At the Horizons of the Subject: Neo-liberalism, neo-conservatism and the rights of the child Part One: From ‘knowing’ fetus to ‘confused’ child

The inability of the child to represent his or her own interests as a legal subject (by definition), and the continued interest of the state in the child as a futurity or resource locks the child in an eternal pas de deux: the child continually approaches the possibility of 'personhood' but never achieves it. In the past 40 years, in western nations the child's legal personhood has been simultaneously invoked and constrained: through a growing array of persons and organizations that, as an exteriority, purport to 'best represent the child'; and through an ever more finely gradated mapping of the child's interiority—which filters the child's voice through a range of interpretive theories, and mechanisms. In this myopic and hyperopic reading of the child, the child's voice disappears. This paper is the first of two examining the relationship of the child to the liberal notion of the subject. In the case law explored around fetal rights and custody issues in the United States and elsewhere we find a paradoxical situation where the 'fetus' is granted a more authoritative voice in terms of what it 'wants' than is the child, whose wishes are perpetually called into question. Together these papers raise questions about the nature of the subject qua individual. They highlight the potential for a ventriloquist discourse around the child whereby neo-liberal and neo-conservative groups that purport to speak for the child mobilize their own political interests.