TABOO - TRANSGRESSION - TRANSCENDENCE

The paper examines the taboo notion of “auto-pedophilia”—the obsessive self-occupation with, and erotization of, one’s own childhood image—as a lens for artistic inquiry. In today’s culture of personal archives, the child-self emerges as a fetishized entity, merging innocence with unattainable purity. This unsettling phenomenon pushes art into controversial territory, challenging conventional ideas of memory, desire, and self-representation.

Jean Baudrillard wrote, “Seduction never belongs to the order of nature, but that of artifice” (Seduction), prompting reflection on how the child-self’s eroticization morphs it into an object of desire. Similarly, Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection addresses the child-self’s capacity to evoke both fascination and revulsion, a borderline space of intimacy and otherness.

How might such a transgressive approach critique society’s fixation on youth and purity, or expose latent narcissistic impulses within cultural narratives? Gilles Deleuze’s The Logic of Sense underscores the fragmentary nature of desire, casting the child-self as a “partial object” in the currents of identity and longing.

This proposal aims to interrogate whether art can transform this taboo into an act of catharsis or transcendence, or if it remains ethically precarious and psychologically fraught. In what ways do artists and viewers bear responsibility when confronting such volatile material, and how might they navigate the line between critique and exploitation?

By engaging auto-pedophilia in creative practice, do we risk reinforcing cultural taboos, or can the provocative exploration of childhood desire reveal broader truths about human psychology? Participants at the TTT Conference are invited to examine these tensions between innocence, memory, and the erotic imagination, confronting head-on the uneasy interplay of transgression and insight.

Probing this disquieting domain, we confront whether the eroticization of one’s child-self can transcend mere shock, serving instead as a vehicle for deeper cultural and psychological reflection on memory, sexuality, and personal myth. Hence, the challenge.