ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. It discusses the divisive topic of violence against children and responses to it. The book considers the symbolic meaning of the whole life term of imprisonment for murder in English law in terms of the relationship between the offender's wrong and the persistence of the punishment that constitutes a form of institutional remembering. It discusses the cultural anxiety over the uses and abuses of children's bodies in visual culture accords those bodies the very qualities of a taboo, which of course only further implicates the child's body with illicit sexuality, adding to our disquiet. The book considers the success with which conservative critics of potentially amazing scientific advances present the 'natural' qualities of human nature as taboo in their own right, that is, as sacred principles that must remain untouched by science or utilitarian logic.
