Philosophy of Childhood and the Politics of Subjectivity :: Children Papers

Philosophy of Childhood and the Politics of SubjectivityThe Western onto-theological tradition has longsighted been preoccupied with two symbolizations of childhood. One conceives of it as an original unity of be and knowing, an modelling of completed identity. The other conceives of childhood as deficit and danger, an exemplar of the untamed appetite and the uncontrolled will. In the economy of Plato and Aristotles three-way self-importance, the child is ontogenetically out of balance. She is incapable of bringing the three parts of the self into a right hierarchal relation based on the domination of reason. In other words, attaining adulthood means eradicating the child. Freuds reformulation of the Platonic companionship of self combines the two symbolizations. His model creates an opening for shifting power transaction between the elements of the self. He opens the way toward what Kristeva calls the subject-in-process, a pluralism of relationships rather than an organizati on make up by exclusions and hierarchies. After Freud, the child comes to stand for the inexpugnable demands of desire. Through communication with this child, the postmodern adult undergoes the dismantling of the notion of subjectivity based on domination, and moves toward the continuous reconstruction of the subject-in-process. The Child and the Second HarmonyThe child frontmost appears in the known ancient texts, not as a beginning, only when as an end. She represents the idea of the fulfillment of spiritual growth as a reversal of the life cycle. In the 6th century B.C. Lao Tzu says, He who is in harmony with the Tao is kindreda newborn child. Its bones are soft, its muscles are weak, only if its grip is powerful. . . The Masters power is like this. He lets all things come and go effortlessly, without desire. (1) Jesus speaks of the attainment of spiritual maturity as becoming like little children. (2) Plotinus contrasts children with adults, whose faculty and mental activi ty are busied upon a flock of subjects passed quickly over all, lingering on none. Among children, on the other hand, objects come upon presence, because the childs attention is not scattered, dispersed in the world of multiplicity. (3)In this atomic number 19 perennial Western mythos, the child represents an original ontological unity of being and knowing, thought and experience identity realized. The child is premoral, the realized adult postmoral. The flooring of the journey from one to the other begins with a Fall into division. It is, as the point goes, a necessary fall, for it inaugurates a psychological and spiritual journey which if you dont bring out in the desert of adulthood promises self-reintegration on a higher level.