Historicizing affect, psychoanalyzing history: pedophilia and the discourse of child sexuality.
Within the last two decades in Australia, Britain, and the United States, we have seen a veritable explosion of cultural panic regarding the problem of pedophilia. Scarcely a day passes without some mention in the media of predatory pedophiles or organized pedophile networks. Many social constructionist historians and sociologists have described this incitement to discourse as indicative of a moral panic. The question that concerns me in this article is: If this incitement to discourse is indicative of a moral panic, to what does the panic refer? I begin by detailing, first, how social constructionism requires psychoanalytic categories in order to understand the notion of panic, and second, how a psychoanalytic reading of history might reveal important unconscious forces at work in the current pedophilia "crisis" that our culture refuses to confront. Here, I will suggest a repressed discourse of child sexuality is writ large. I will argue that the hegemonic discourse of pedophilia is contained largely within a neurotic structure and that many of our prevailing responses to pedophilia function as a way to avoid tackling crucial issues about the reality and trauma of childhood sexuality.
Angelides
Steven
S
Australian Centre, University of Melbourne, Australia 3010.
D000328:Adult; D001315:Australia; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D008399:Mass Behavior; D009497:Neurotic Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D010378:Pedophilia / Q000523:psychology; D011574:Psychoanalytic Theory; D011606:Psychosexual Development; D012094:Repression, Psychology; D012927:Social Control, Informal; D006113:United Kingdom; D014481:United States