Who Ate My Baby?: Crimes of the Oral Father

Taking as a horrifying example a 1993 triple child homicide in West Memphis, Arkansas, in which bitemark evidence figures prominently, this article explores some ramifications of “the Oral Father”—a figure of paternity associated with the most primitive appetite and aggressivity. The Oral Father is the preoedipal, anti(or ante-) genital paternal analog of that familiar image of polymorphous maternity known as the “Phallic Mother.” Although the image of the Phallic Mother has, almost from the inception of psychoanalysis, embodied the tropology and aetiology of perversion, she cannot and should not represent alone the dark side of the parental unconscious. Furthermore, psychoanalysis has always used the Phallic Mother to represent the eros of the (usually male) child (of whatever age), not that of the parent. The Oral Father does not work alone; the term refers not only to an actual father or custodial male who breaches what should be the

boundaries between himself and his children in particular ways, but to the entire network of paternalist, patriarchal, oedipal practices, discourses, and institutions that support and cover for him. In too many cases, however, physical evidence testifies to the fact that little boys have reason to fear being eaten up, and even emasculated, by their father—his appetite is not a figment of their imagination.