{"product_id":"wild-child-intensive-parenting-and-posthumanist-ethics-9781517903794","title":"Wild Child: Intensive Parenting and Posthumanist","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eExploring how the figure of the “wild child” in contemporary fiction grapples with contemporary cultural anxieties about reproductive ethics and the future of humanity\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e In the eighteenth century, Western philosophy positioned the figure of “the child” at the border between untamed nature and rational adulthood. Contemporary cultural anxieties about the ethics and politics of reproductive choice and the crisis of parental responsibility have freighted this liminal figure with new meaning in twenty-first-century narratives.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eWild Child\u003c\/i\u003e, Naomi Morgenstern explores depictions of children and their adult caregivers in extreme situations—ranging from the violence of slavery and sexual captivity to accidental death, mass murder, torture, and global apocalypse—in such works as Toni Morrison’s \u003ci\u003eA Mercy\u003c\/i\u003e, Cormac McCarthy’s \u003ci\u003eThe Road\u003c\/i\u003e, Lionel Shriver’s \u003ci\u003eWe Need to Talk about Kevin\u003c\/i\u003e, Emma Donoghue’s \u003ci\u003eRoom\u003c\/i\u003e, and Denis Villeneuve’s film \u003ci\u003ePrisoners\u003c\/i\u003e. Morgenstern shows how, in such narratives, “wild” children function as symptoms of new ethical crises and existential fears raised by transformations in the technology and politics of reproduction and by increased ethical questions about the very decision to reproduce. In the face of an uncertain future that no longer confirms the confidence of patriarchal humanism, such narratives displace or project present-day apprehensions about maternal sacrifice and paternal protection onto the wildness of children in a series of hyperbolically violent scenes.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eUrgent and engaging, \u003ci\u003eWild Child\u003c\/i\u003e offers the only extended consideration of how twenty-first-century fiction has begun to imagine the decision to reproduce and the ethical challenges of posthumanist parenting.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Your child isn’t civilized. Neither are you. Expect the child to be more productively destructive and survivalist than you imagined, showing us to be the techno-relational-vulnerable animals that we are, strange to the core in crisis and change. Also expect that you won’t find a smarter, more forthright, and beautifully nuanced guide to these thoughts than Naomi Morgenstern. Impressive and persuasive.\"—Kathryn Bond Stockton, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Queer Child, or Growing Sideways in the Twentieth Century\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eWild Child\u003c\/i\u003e is a brilliant and thoroughly engaging study of reproductive ethics and the ethics of parenting in narratives of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Naomi Morgenstern's command of theoretical texts, both philosophical and psychoanalytic, is prodigious, and her writing style is vibrant—at once theoretically complex and alive with personal twists and turns of language.\"—Jean Wyatt, author of \u003ci\u003eLove and Narrative Form in Toni Morrison's Later Novels\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eContents\u003cbr\u003eIntroduction: The Posthumanist Wild Child\u003cbr\u003e1. Is There a Space of Maternal Ethics? Emma Donoghue’s \u003ci\u003eRoom\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e2. Postapocalyptic Responsibility: Patriarchy at the End of the World in Cormac McCarthy’s \u003ci\u003eThe Road\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e3. Maternal Love\/Maternal Violence: Inventing Ethics in Toni Morrison’s \u003ci\u003eA Mercy\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e4. “Monstrous Decision”: Destruction and Relation in Lionel Shriver’s \u003ci\u003eWe Need to Talk about Kevin\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e5. “Dis-ap-peared”: Endangered Children in Denis Villeneuve’s \u003ci\u003ePrisoners\u003c\/i\u003e and Alice Munro’s “Miles City, Montana”\u003cbr\u003eAfterword: The Pretense of the Human from Victor of Aveyron to Nim Chimpsky\u003cbr\u003eAcknowledgments\u003cbr\u003eNotes\u003cbr\u003eIndex\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"University of Minnesota Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49409699152215,"sku":"9781517903794","price":19.79,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781517903794.jpg?v=1730507724","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/wild-child-intensive-parenting-and-posthumanist-ethics-9781517903794","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}