La reivindicación del sujeto político desde la perspectiva de los niños

Abstract

The study, developed within the Urban Culture and Politics research line, arises from the need to empower children as agents of change in their society, within a reality mediated by screens and characteristic of a digital context marked by the rapid circulation of content and discourses loaded with values, ideologies, and aesthetic stereotypes. In this era, priority is given to the consumer subject, generating apathy and disinterest toward individuals’ political action. For this reason, the research aimed to identify how a group of fourth-grade students from a public school in Bogotá, immersed in the digital context, exercise their political subjectivity. To this end, categories such as subjectivation—drawn from post-structuralism—were considered in order to account for the constitution of the subject; as well as political action, the notion of zoon politikon, and the concept of the political. These theoretical constructs were necessary to guide the development of the analytical framework concerning those practices and attitudes that allow the recognition of political exercise in children within this new communicative ecosystem, also referred to as hypermediations. The study adopted an educational action-research approach to analyze what children wish to communicate about their subjectivity and their everyday interactions with digital devices. Based on their experiences, it was found that children construct their subjectivity within a constant tension between their own identity and the discourses, practices, and power relations present in the content they consume. The study also reveals the existence of small everyday forms of resistance among children, even in contexts highly regulated by parents, algorithms, and markets.