Metamodern Engagement and Micropower in Lissa Evans’s Wed Wabbit

Abstract:This article examines the implication of metamodern engagement for the emergence of micropowers in times of political instability, as portrayed in Lissa Evans’s Wed Wabbit (2017). Metamodernism is a cultural sensibility that reacts to the sense of anxiety that springs from crises through qualities such as engagement and affect. As micropowers who are engaged—but also aware of their limitations—the Wimbley Woos (or the Wimblies) learn to use their own strengths to work together, with a singular aim, namely, to get rid of the tyrant and restore order to their society. The use of metamodernism in this article is based on the premise that children’s literature has responded to ideas associated with metamodernism but has not been given due attention. In this metamodern reading on the Wimblies’ engagement, I posit that Wed Wabbit addresses the changing patterns of engagement in current times and embodies the transformative capacity of children’s literature by subverting power structures in its expressions of metamodernism as a cultural sensibility that has emerged in response to intensified political instabilities.