoretical but ultimately rewarding examination of the various justice-related cognitive scripts that readers of fiction in general, and more specifically readers of young adult science fiction and related genres, unconsciously absorb from the stories they read and use to structure and make meaning from what they have read. In a blurb at the beginning of the book, Brian Attebery refers to Oziewicz’s method and the theory behind it as nothing less than “a new way to read—and to value—fantastic literatures,” and he may well be right. The book has certainly [End Page 224] changed the way in which I will read young adult literature in the future. Oziewicz begins: “I have continued to be struck, time and again, by how profoundly plot structures, theme—and, as I now believe, the very appeal—of young people’s literature are predicated on the dream of justice” (1). This, he says, is particularly true of young adult speculative fiction because, not needing to conform to mere fact, it has a unique capacity to examine ethical situations. Oziewicz then makes the bold claim that “YA speculative fiction ought to be recognized as one of the most important forges of justice consciousness for the globalized world of the 21st century, an argument with clear implications for both literary criticism and literary practice” (4). He believes that what he calls “the big bang” of justice began shortly after World War II, making it possible for humanity to recognize and put into effect new forms of justice that had not previously been widely available. Throughout recorded history society worldwide has embraced retributive justice: essentially, a belief that might makes right and either that injustice cannot be redressed, or that the primary sort of redress possible is the old “eye for an eye,” revenge sanctioned by law. An alternative form, restorative justice, which resolves conflicts by means of “repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation” (5), has always existed as well, but only came into common use in the past century. Since the early 1990s, however, we have seen the rapid growth of interest in three other forms of justice—environmental, social, and global—each of which represents a more specialized move beyond the older forms. As the next link in his argument, Oziewicz claims that “justice” is a “cognitive category.” Following the work of a number of other theorists, he states that “human cognition occurs through conceptual structures variously called scripts, schemata, mental or cognitive models, mental spaces, and conceptual frames or worlds.” Our minds are thus “hardwired” for “script-based narrative understanding,” or stories (5). Oziewicz builds the case for this claim in great detail over an introduction and two dense chapters discussing theories of justice, arguing for the existence of the above forms of justice not just as scripts, but as a variety of subscripts as well. He further sets up three overarching, chronologically based categories: “Old Justice,” “New Justice,” and “Open Justice” (15). He also presents in detail the reasons why speculative fiction is more capable of dealing with justice issues through scripts than is mimetic fiction, though he does at one point admit that such scripts undoubtedly apply elsewhere, but that he is simply more interested in how they are used in speculative fiction. In six further chapters, each supported by an excellent bibliography, Oziewicz discusses his scripts in more detail, applying each one to a number of different fairy tales, young adult novels, and films. Chapter 3, for example, provocatively entitled “The World Is Not Fair,” deals with poetic justice and its two subdivisions, or “tracks”: the “feudal” and the “transcendental.” It covers a range [End Page 225] of pre-Enlightenment texts and attitudes, and particularly such folk- and fairy tales as “Hansel and...
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Jan 31, 2017
Marzia Beltrami 
Open Access
