Childhood and Postcolonialism

Colonialist discourses about childhood - inscribing the child's body within a defined territory to be protected against the threat of the "Other" strange and foreign - are constituted on the basis of the same dual "grammar" of the organization of human relations, according to a unique and fixed type of cultural-political tie: the nation-state. Thus, colonialist discourses shape the child's body according to the same imperialist and war logic of capitalist exploitation. Opposing this view, the purpose of this article is to characterize postcolonial discourses that, based on the notion of cultural hybridity, claim the need to decolonize the very concept of childhood, which is considered a colonialist invention.

Childhood; Postcolonialism.