ABSTRACT
The questions of the desire for the child, and the child that is wanted, are widely seen to be determined by constructions of race as constitutive of repetition and the own, and, conversely, of difference and the “not own”. In the case Ragone remarks upon, “unresolved needs to have a child” create the wanted child primarily as child, regardless of other identities that might be produced for it. Presumably the child is “own” in the specificity of being the child that is wanted, whether or not it is perceived as racially the same or different. Race may trump the child, or child may trump race in determining race as a bar to, or an enabler of, ownness. The child and its value are the product again of a particular perspective, which can effect the recognition of the child as child, and the body as body, as well as assert the differences that they are supposed to transgress.
