Violent Exceptions turns to the humanitarian figure of the child-in-peril in twenty-first-century political discourse to better understand how this figure is appropriated by political constituencies for purposes rarely to do with the needs of children at risk. Wendy S. Hesford shows how the figure of the child-in-peril is predicated on racial division, which, she argues, is central to both conservative and liberal logics, especially at times of crisis when politicians leverage humanitarian storytelling as a political weapon. Through iconic images and stories of child migrants, child refugees, undocumented children, child soldiers, and children who are victims of war, terrorism, and state violence, Violent Exceptions illustrates how humanitarian rhetoric turns public attention away from systemic violations against children’s human rights and reframes this violence as exceptional—erasing more gradual forms of violence and minimizing human rights potential to counteract these violations and the precarious conditions from which they arise.

Wendy S. Hesford is Professor of English and Faculty Director of the Global Arts and Humanities Discovery Theme at The Ohio State University. She is the author, most recently, of Spectacular Rhetorics: Human Rights Visions, Recognitions, Feminisms.

Preface           Handprints and Humanitarian Violence at the Border

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1        “No Tears Here”: Humanitarian Recognition, Liminality, and the Child Refugee

Chapter 2        Trafficking Global Girlhoods, Terrorism, and Humanitarian Celebrity

Chapter 3        Humanitarian Futures: Disability Exceptionalism and African Child Soldier Narratives

Chapter 4        Humanitarian Negations: Black Childhoods and US Carceral Systems

Chapter 5        Queer Optics: Humanitarian Thresholds and Transgender Children’s Rights

Coda   “Walls as We See Them”

Notes

Bibliography

Index