Innocence, Evil, and Human Frailty

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Notes

notes

I wish to acknowledge Angelaki's anonymous reviewer, through whose helpful advice I was able to improve the article. I would also like to thank Magdalena Zolkos, Peter Chen, and Cressida Heyes for reading and commenting on early drafts of the paper. This research was supported under Australian Research Council's Discovery Projects funding scheme (project DP0877618). The views expressed herein are those of the author and are not necessarily those of the Australian Research Council.

1 My choice of methodology to elucidate childhood disempowerment – in terms of ontology rather than economics – may seem unusual. I do not wish to disregard other more descriptive and empirical types of account, and hope this reading might complement them. My intention here is rather to bring out the conceptual frame that shapes our ideas about children's capacities and their relation to adults – a frame which, in turn, affects the manner in which resources are distributed. I would like to thank Angelaki's anonymous reviewer for urging me to clarify the purpose of this methodology.

2 The development of more “humble” notions of agency – in response to critiques of the fully autonomous, rational self, and emerging from a psychoanalytically informed account of social dynamics – is part of a larger research project currently in process. For further work in this project, see my “The Innocence of Victim-hood vs. the ‘Innocence of Becoming’” and “Terror, Trauma, and the Ethics of Innocence.”

3 For a comprehensive treatment of the ontological significance of potentiality in Aristotle's work, see Witt.

4 Discussing a runner poised in the starting position – in her potentiality to run – Heidegger writes:what we call “kneeling” here is not kneeling in the sense of having set oneself down [like the old peasant woman who kneels before a crucifix]; on the contrary, this pose is much more that of being already “off and running.” The particularly relaxed positioning of the hands, with fingertips touching the ground, is almost already the thrust and the leaving behind of the place still held. Face and glance do not fall dreamily to the ground, nor do they wander from one thing to another; rather, they are tensely focused on the track ahead, so that it looks as though the entire stance is stretched taut toward what lies before it. No, it not only looks this way, it is so, and we see this immediately; it is decisive that this be attended to as well. What limps along afterwards and is attempted inadequately, or perhaps without seriousness, is the suitable clarification of the essence of the actuality of this being which is actual in this way. (Aristotle's Metaphysics 187)Thus Heidegger signals the temporality of force, wherein potentiality and actuality co-determine one another. Dumania anticipates and enables the act, energeia, just as the actual then corrects or clarifies that nature of potentiality, because, Heidegger notes, capability is always capability for something. Heidegger thus remains faithful to Aristotle's hierarchy of ways of being, which awards actuality priority over potentiality, even while salvaging potentiality from the oblivion to which the Megarians had consigned it. Agamben, on the other hand, challenges and reverses this order of priority, by placing potentiality before actuality in significance, and further, marking out impotentiality as the most integral quality of being and doing. Understanding this difference in evaluation of the modes of being allows better access to the ethical and political meanings of potentiality for Agamben.

5 The philosophical conception of free will depends upon the premise that one has free will only to the extent that, at least in the relevant circumstances, one might have acted otherwise, or have refrained from acting. This principle is borne out in relation to the dual structure of potentiality, in that a capacity is thereby defined as something that may be enacted or not. Otherwise it would be a necessary predicate of the subject in question, rather than a capacity or potentiality (which signals contingency). Likewise, without the ability to do otherwise or refrain from doing, our actions would be determined and not the consequence of free choice. See Ayer.

6 The website for one outlet at which the device is sold (www.compoundsecurity.co.uk/teenage_control_products.html) boasts that “trials have shown that teenagers are acutely aware of the Mosquito™ and move away from the area within just a couple of minutes.” The image used to sell the device shows hooded teenagers covering their ears. See also this BBC report: <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/7240306.stm> (both items last accessed 26 Nov. 2008).

7 The official Children's Commission website (http://www.11million.org.uk) (last accessed 2 May 2008), provides the following reasons for its opposition to the use of Mosquito devices:• They affect all children and young people, even babies and toddlers.• They don’t work. They only move the problem along.• They build barriers between younger and older people.• They force us [youths] to move away from places we feel safe in.

8 In a poignant display of agency, many young people have turned the mosquito sound to their advantage by downloading it as a ring-tone onto their mobile phones, and thereby being able to receive calls and text messages without the knowledge of parents or teachers. See, for instance, this website: <http://www.freemosquitoringtones.org/> (last accessed 28 Feb. 2008).

9 Note, for instance, that public policy issues are frequently framed in terms either of a threat to children or else the present degradation of the character of children that puts the community itself at risk. Health risks are understood in terms of childhood obesity, for instance; domestic violence and rape in terms of child abuse; poverty in terms of child neglect; commercialization and advertising in terms of the sexualization of children; community morality in terms of teenage pregnancy; and so on.

10 The relation between Agamben's use of the term “thing” here and Lacan's reinterpretation of das Ding in Freud should not be overlooked. The Thing in Lacanian psychoanalytic theory designates an imaginary loss, or internal un-representable rupture, that is precipitated by the acquisition of language (the splitting of the self between unconscious and conscious), and which thereby sets desire into motion. See Lacan 118.

11 For an excellent analysis of Agamben's treatment of law in terms of his accounts of history and play, see Mills.

12 An apt example of the kind of power Bartleby represents is Rosa Parks's refusal to move from her “white” seat on an Alabama bus, in 1955: an action which helped galvanize the civil rights movement. Thanks to Robert Sinnerbrink for suggesting this example.

13 See also Edkinds.

14 It is often suggested that children live in between fantasy and reality. Yet research in child psychology suggests that, provided with accurate information about their environment, children easily tell the difference. For instance, they might play with an imaginary friend, or attribute agency to a doll for the purposes of a game, aware of the provisional nature of this “reality.” The boundary breaks down, however, when children are given inaccurate information about the world: for instance, that a fat man in a red suit breaks into their house to deliver presents at Christmas time, but only if they’re good. Children often struggle to incorporate the contradictions the Santa myth generates into the fabric of their everyday understanding of reality, and once the myth is debunked, can feel misled and betrayed. See Woolley; and Taylor.

15 Another example of adults’ attempt to limit teenagers’ use of public space is the case of a British local council that spent considerable funds rebuilding three steps so that they were no longer comfortable to sit on, on the basis that teenagers were gathering there after school. For news coverage see <http://www.yourlocalguardian.co.uk/news/2272425.taking_steps_to_deter_kids_having_a_sitdown_in_rosehill/> (last accessed 26 Nov. 2008). The comments section to the article is also instructive.

16 Bill Henson became a household name in Australia after the image on an invitation to his 2008 Sydney exhibition caused a media row, leading to the seizure of some of the exhibition's photographs by police and the investigation of Henson as a child pornographer. Although ultimately charges were not laid, the incident ignited a debate in Australia that mirrors those in the USA (in relation, for instance, to the photographer Sally Mann) regarding the meaning of child nudity, and whether its representation in itself constitutes pornography. For a detailed “anatomy” of the moral panic over Henson's exhibition, see Marr. One notable omission during the media ruckus over the image was the girl's own view on the photographs, and indeed the opinions of any children, as children's rights activists took it upon themselves to speak on their behalf. For an account of this omission, see Valentine.