At the Horizons of the Subject: Neo-liberalism, neo-conservatism and the rights of the child Part One: From ‘knowing’ fetus to ‘confused’ child

Abstract

The inability of the child to represent his or her own interests as a legal subject (by definition), and the continued interest of the state in the child as a futurity or resource locks the child in an eternal pas de deux: the child continually approaches the possibility of ‘personhood’ but never achieves it. In the past 40 years, in western nations the child's legal personhood has been simultaneously invoked and constrained: through a growing array of persons and organizations that, as an exteriority, purport to ‘best represent the child’; and through an ever more finely gradated mapping of the child's interiority—which filters the child's voice through a range of interpretive theories, and mechanisms. In this myopic and hyperopic reading of the child, the child's voice disappears. This paper is the first of two examining the relationship of the child to the liberal notion of the subject. In the case law explored around fetal rights and custody issues in the United States and elsewhere we find a paradoxical situation where the ‘fetus’ is granted a more authoritative voice in terms of what it ‘wants’ than is the child, whose wishes are perpetually called into question. Together these papers raise questions about the nature of the subject qua individual. They highlight the potential for a ventriloquist discourse around the child whereby neo-liberal and neo-conservative groups that purport to speak for the child mobilize their own political interests.

La imposibilidad de la/el niña/o para representar sus propios intereses como un sujeto legal (según la definición), y el interés constante del estado en la/el niña/o como el futuro o un recurso atrapa la/el niña/o en un pas de duex enterno: la/el niña/o continuamente se acerca la posibilidad de ser ‘persona’ pero nunca lo logra. En los últimos cuarenta años, en las naciones occidentales las posición legal de la/el niña/o como persona han sido simultáneamente invocado y restringido: a través de una selección creciente de personas y organismos que, como un exterioridad, pretenden ser ‘el represente mejor’ de la/el niña/o; y a través de un cada vez más finamente matización del mapa de la interioridad de la/el niña/o, lo cual filtra la voz de la/el niña/o a través de un rango de teorías interpretativas y mecanismos. En esta lectura miope y floja de la/el niña/o, la voz de la/el niña/o desaparece. Este papel es la primera parte de dos artículos que examinan la relación entre la/el niña/o con la noción liberal del sujeto. En la ley sobre las derechas del feto y asuntos de custodia en los Estados Unidos y otros lugares, se encuentra una situación paradoja donde el ‘feto’ se da una voz más autoritativa en términos de lo que ‘quiere’ que la/el niña/o, cuyos deseos se cuestionan perpetuamente. Juntos, estos dos papeles plantean cuestiones sobre la naturaleza del sujeto qua individual. Subrayan la potencial para un discurso de ventrílocuo acerca de la/el niña/o del cual los grupos neo-liberales y neo-conservadores que pretenden hablar por la/el niña/o movilizan sus propios intereses políticos.

Keywords:

• Child
• rights
• neo-liberalism
• neo-conservatism
• family

Keywords:

• niño
• derechas
• neo-liberalismo
• neo-conservadorismo
• familia

Acknowledgements

Draft first presented at the Association of American Geographers, Los Angeles 2002.

Notes

 1. In most Anglo-American countries (with Australia as the exception), legal decisions governing families and children tend to be organized around a principle of subsidiarity—that is, unless key issues are at stake it is the lowest court in the land that reviews a case. It would be impossible because of the dispersed nature of these rulings to present a comprehensive overview of legal decisions affecting the child. There are, however, precedent-setting cases that work their way into national and international public discourse—either because they have been heard in national-level courts, or because they have particularly significant effects on specific interest groups. To document shifts in the positioning of child as legal subject and the role of the family, therefore, I have focused largely on these types of cases, which have become critical points of reference in shaping subsequent legal debate and decision.

 2. Thanks go to Barbara Hooper for this concept.

 3. A parallel can be drawn in the case of the murder of Tracy Latimer—a ten-year-old afflicted with cerebral palsy who was killed by her father by carbon monoxide poisoning. Although the sentence for the father was life with parole after 25 years the judge, considering this to be a mercy killing, commuted it to one year in prison. Here it is not the imagined wishes of the already born, but the conveniently now dead that come into play.

 4. Roe v. Wade is a landmark ruling in the United States that enshrined pregnant women's right to chose pregnancy or abortion.

 5. Johnson v. State, 602, So. 2d 1288 (Florida, 1992).

 6. Ibid.; People v. Hardy, 469, N.W. 2d 50 (Michigan); State v. Inzar, Nos. 90CRS6960 90CRS6961 North Carolina, Super. Ct. Robeson City 1991, cited in Center for Reproductive Law & Policy, 1996.

 7. In Tremblay v. Daigle, for instance, the federal government overturned a provincial ruling that would have required a woman to carry a fetus to term at the request of her ‘dominant, jealous and physically abusive’ estranged boyfriend. Here, federal rulings around fetal rights often follow a kind of alchemy that limits the recognition of the fetus as Hobbesian subject as an effect of the juridical process without ever claiming to speak directly about the issue of the personhood of the fetus. Thus the federal court ruled: ‘The issue was thus not whether a foetus is a person per se, but whether the relevant legislation accorded a foetus legal status and rights for the purpose of granting an injunction restraining Ms. Daigle from having an abortion. For the Court, the broader social, political, moral and economic issues were to be more appropriately left to the legislature.’ Case Summary Tremblay v. Daigle [1989] 2 S.C.R. 530.

 8. This observation itself is a matter of some debate. Although Gardner's website suggests by implication that the cases he lists are examples where PAS has been demonstrated, many of these cases, while not discrediting the theory, simply rule that it does not apply to the families in question. See for example McLelland v. Mclelland, British Columbia Supreme Court Docket Nanaimo 07907, 1999, Carswell BC 1706, 2 July 1999.

 9. This is a term the National Organization of Women (NOW) has used to characterize fathers' rights groups that are intent on re-instating a neo-conservative and patriarchal nuclear family. It is not intended to apply to all groups representing fathers' rights (see Part Two of this article).

10. Aspects of this argument that relate to state supports for social reproduction will be more fully developed in Part Two of this article.