The present text has as a main goal to discuss the relations between childhood and contemporary culture. More so, that the social space the children occupy in the cyberculture became a very contradictory one: for in one hand we see such children with a natural inborne expertise; and on the other hand, we see them as unprotected and fragile beings. The line of reasoning we intend to partake with the reader, begins initially with the data research of the production of (...) arguments on the children´s relations with the internet that go around their daily routine and the researches of academical and official nature. On a second instance, we look into the market´s discursive production in order to observe how the making of sites, targeted speciffically to childrens, relates itself with prerrogatives of such specialized knowledge. At last but not at least, we show a philosophical approach of such speeches sustained metaforically by the homeric narrative and Franz Kafka’s reading of Ulisses’encounter at the mermaid’s island. Through this path we intend to analyze tendencies that emerge from the production of knowledge about childhood and cyberculture and, altogether, to think on the ethical and methodological chalenges that such subject imposes to childhood’s researchers. (shrink)

Este texto, de caráter ensaístico, tem por objetivo colocar em debate as relações entre infância e cultura contemporânea, mais especificamente, sobre o lugar social que as crianças ocupam na cibercultura, lugar esse vem se mostrando um tanto paradoxal: por vezes se atribui às crianças uma quase inata expertise; por outras, as supomos frágeis e desprotegidas. Trata-se de um esforço de aproximação e de delimitação de um objeto de estudo em permanente devir cujas transformações psíquicas, sociais e culturais envolvidas afetam também (...) os modos de pesquisar e de produzir conhecimento. Isto exige, pois, uma construção teórica e metodológica em constante e vertiginoso processo que, mais do que poder contar com o conhecimento historicamente acumulado, parece manter-se mergulhada na intersecção de nossas incertezas. O caminho proposto para a formulação das indagações que aqui queremos compartilhar com o leitor passa inicialmente por um levantamento da produção discursiva sobre a relação das crianças com a internet que circula no cotidiano e nas pesquisas de caráter acadêmico e oficial. Num segundo momento buscamos a produção discursiva do mercado para observar como a produção de sites dirigidos para crianças dialoga com prerrogativas do saber dito especializado. Por fim, apresentamos uma perspectiva filosófica de análise desses discursos amparada metaforicamente na narrativa homérica e na releitura que Franz Kafka faz da passagem de Ulisses pela ilha das sereias. Com esse caminho buscamos analisar tendências que emergem na produção de conhecimento sobre infância e cibercultura e, junto disto, pensar sobre os desafios éticos e metodológicos que a temática em tela impõe para os pesquisadores da infância. (shrink)

The following text introduces the story of the siblings Walter, Georg and Dora Benjamin, who understood childhood as a topic of interest, training, performance and theoretical production. Walter sees childhood as a philosophical perspective for a critique of culture, sensitive to children's actions and language; Georg, as a pediatrician, school doctor and deputy, takes childhood as a health emergency for the formulation of public policies; and Dora weaves a strong sociological analysis of the binomial women/children crossed by the work relations (...) transferred from the textile industry to the domestic environment. These are just a few nuances of the Benjamin siblings' multifaceted relationship with the theme of childhood. Born at the end of 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, they lived through the oscillation of German politics and economy, the hardships of the First World War, the rise and consolidation of Nazism which forced them, due to their Jewish origins and intellectual condition, to undergo displacement, imprisonment, illness and death. A significant part of Walter's production was saved when he deposited his writings in libraries or sent copies to friends. Georg and Dora, who were more closely linked to the communist party, did not achieve the same success, and most of their vast production was destroyed in the book bonfires perpetrated by the Nazis. This has resulted in a silencing of their history and their vast intellectual production, which is now considered visionary–a silence that denounces the policies of exception dedicated to history's erasure. (shrink)