Sublime monsters and virtual children

Deems Daniel Morrione, Purdue University

Abstract

The purpose of the present study is to explore the various ways in which American popular and legal cultures circulate and maintain axes of virtuality and fetishization in the context of children. First, this project undertakes to explain just how legal statutes and juridical popular culture have converged in America under the sign of Law, and how this process divides our society into two separate and distinct groups, adults and children. Second, there is a discussion of the crossing of these boundaries in intergenerational romance, the often paradoxical consequences which inhere, and the exceptions produced through the logic of heteronormativity. Third, this dissertation explores the power behind trauma narratives, the objects they produce, and the type of narcissistic mourning they establish culturally. Finally, the discussion comes back to the original problem of the virtual fetish object, those who would attempt to establish mastery over it, and how it is subjected to various forms of disciplinarity as a national fetish object, the child. This project underscores the manner in which heteronormativity is mobilized as a cudgel to ensure the effectuation of various large scale fetish fantasies concerning children in the socius. It analyzes the ways in which adults mobilize the child-as-fetish-object for the purposes of establishing their own victim fantasies, totemic desires, and sadistic enjoyment. The problem identified here is that this sequesters the child in a space of abjection where it is voiceless and where the adult establishes a necessity for speaking on its behalf. This contributes to a culture saturated with aspirations to helplessness, trauma, and the impulse to punish alterity.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Rubenstein, Purdue University.

Subject Area

American studies|Political science

COinS