ABSTRACT
One of the cornerstones of the social order is the asymmetrical power relationship between the adult and the child. The details may differ, but essentially, we understand power and responsibility to be the prerogative of the adult, considering dependence and obedience as the lot of the child. If these fundamentals are altered or challenged, the social order itself is threatened. This is no doubt why, for instance, Neil Postman’s The Disappearance of Childhood (1982) strikes such an alarmist note: if childhood as we know it is disappearing, is not our entire society on the brink of collapse? Conversely, Robert Bly’s The Sibling Society (1996) identifies the societal problems facing Western societies with a lack of mature adults, where no one wants to be responsible and life should be an extended teen ride. In other words, if either the adult category or the child category is taken out of the equation, the social order collapses. On another level, such a breakdown leads, at least temporarily, to the concept of child or adult being cast out of the symbolic order; that is, they become Kristeva’s abject, or the uncanny (in Freud’s parlance), or taboo (to use Lévi-Strauss). In fictional responses to such anxieties, we find stories about changelings or children who are possessed (The Exorcist) or monstrous in other ways (Doris Lessing’s The Fifth Child).
