ABSTRACT
Fathers and fatherhood have long played an important role in the thinking and theorizing about law. But perhaps this is not another side of the law of the father. Perhaps, as feminist writers like Kaja Silverman have pointed out, because the law of the father conjures a mythical fullness and plenitude it simultaneously marks a void, an absence. The film, A Perfect World, also offers its spectator the chance to contemplate the value of "lost" children, or of childhood that is lost, at least as law sets that value, and, at the same time, to occupy a childlike identity. This chapter discusses this film because law exists in a world of images whose power is not located primarily in their representation of something exterior to themselves, but instead is found in the image itself. It holds out possibilities for reimaging law in its complex relations to fatherhood.
