Abstract:Th ere is a story called "Th e Willful Child."O nce upon a time there was a child who was willful, and would not do as her mother wished.For this reason God had no pleasure in her, and let her become ...Th ere is a story called "Th e Willful Child."O nce upon a time there was a child who was willful, and would not do as her mother wished.For this reason God had no pleasure in her, and let her become ill, and no doctor could do her any good, and in a short time she lay on her death-bed.When she had been lowered into her grave, and the earth was spread over her, all at once her arm came out again, and stretched upwards, and when they had put it in and spread fresh earth over it, it was all to no purpose, for the arm always came out again.Th en the mother herself was obliged to go to the grave, and strike the arm with a rod, and when she had done that, it was drawn in, and then at last the child had rest beneath the ground.(Grimm and Grimm 1884, 125) 1 What a story.Th e willful child: she has a story to tell.In this Grimm story, which is certainly a grim story, the willful child is the one who is disobedient, who will not do as her mother wishes.If authority assumes the right to turn a wish into a command, then willfulness is a diagnosis of the failure to comply with those whose authority is given.Th e costs of such a diagnosis are high: through a chain of command (the mother, God, the doctors) the child's fate is sealed.It is ill will that responds to willfulness; the child is allowed to become ill in such a way that no one can "do her any good."Willfulness is thus compromising; it compromises the capacity of a subject to survive, let alone fl ourish.Th e punishment for willfulness is a passive willing of death, an allowing of death.Note that willfulness is also that which persists even after death: displaced onto an arm, from a body onto a body part.Th e arm inherits the willfulness of the child insofar as it will not be kept down, insofar as it keeps coming up,Read More