Primack, Alvin J.
(2022)
The Child of Obscenity: Rhetoric, Grammar, and the Unconscious of Law.
Doctoral Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh.
(Unpublished)
Abstract
Prior historical scholarship on obscenity has noted that most social and legal calls for regulating obscene media content have centered on specious appeals to children’s vulnerability. Scholars have explored the technological, cultural, and ideological functions these claims served for members of the public and legislators, and some have considered the legal ramifications of their use in judicial argumentation. I contribute to this literature by closely reading more than two centuries of judicial opinions (1708-1968) to understand what functions these claims served for adjudicators. I found that adjudicators were rarely involved in disputes involving actual children or were seldom concerned with actual provable harm. Instead, these appeals helped produce an “image of the Child” – a collective figure that powerfully limited the possibilities of rhetoric in judicial discourse. To enhance my analysis of these writings, I turned to the psychoanalytic work of Jacques Lacan to develop a critical rhetorical method of reading that attuned me to the “continual mismatch between enunciation and apparently intended meaning” in the law. This method directed attention to both how the Child operated as a signifier to help judicial actors assert claims to authority, but also how court officials’ enunciative conditions restricted a variety of rhetorical possibilities. I found that the Child served as an anchoring point in legal discourse that enabled judicial actors to perform the role of subject supposed to know: a performative representation of the rules, conventions, or protocols of law whereby judges serve as providers of stability to legal meaning. In ascertaining this use of the Child, I retheorize stare decisis as both a practice of producing judicial authority and as a place-making activity that enables judges to forge spaces for themselves in the discourse of law. This project considers the broad social implications these discursive processes have for children who are made vulnerable by the very same legal processes and concepts enacted to protect them.
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Details
| Item Type: |
University of Pittsburgh ETD
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| Status: |
Unpublished |
| Creators/Authors: |
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| ETD Committee: |
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| Date: |
13 August 2022 |
| Date Type: |
Publication |
| Defense Date: |
16 May 2022 |
| Approval Date: |
11 November 2024 |
| Submission Date: |
16 May 2022 |
| Access Restriction: |
No restriction; Release the ETD for access worldwide immediately. |
| Number of Pages: |
301 |
| Institution: |
University of Pittsburgh |
| Schools and Programs: |
Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences > Communication: Rhetoric and Communication |
| Degree: |
PhD - Doctor of Philosophy |
| Thesis Type: |
Doctoral Dissertation |
| Refereed: |
Yes |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: |
Rhetoric, Lacan, Psychoanalysis, Stare Decisis, Obscenity, Unconscious, Subject Supposed to Know |
| Date Deposited: |
11 Nov 2024 18:50 |
| Last Modified: |
11 Nov 2024 20:45 |
| URI: |
http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/id/eprint/43002 |
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