Coda: The Ventriloquy of Childhood

Abstract

Recall Foucault’s argument that “objects of knowledge,” such as the five figures discussed in this book, come to serve as a resting spot for cultural knowledge. Whether this is medical, political, legal, moral, or economic knowledge, these objects of knowledge both express and conceal social attitudes. For example, the crack baby is ostensibly a figure warning of the dangers of drug use, but it really expresses racial anxieties over black motherhood. Likewise, the brat is a figure seemingly showing off the value of precocity and getting ahead, but is really a symbol of the danger of losing traditional family values. For Foucault, the objects of knowledge he wrote about were always “other people”—figures that doctors, legislators, or priests might hold up in order to reflect a lesson or make a claim. But in the 1980s, the era of lifestyle, we see how these objects of knowledge also start to become subjects. As with the sudden appearance of postmodernism, there is a seeming inevitability to occupying a lifestyle, to making a conscious choice between a range of proffered subject positions. We see an extreme version of this in the high school halls of The Breakfast Club and more subtle versions in yuppie advertisements for “power” condominiums, shopping, and dining. In fact, we can read the story of the PWA as marking exactly this kind of change from object of knowledge to subject: rather than remain a victimized object to be passed around and held up as a medico-moral example, our object began speaking for itself, claiming subjecthood and refusing to be merely a sign for others.