In my paper I discuss the idea of the relation between picture and text in chosen picturebooks which deal with sexual education. I refer to the broader context of their interconnection with discourses and social ideologies in Poland in the European context of the field. In my research I deal with a social construction of meanings of picturebooks’ content and form, so also with what kinds of discourses and ideologies determine the conditions of picturebooks’ production in societies under analysis. In other words,  I am interested in the issue of who, why (in whose interest) and how produces and distributes the picturebooks on sexual education for children. To describe and understand the mechanism of this field I use the Foucauldian theory of discourse and its production, distribution and reproduction, and also ideology in the way explained by S. Žižek. I present the critique of the dominant discourse in Poland which is powerful in the production of picturebooks, and could be called in this field ‘catholic’. It is based on the conservative ideology and social and sexual roles defined in stereotypical, hierarchical and heterosexual terms. In the view of this discourse sexual education in general is understood as homosexual propaganda or pornography for children. In this aura discourses based on liberal or radical ideologies are marginalized. In this context a picturebook is seen as a cultural medium, within the content and form of which various (possible) ideologies and conceptions of the child co-occur and have their representations. I understand the picturebook as the first “cultural framework” in the formation of subject's identity. The aim of my research is to identify discursive formations and their potential impact on the child’s imagination, sensitivity and subjectivity.

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