Abstract
By deconstructing some correlations between the opposition prose/poetry (also taken as a metonymy of the opposition literature/non-literature) and the opposition adult/child, we take up some bases of reflection on biopolitics to conceive childhood among the series of agents whose exclusion from the political community (along with the figures of the Orient, the woman, the savage and other beings supposedly devoid of speech, of logos) paradoxically reinvests them with force and political interest, either as objects of an expansion of the established regimes of visibility and control, or as possible instigators of other modes of action, which require rethinking what agency and politics mean. Thus, through an analysis of Haroldo de Campos’ transcreation of Heraclitus’ fragment 52 on the child and João Luiz Guimarães’ book Sagatrissuinorama, we seek to outline some consequences of this intricate contemporary phenomenon of the politicization of childhood for the teaching of literature.
Keywords:
education and literature; poetry and childhood; contemporary literature; biopolitics