The Counterfeit Child and Unequal Terrains of Innocence: Race, Gender, and Murder in Junior High

• In Event: 52.063 - The Child in Question: Exploring Social Constructions of Childhood

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to analyze, from a social psychoanalytic perspective, the status of the “counterfeit child” as it is linked to race and gender. The “counterfeit child” is a literary symbol referring to a child who is not actually a child, but rather a threatening imposter to the point of justifying murder (Bruhm, 2012). My aim is to unearth the social significance of this literary figure in the legal case of Leticia King, a transgender black child who was murdered by her classmate, Brandon McInerney, in 2008. At the time, both children were 14-years-old, even while the avenues leading to that fatal day are much older. How their early childhoods of gender and race could end in murder is the subject of this paper.

The theoretical framework of the paper is psychoanalytic, with a particular focus on Stephen Bruhm’s (2012) concept of the “counterfeit child.” While Bruhm uses this concept to unearth the literary significance of this (non) child figure, I interrogate the unequal terrains of innocence on which childhood is constructed. My analysis also turns to Melanie Klein’s (1946) concept of splitting, which, I suggest, underwrites the counterfeit figure as the psychical condition of murder (p. 181; see also Britzman, 2015).
Drawing on media coverage of the King trial, my inquiry examines the significance of Ken Corbett’s (2015) account of the proceedings, while also speculating about implications for thinking about cases of anti-black violence against children in general (Ferguson, 2001). I draw from news media about the case, with a particular emphasis on Corbett’s watershed text, as well as scholarly work that addresses the racialized and gendered construction of childhood (Duane, 2010; Hodgson, 2013).

The counterfeit child is a valuable concept for the way it exposes the racialized and gendered terms on which the borders of childhood are made and policed. In the case of Leticia King, I argue that the counterfeit reveals the unconscious justification of anti-black violence and transphobia on the ground that this child is not a child, but rather as a threat to the normalized image of the child, which includes the “boys-will-be-boys” psychology of her murderer (Corbett, 2015, p. 149).

The significance of the paper is the case it builds for the significance of the counterfeit child as it pertains to the analysis of transphobia and racism in relationship to childhood. At a time when black children fear for their lives in contexts of anti-black racism (Coates, 2015; Sharpe, 2011; 2014) and at a time when the murder of black transgender youth reaches unprecedented heights (Rose, 2016), it is time to expose for analysis the psychical and social channels that justify hatred in the name of innocence that is at the same time violently denied to particular children.

Author

• Lisa Farley, York University