O jardim das imagens, a infância e suas flautas sagradas

Abstract

The research seeks to analyze the children´s expressions contained in their drawings. The perspective is to understand the processes of symbolic construction in the cultural and subjective dimensions. The drawings are seen as particular forms of expressions of children expressions cultures; as means of communication with their peers and with adults; as forms of representation of their knowledge and worldviews; and also as an expression of their creative imagination and esthetic sensibility. In this direction, the research moves through different fields of knowledge construed about childhood from a critical perspective in which are questioned the bases proposed for the awakening of childhood awareness in modern times; they point out, as well the economic, political, and social contradictions generated from the principles formulated by the Enlightenment authors. The study observes that in the capitalist society development children have been deprived of their sacred flutes (toys) and imagination. The modernity brought about the visibility of childhood as labor force and produced great inequalities, even under the guardianship of the laws. These inequalities were put in evidence by the men of numbers and their account of childhood in the modern times. In the second chapter (The architects of childhood sociology) the author explains the ideas developed by the adepts of realism, functionalism, interactionism and the theories of the imaginary, tracing from these bases, parallels between the models of sociological analysis and the issue of childhood in society. In the fields of Psychology and Psychoanalysis (Chapter 3: The garden of images and the valuing of symbolic field), the author uses approaches from Psychology , Psychoanalysis, organicism, constructivism and those dealing with the imaginary (Bachelard) to undertake the analysis about the drawings produced by a child (6 to 7 years old) coming from social background which allowed it to have access to the material conditions of production. The research seeks to ascertain in the limits and epistemic difficulties presented in each of theories which support the analysis of children´s drawings according to different interpretations. It concludes that to understand childhood expressions, the approach should be oriented by different perspective and fields of knowledge to permit the understanding of the process of the constitution of childhood culture and the breaking of traditionalist schemes of analysis based on the directivist and interventionist tendencies which still influence the imagination and the creativity of childhood universe.