The wild child: Posthumanism and the child-animal figure

“Never work with animals or children” is a familiar word of advice. While this tongue-in-cheek line was reportedly first uttered by the American actor and comedian, W C Fields, in the early part of the twentieth century, it has become something of a common throwaway comment uttered by adults ever since. Behind the humorous intention of this warning, there is an implied suggestion that the reason why a rational adult would not entertain such a partnership is that the two species – child and animal – share an inherent “wildness” that is certain to bring, if not disaster, then a disruption to the “normal” course of events. Kenneth Kidd (2004: 151) notes that for Freud, “all children are feral early in life, and this perspective survives in both Freudian interpretive schemes and pop-cultural feral tales”. A further dimension to this viewpoint is the long-held assumption that children’s literature, by its very nature, is associated with the primitive or uncivilised (Smol 1996). In this way, the child and children’s literature become interchangeable with the “feral” as both stand in opposition to the adult and the civilised..