Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:
https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/21861
Title: | Disavowal and foundational fantasies: A psychosocial exploration of the class, race and the social construction of the sexual child in the Anglophone West | Contributor(s): | Egan, R Danielle (author); Hawkes, Gail (author) | Publication Date: | 2013 | DOI: | 10.1177/1363460713488285 | Handle Link: | https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/21861 | Abstract: | Archival data offers rich source material for examining the complicated, and often paradoxical, deployment of the sexual child within protection literature crafted in the Anglophone West during the early 19th century. Drawing on a psychosocial framework, I analyze the affective and ideological subtext of social purity narratives in order to understand how and why it came to feel so natural for reformers and their primary audience-middle-class parents. I argue that the social construction of the sexual child within this discourse rests upon longstanding ideological preoccupations and middle class anxieties regarding class and race distinction. Attempts to secure the myth of middle-class purity through the disavowal of the middle-class child's autoeroticism functioned as a foundational fantasy in calls for protection. In the end, the construction of the sexual child within this protection movement was largely a figment of middle-class anxiety and defense, but one which nevertheless had and continues to have powerful cultural resonance. | Publication Type: | Journal Article | Source of Publication: | Sexualities, 16(5-6), p. 635-650 | Publisher: | Sage Publications Ltd | Place of Publication: | United Kingdom | ISSN: | 1461-7382 1363-4607 |
Fields of Research (FoR) 2008: | 160899 Sociology not elsewhere classified 160805 Social Change |
Fields of Research (FoR) 2020: | 441099 Sociology not elsewhere classified 441004 Social change |
Socio-Economic Objective (SEO) 2008: | 970117 Expanding Knowledge in Psychology and Cognitive Sciences 959999 Cultural Understanding not elsewhere classified |
Socio-Economic Objective (SEO) 2020: | 280121 Expanding knowledge in psychology | Peer Reviewed: | Yes | HERDC Category Description: | C1 Refereed Article in a Scholarly Journal |
---|---|
Appears in Collections: | Journal Article School of Psychology |
Files in This Item:
File | Description | Size | Format |
---|
SCOPUSTM
Citations
3
checked on Jan 20, 2024
Page view(s)
2,050
checked on Aug 20, 2023
Items in Research UNE are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.