Introduction: the posthumanist wild child -- Is there a space of maternal ethics? : Emma Donoghue's Room -- Postapocalyptic responsibility : patriarchy at the end of the world in Cormac McCarthy's The road -- Maternal love/maternal violence : inventing ethics in Toni Morrison's A mercy -- "Monstrous decision" : destruction and relation in Lionel Shriver's We need to talk about Kevin -- "Dis-ap-peared" : endangered children in Denis Villeneuve's Prisoners and Alice Munro's "Miles City, Montana" -- Afterword : the pretense of the human from Victor of Aveyron to Nim Chimpsky.
Summary:
"In Wild Child, Naomi Morgenstern explores depictions of children and their adult caregivers in extreme situations--ranging from the violence of slavery and sexual captivity to accidental death, mass murder, torture, and global apocalypse--in such works as Toni Morrison's A Mercy, Cormac McCarthy's The Road, Lionel Shriver's We Need to Talk about Kevin, Emma Donoghue's Room, and Denis Villeneuve's film Prisoners. Morgenstern shows how, in such narratives, 'wild' children function as symptoms of new ethical crises and existential fears raised by transformations in the technology and politics of reproduction and by increased ethical questions about the very decision to reproduce. Urgent and engaging, Wild Child offers the only extended consideration of how twenty-first century fiction has begun to imagine the decision to reproduce and the ethical challenges of posthumanist parenting."-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.