“The long nightmare:” Childhood, identity, and carnophallogocentrism in Yuki Kaori’s Godchild

Butler, Ingrid

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/132437 Copy

Description

Title

“The long nightmare:” Childhood, identity, and carnophallogocentrism in Yuki Kaori’s Godchild

Author(s)

Butler, Ingrid

Issue Date

2025-12-16

Keyword(s)

• Animal Studies
• Carnophallogocentrism
• Childhood
• Meat-eating
• Yuki Kaori
• Pets
• Godchild
• Count Cain

Abstract

This essay will examine the complex intersections of childhood, pets, and meat-eating in Yuki Kaori’s gothic neo-Victorian manga Godchild, by using Jacques Derrida’s concept of carnophallogocentrism. Through a close reading of carnophallogocentrism in conversation with the childhood of the adult character Jizabel Disraeli, this essay will examine how children negotiate the complexity of meat-eating and the egalitarian bonds of child-animal relationships. The narrative ultimately takes an ambivalent position on child resistance to carnophallogocentrism and the change in the child-animal relationship wrought by human socialization, arguing for the inevitability of such a shift while also positioning the untimely loss of the animal-child bond as a deeply traumatic event that can disrupt the developing personality. In its exploration of a cure for such disruption to the psyche, the prioritization of relationships with other humans, Godchild pessimistically locates the shared kinship of animal-human relationships in the realm of the child or the dead, but not the adult human.

Series/Report Name or Number

The Journal of Anime and Manga Studies, volume 6 issue 2

Type of Resource

text

Genre of Resource

Articles

Language

eng

DOI

https://doi.org/10.21900/j.jams.v6.1888

Copyright and License Information

• Copyright 2025 Ingrid Butler
• This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0).

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