“Childing, me?”

ethics, politics and listening in the deconstruction of hegemonic childhood

Abstract

Based on the hypothesis that hegemonic speeches about childhood generate effects of exclusion and subjection of the child, we draw on possible connections between Agamben, Benjamin and Lacan to discuss childhood as a historical and political construct, shaped by normative idealizations and social erasures, especially in contexts of vulnerability. In this article, we propose to discuss, in an essayistic manner, the notion of “child as a method” as an ethical and epistemological operator, able to destabilize totalizing discourses and call for singular forms of listening. Psychoanalysis, in its articulation with the unconscious and the rest, provides tools to sustain the child’s emergency, especially through playing and flâneur listening. We borrow Vincentin’s (2020) “childing” ethos to invite the psychoanalyst to engage on the public sphere, recognizing the child as a producer of knowledge and enunciation, and advocating, within the political field, the listening to children as a means to uphold rights to protection and freedom.