Philosophy of Childhood and the Politics of Subjectivity

Philosophy of Childhood and the Politics of Subjectivity

The Western onto-theological tradition has long been preoccupied with two symbolizations of childhood. One conceives of it as an original unity of being and knowing, an exemplar 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 Aristotle’s tripartite self, 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. Freud’s reformulation of the Platonic community of self combines the two symbolizations. His model creates an opening for shifting power relations 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 organization constituted by exclusions and hierarchies. After Freud, the child comes to stand for the inexpugnable demands of desire. Through dialogue 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 Harmony

The child first appears in the known ancient texts, not as a beginning, but 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 likea newborn child. It's bones are soft, its muscles are weak, but its grip is powerful. . . The Master's 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 activity are busied upon a multitude of subjects passed quickly over all, lingering on none." Among children, on the other hand, objects "achieve presence," because the child's attention is not "scattered," dispersed in the world of multiplicity. (3)

In this grand 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 story of the journey from one to the other begins with a Fall into division. It is, as the story goes, a necessary fall, for it inaugurates a psychological and spiritual journey which — if you don't die in the desert of adulthood — promises self-reintegration on a higher level.