From Hunger to Love: Desmond Manderson (week 1 reading)

The Civilised vs the Savage

• Manderson tackles the defining factor that separates the savage from the civilised

• Humans use tools (fork) and laws through culture to create distance between ourselves and the primal

• To be civilised, you must be a rule abiding citizen (the loved and protected ones in the eyes of the law).

• Lone wolf = Max is isolated in a room by himself as punishment for his disobedience

• Being called a ‘wild thing’ relates to Freud’s understanding of children as the primitives of our time.

Obedience, disobedience and punishment in Where the Wild Things Are

Dawning of Responsibility

• Piaget theory: rules have consequences and do not embody judgments at all. Evident through the repetition of his mothers rules when in the wild

• Promise of obedience in exchange for love (an example of common law)

• Question: Do you think this story just an example of a common parent/child disciplining relationship rather than a disciplining of law in society?

• Legitimacy of aggression and punishment VS a stabilized environment through personal tribute and loyalty

• Disobedience at the beginning of the story led to the punishment of no dinner

• Role reversal: Max was the ‘wild one’ and becomes the sovereign to the wild things. This is where his understanding of the begins

Where the Wild Things Are

Dawning of Responsibility

• Responsibility does not require one to stop obeying as Piaget theorised, it’s already within a child

• Children learn about problems of obedience and cooperation in the games they play, similarly to Max in his exploration of the kingdom

• Obeying statements such as “do as I say” leads to injustice

• Max is lonely and unhappy, reflecting the inadequacy of relying on obedience as a model of law

• We sacrifice the state of nature, in favour of a legal order marked by objectivity and obedience

• Max ultimately surrenders his state of nature (to be a ‘wild thing’ as his mother calls him), in favour of obedience and abidance of the law (his mother’s rules)

• Being called a ‘wild thing’ relates to Freud’s understanding of children as the primitives of our time.

• Max’s dream world represents his internal struggle between
• The desire for freedom
• Obeying his parents to gain their approval

• Obedience is traded for love

• To be a good legal subject you need to love the law/sovereign

• To be responsible is to recognise the uniqueness of a situation

• Max reflects upon his own difference from the wild things and returns home. He understands to receive love from his mother he must play quietly

• Question: Do you believe the only consent to the law because we have found responsibility in ourselves to love others and think of others? Or other reasons?

Children's Literature and the law

• Children’s stories ought to be regarded not just as fables, but as an essential site of for the emergence of the understanding of law

• Our understanding of law is first learned as a child, and this becomes the basis for the rest of our lives.

• The education of children through fables has existed since the beginning of time, and this has translated more recently into film

The head in the world

A Civilised Culture

Society's attitudes through literature

The head in the world

• Manderson repeatedly mentions the qualities as to what makes a person civilised in the Western eyes

• From distancing oneself away from their food via the usage of the forks, and the way in which we all abide the rules

• What these all these qualities have in common is culture

• Punishment and Obedience

• Children's stories instil values and beliefs held by the law in the impressionable minds of children.

• As we evolve as a society, (eg: through the legalisation of gay marriage) this is reflected in children’s literature.

• ‘Gal and Noa’s Daddies’.

• The laws documented in children’s stories reiterate society’s beliefs AT THAT TIME

• Question: What are some books that you read as a child, that reflect society’s laws and morals at the time they were written?

• The reading environment is of crucial importance for Manderson

o The concept trust is formed here which produces an external medium for children to communicate

•Children’s books provoke children to explore the characters beyond the facts. Evident through the social context in which children conduct their first reading

Question: Why does Manderson emphasise such importance over the context in which readings, specifically children’s stories are done?

• Where the Wild Things Are has to be seen through two more additional ways

o An argument of legal ethics; and

o An argument of legal pluralism

• Oral communication and the way reading is done for children has a profound effect on how children understand readings

o “reading of something

o “reading to someone”

From Hunger to Love: Desmond Manderson (week 1 reading)

By Gabrielle Capes, Kathy Tran, Gabrielle Dupe, Natasha Stoikos and Hannah Alam