Childhood Innocence
Childhood Innocence, as our debate article explains, is a subjective and culturally unstable concept in Western society, whereby naivety and ignorance in children is idolized in some way. "Childhood innocence", a relatively recent invention[1] is historically associated with romanticists such as Rousseau, and more recently as a trope and cause célèbre within regressive politics, particularly of the conservative variety. Conservative and regressive liberal politics, including "radical" feminism has tended towards sexualizing/eroticizing those qualities in children which it deems to be "innocence", defining outside influences as "corrupting", "perverse" and "degenerate".
Quotes from authors attempting to define or reify innocence
Imaginative Conservative:
Everyone has witnessed this childhood innocence. The child exhibits this marveling spirit with great exuberance toward the good, true and beautiful and a rejection of the contrary. During early childhood, the boy develops his first certainties. He will be full of admiration, trust and hope that comes from the joy of new life. All these things develop inside this wonderworld of childhood innocence. However, this splendid gift must be protected against evil, sin and deception. With an underdeveloped intelligence, the young boy lacks the understanding of these elements that invade his marvelous world. As he grows older, he will develop new criteria and find ways of combatting evil without breaking his internal harmony.[2]
Tim Lott for The Guardian:
Innocence goes deeper than ignorance. It is some mysterious operation of the imagination, the part that can enter into mental universes from which one is soon to be forever excluded. I have my own particular recollection of this. Every year from when I was of reading age, I was given a Rupert the Bear annual for Christmas and every Christmas day I fell upon it with a passion, losing myself in the mysterious tales of Chinese wizards and sea-gods and wood sprites. Then one year I picked up the annual and could not "get into it". It was just a book with pictures and a story. I could no longer enter its portal and inhabit its world.[3]
Authors who critique innocence
David Evans, Danielle Egan, Gail Hawkes, John Holt and James Kincaid have all attempted to critique the concept of innocence.
Works that address the innocence trope
- James Kincaid: Erotic Innocence: The Culture of Child Molesting (Duke University Press, 1998). See also our article on the subject.
- David Evans: Falling angels? - the material construction of children as sexual citizens.
- Essay:The Paradigm of Innocence