Crianças “estranhas”: a infância marginalizada em evidência

Abstract

Childhood is an extremely significant and valuable stage of development; however, not all subjects experience this phase surrounded by affection and care, and marginalized children reflect this reality. The aim of this study is to understand how these children are produced, using Freud’s concept of strangeness as a symbolic marker of these subjects, identified in this work as “strange.” The method used was an experience report, based on the analysis of field diaries produced during the follow-up of a “strange” child over a six-month period in a settlement. Through a historical retrospective, the study seeks to make explicit that the ideal of childhood was socially constructed and shaped by a bias of exclusion toward those considered deviant. Throughout the text, Lacanian subjective constitution and the subject’s position in the social field are used to argue that “strange” children are displaced from the place of rights, suffering from a triple abandonment: institutional, material, and discursive. Through the report, the study defends listening and the construction of bonds as an alternative and powerful tool of care, while also making explicit the many responses produced by the accompanied child during the work, considering that, amid subjective and material dismantling, it is still possible to shift and reposition oneself as a desiring and speaking being.