Hysteria Studies

We are on the cusp of a new genre of academic research that I would call, “hysteria studies.” Witness a recent spate of books and articles investigating such seemingly unrelated topics as a variety of “syndromes” including the elusive Epstein-Barr (Elaine Showalter, Hystories, Columbia University Press), alien abductions (Jodi Dean, Aliens in America, Cornell University Press), and fear in general, (Barry Glassner, Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things, Basic Books). There seems to be no doubt about it, we are plenty scared about lots of things that are largely out of our control; technology, capitalism, the government, death. Perhaps it is no surprise, then, some scholars contend, that we are very busily transferring our panic onto an endless array of maladies and conspiracy theories that reflect this panic in a more well pleasurable way. No doubt it is decidedly not pleasurable to the people who have these maladies, or are abducted, ritually sacrificed, etc. But, if we are to look at what sells newspapers, television shows and movies, it appears that it sure is fun to talk about them. Et, voila, a discourse of fear, and biensur, hysteria studies.

I am as taken with this new turn in social theory as I am with James Kincaid’s contribution to it, Erotic Innocence: The Culture of Child Molesting. It is witty (even a little too witty), well researched and intelligent. Careful to acknowledge the existence of child abuse, Kincaid is more interested in why we love to talk about it. In the course of advancing his thesis, he re-tells a bevy of high profile stories of alleged sexual misconduct and criminality (Woody Allen, Michael Jackson, the Menendez brothers, the McMartin trial, etc.). Also included are his original and thought provoking re-readings of a wide array of films, novels, and pop culture phenomena.

Among my favorite sections is the one on incorrigible children. In it, Kincaid discusses the Wild Boy of Aveyron alongside Horatio Alger’s two most famous novels, Ragged Dick and Mark the Matchboy. As if this coupling wasn’t odd enough, he finishes with a discussion of the pop-psychology notion of the “child within.” The construction of the innocent child, Kincaid concludes, carries with it a constructed “wild child;” one who resists classification as either “the good” or the “the bad” child. Though this child might appear at first to be more complex and thus more authentic, it too, Kincaid contends, is a projection. For thinking of children as a separate species, whether complex or not, continues to construct them as an exotic beings devoid of human agency. Such fantasies tell us not only about the child, but also about ourselves. Thus, Kincaid observes, with the construction of “the child” in the 19th century, we have the concomitant construction of “the parent.” Lately, he argues, adults have sought out the fantasy child as a way to achieve mental health in the form of healing a child within. “This child rechurns our cultural curds, innocence and purity, into a modern snack food we can ingest and use to nourish, excuse and explain ourselves. This is a child whose identity we steal and can then ‘find’ and use to create the happy time we deserved all along,” (p. 70).

For Kincaid, the child molester story is a “Gothic” one. “It is a story of monsters and purity, sunshine and darkness, of being chased by the beast and finding your feet in glue. Gothic narratives,” he continues, “always seem to serve a culture under stress... the Gothic assumes and creates a terror so urgent it excuses the most brutal appeals,” (p. 10–11). Some readers might find it disturbing to see that Kincaid talks about child molesting in the same breath as alien abductions and ritual, satanic sacrifices. Linking these is a bold move as it seems to imply that they are all uniformly, bunk. Of course, that is not his point. Rather, what all of these have in common is the construction of victims that are cast in terms of the needs of...