http://dx.doi.org/10.15198/seeci.2017.43.151-168
RESEARCH
“MIRAR MAL” AND DESCANSO”. INTERSUBJECTIVE DYNAMICS SINGS IN YOUTH AND ADULT EDUCATION
“MIRAR MAL” Y “EL DESCANSO”. INDICIOS DE LAS DINÁMICAS INTERSUBJETIVAS EN EDUCACIÓN DE JÓVENES Y ADULTOS
Darío Gabriel Martínez1
1National University of La Plata. Argentina. dariogmartinez@gmail.com
1Darío Gabriel Martínez: National University of La Plata. Argentina.
Correo: dariogmartinez@gmail.com
The article as written within the framework of a Postdoctoral Scholarship of the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research. It also falls into the framework of the Research Project “Strategic articulations in communication/education: academic field, memoirs and educational areas”, under the direction of Professor Paula Morabes and filed in the Laboratory/Comedi of the Faculty of Journalism and Social Communication of UNLP.
Received: 10/04/2017
Accepted: 15/06/2017
ABSTRACT
This piece of research analyzes two native categories, “looking disapprovingly” and “rest”, to understand the intersubjective relationships of students attending educational spaces for youth and adults. The analysis perspective is situated in the communication / education field that seeks to transcend the reductionism that places communication in the media and education in school. With these present observations, the article seeks to reflect about the construction processes of subjectivities that the young people who are finishing their educational trajectories in the city of La Plata, Argentina, go through. On the other hand, elements of conceptualization are outlined to reflect on contemporary subjectivities in the context of media culture.
KEY WORDS: Communication - education - youth - adults - subjectivities - culture - politics.
RESUMEN
En esta investigación se analizarán dos categorías nativas, “mirar mal” y “descanso”, para comprender las relaciones intersubjetivas de los estudiantes que asisten a espacios de educación de jóvenes y adultos. La perspectiva de análisis se sitúa en el campo de comunicación/ educación que pretende trascender el reduccionismo que sitúa a la comunicación en los medios y a la educación en la escuela. Con estas observaciones presentes, el artículo busca reflexionar acerca de los procesos de construcción de subjetividades que atraviesan los y las jóvenes que se encuentran finalizando sus trayectorias educativas en la ciudad de La Plata, Argentina. Por otra parte, se esbozan elementos de conceptualización para reflexionar acerca de las subjetividades contemporáneas en el contexto de la cultura mediática.
PALABRAS CLAVE: comunicación, educación, jóvenes, adultos, subjetividades, cultura, política
How to cite this article
Martínez, D. G. “Mirar mal” and “descanso”. Intersubjective dynamics sings in youth and adult education [Mirar mal” y el “Descanso”. Indicios de las dinámicas intersubjetivas en educación de jóvenes y adultos] Revista de Comunicación de la SEECI, 43, 151-168 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15198/seeci.2017.43.151-168 Recuperado de http://www.seeci.net/revista/index.php/seeci/article/view/469
1. INTRODUCTION
The anchor point of the following analysis is located in the field of communication / education, which has a strong imprint on the research perspectives in Latin America. Jorge Huergo (1997) was the one who proposed to substitute the bar (/) for the copula (y) to denominate the field of communication / education. This way, he took up the initiative that Héctor Schmucler (1997) designed in 1984 with the communication / culture project and talked, to a certain extent, with the (late published) developments in communication / politics presented by Sergio Caletti (2002) who argued that it was impossible to separate the terms because communication was the enunciating dimension of politics. In this sense, Huergo, when referring to communication / education, proposed to sustain the tense merger between different concepts, where the bar accepts the distinction but indicates its indissoluble treatment. The macro proposal of this delimitation of the field operated under the following purposes: the recovery of processes of linkage / expression / liberation even if the disciplinary objects are lost; recognition of historical, sociocultural and political contexts; construction of a transdisciplinary theoretical space marked by the ethical-political nature of communication / education. At the same time, there were also some precautions when considering the field of communication / education from a unilaterally pedagogical perspective that limits the practices of the communicator. The same happens if you access from a technical perspective that assimilates communication to the media or educational technology that directs the look towards technological innovations, computing, distance education, etc. (Huergo, 1997). The classic reductions have been: to consider communication as the means, without regarding, sometimes, the place of the audiences and their modes of symbolic configuration; another is to link education with the school, which discards educational processes that do not happen within the framework of clearly identifiable institutions (into which many of the popular education processes would not fit); the last is to link the field of communication / education with projects or practical paths.2
2Paula Morabes (2008) is researching and expanding the category of communication / education territory and calls into question the reflections on the fields of knowledge of Pierre Bourdieu to problematize the institutionalities, the research problems and the modes of political intervention of stakeholders who fall into this perspective.
Concerns about subjective training are central to understand, in part, the processes of interpellation and recognition around education and also to reflect on the formation of a certain repertoire of socio-cultural practices of those who attend the institutional areas of education of young people and adults. These historical-cultural transformations are manifested with unusual emphasis and are found in the expressions of young men and women. Their testimonies can give account of the subjectivation and its vectors that cross them at this particular historical moment. Therefore, a focus will be given here to understand some of the strategies of naming the experiences that constitute a process of subjectivation in the young people who attend a particular educational institution. This choice led us to leave for another time the modalities of subjective constructions of adult men and women, in part because it has been analyzed by the traditions of research on adult education.
Therefore, a reflective framework will be set out here to find out these issues in the practices of young people. However, it should be noted that the school - in a broad sense - will be close but will not function as an all-encompassing arc to understand the processes of subjectivation. In this sense, experiences that come from different social spheres are recovered, but they are bestowed by young people with relevance to the development of their practices of relationship with their peers and with the adult universe (Martínez, 2012, 2013). Some of them have been problematized in situations of “disrespect” (Martínez, 2015), as a demand for recognition demanded to the adult world and institutions. Here we will emphasize events of “looking disapprovingly” and “rest”. All of them involve a full need for an exposition of himself to another that demands instances of openness, positioning and pronunciation of the word itself to gain recognition.
The power traces its operational limits in seemingly unquestioned meanings where the processes of subjectivation acceptable for a given time are played. This is where the multiple institutionalities begin to carve their scenes, among which the media that radiate scenes of moral panic around the young people of popular sectors can be mentioned: generally, men are described as potential stakeholders of criminal events and women from a condemning look at their alleged unbridled sexual practices. It is on this terrain that young people have to travel, whose tactics of participation and self-government are at a distinct disadvantage compared to other sectors with greater availability of resources and that can be disconnected from the media configurations that fall on them. They have moments where they try to pose another process of subjectivation, where the usufruct of technological convergence is an alternative although it does not always achieve the desired effects to reverse a discourse. Thus, in the conflictive heterogeneities underlying the demands of respect and “looking disapprovingly”, among others that are possible, young people express the need to signify, to intervene in the production of meanings from the symbolic resources they have at hand. The appropriation of these resources, their circulation through enunciating strategies that are far from being politically correct can antagonize in a conflictive way with the institutions and vectors of subjectivation foreseen by hegemony in a specific cultural and political context.
2. OBJECTIVES
The objective of this paper was to research the modalities of the configuration of subjectivities of students attending areas of education of young people and adults in the historical context permeated by the media culture. On the other hand, it must be related to a general objective that seeks to analyze the senses that students who attend educational areas of youth and adults in the city of La Plata assign to education and knowledge that come from their own social experiences and those that the schooling proposes them in the context of the media culture. The discussions and the theoretical problematizations presented here have to be read in this proposed articulation among knowledge, subjectivities and experiences from the perspective in communication / education.
3. METHODOLOGY
It is impossible to consider the theoretical phase to be dissociated from the methodological one; it is rather a question of understanding them through their dialogical recursiveness, where both become thresholds of reflexivity and methodological challenges. In this sense, it is necessary to affirm that the methodology is theory in act because it operates “as construction methods, conscious and unconscious, of facts and the relationships among facts” (Bourdieu, Chamboredon, & Passeron, 2008, p. 66). Therefore the methodological point is not exhausted in the application of a certain set of techniques, but also is rooted in epistemological presumptions and theoretical dimensions that base it. The adopted approach falls into a socio-semiotic perspective of culture. This way, the emphasis will be placed on meaning and, therefore, methodological options have to aim at the reconstruction of the perspective of social stakeholders. Significance is built intersubjectively and, in turn, is imbricated with material and historical dimensions.
This way, a perspective of dense description of the experiences and knowledge recognized by men and women attending educational spaces for young people and adults in the city of La Plata was taken on. Practice of knowledge production that entails paying attention to the stratified hierarchy of the production of meanings to determine its social field and scope (Geertz, 2003). The adopted methodology was qualitative, as part of a process of inquiry that begins in the crumbling of successive interpretations and uses a repertoire of valid techniques for data construction. Of course, the idea of ??the uniqueness of the method can be criticized and the guardians of its application would be jealous researchers of its detailed status of actions to be implemented. However, we adhere to a position in which we consider the method to be above all an ethical-political choice which is, in short, what a piece of scientific research consists of. The method is much more complex than a simple one-dimensional sequence of steps (Marradi, Archenti, & Piovani, 2007), which offers a methodical approach but must be applied artisanally and originally to each problem that underlies a research process.
In order to collect data, we used the constant comparative method the objective of which is to formulate a theory based on information obtained in the material field (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). Corbin and Strauss call it “a theory derived from data collected systematically and analyzed by means of a research process. In this method, the collection of data, analysis, and theory that will emerge from them are closely interrelated “(Strauss & Corbin, 2002, p.13). As the possibilities of comparison are infinite, the selection of materials to be researched must be in accordance with the preset theoretical aims. This way, the data that are conceptualized in the process of knowledge construction are interpreted, by linking the emergents recognized in the field with theory, and it provides the framework for a potential action in the social sphere. In this sense, theorizing is a complex activity that involves conceiving ideas, as well as formulating them within a logical scheme and analyzing their implications for the decisions made by the researcher in the research process (Strauss & Corbin, 2002).
The proposal of Glaser and Strauss sought to offer an opposite sense to the canonical strategy of generation of theory from deductions (Marradi, et al., 2007). To do this, it established four stages: the comparison of incidents, the writing of theory, the integration of categories and the delimitation of theory. In the development of the process, it is aimed at the saturation of the categories, overdetermining their significant capacity in the instances of theoretical production. Achieving this saturation leads the researcher to stake their sensitivity to generate knowledge within the framework of social sciences: “In qualitative research, being objective does not mean controlling the variables but being open, having the will to listen and to ‘give the floor’ to the interviewees, whether they are individuals or organizations. It means to hear what others have to say, and see what others do, and to represent them as precisely as possible “(Strauss & Corbin, 2002, 48). However, it is important to clarify and reiterate that the researcher’s perceptions or perspectives do not matter, but the main thing is how the participants in research see events (Strauss & Corbin, 2002, p. 53). ).
With these premises, this piece of research was a descriptive rather than conclusive exploratory study. For this, sampling followed a theoretical criterion for the choice of which men and women (young and adult) that could account for education in a broad sense and understood the formative nature of social experiences. At the same time, an attempt was made to understand the unequal ways of configuring the experience and knowledge of students attending youth and adult education in the context of media culture.
The choice of areas of youth and adult education was based on a criterion that could account for the variability of scenarios in the city of La Plata and its peripheral zone. Thus, educational spaces were taken for young people and adults located in the north, center and south of the city.Prior to the field work, a protocol of interviews and observations was carried out at a non-nucleated adult education center in the north area and at a youth and adult education center that relied on one EGBJA in the center of the city.3 These operations gradually allowed us to specify the set of the problematic axes for the conduction of the observations and the interviews in depth to the men and women who attend these spaces. It must be noted that, in all cases, they were areas with which there was a trust relationship built thanks to the work shared in activities related to communication and education at the Faculty of Journalism and Social Communication of the National University of La Plata.
3The description of the institutional characteristics is deepened in our thesis Elementary education of young people and adults in La Plata. An analysis of the subjectivities and practices from Communication / education for the title of master in planning and management of communication processes. [Mimeo, FPyCS, La Plata, 2012. Available in the Institutional Repository of the Service of Dissemination of Intellectual Creation of the UNLP / http://sedici.unlp.edu.ar/].
In this sense, the corpus of this piece of research took place in the following areas of youth and adult education of La Plata City; an educational center in the area of Gorina (northern zone), another at the neighborhood of Los Hornos (southern zone) and the other in the center of the city, they all belonging to the Party of La Plata. Initially three groups were built based on the selection of scenarios. Also, the dimensions of gender and age of each one operated, so it is fruitless to make clear divisions within each group, as well as to interpret the interconnections that are presented and demonstrate the flexible nature of the construction. The choice of method leads to the use of flexible techniques for information collection; to a certain extent, it was to avoid the dogmatism of the tools. In this sense, the structural conditions in which the research questions are carried out must be taken into account. Here we worked with the technique of observation and the semi-structured interview.
4. DISCUSSION
The question of subjectivity has been structuring much of the issues that are researched in the social sciences. The attempt to leave the frameworks of understanding positivism enthroned the questions about what is subjective, at the same time, it began to question the ideological aspects strictly related to economy and politics. Thus a fertile territory was opened to research those spaces that had been discarded by the most institutionalized social sciences. To specify from communication / education, reflecting on subjectivity provides clues to analyze the ways of naming social experiences - in their frameworks of intelligibility and action - that have different social stakeholders and the possibilities of formation of subjectivities that are possible in a given historical epoch.
These conceptions allow us to observe how much common sense, rooted in hegemonic articulations, is found in historically constituted subjectivities (Papalini, 2006). Whether it is for the political actions that tend to modify it or for the restrictions silently imposed by society in general. Perceiving that strain, between what is given and what works to reverse it, becomes the main dimension of research and strategic interventions for the field of communication / education. For this reason, in this discussion we want to present at least some of the conceptual nucleuses from which we started in our work and then the characterizations of two intersubjective dynamics that the young people of the popular sectors raise: “to look disapprovingly” and “rest.” This way, it will be possible to analyze some of the modalities of configuration of subjectivities that take place in the areas of youth and adult education.
4.1. Subjectivation processes
In communication / education, one of the links of analysis between subjectivity and schooling was understood as one of the main vectors of the project of Modernity. In this sense, it is still possible to find remnants of this link as residual traditions that still operate in the discursive formations that characterize education. Therefore, in the face of the loss of the capacity of the school for interpellation (and not only because of this), it becomes necessary to find comprehension strategies that can delve into the complexity of current historical processes.
Subjectivity can be considered a “set of conditions by which individual and / or collective instances are able to emerge as a sui-referential existential territory, in adjacency or in a relation of delimitation with a subjective alterity” (Guattari, 1996). In addition, subjectivity is plural and polyphonic, without a dominant instance of determination that governs other instances in response to a univocal causality. Due to its strongly historical nature, one can speak of processes of subjectivation to account for a development that transcends the clinical view about the individual:
A process of subjectivation, that is, the production of a mode of existence, cannot be confused with a subject, unless it is stripped of all identity and all interiority. Subjectivation does not even have to do with the person: it is an individuation, particular or collective, that characterizes an event (an hour of the day, a current, a wind, a life ...). It is an intensive mode and not a personal subject (Deleuze, 1995).
The inescapable presence of the media in this stage of postindustrial capitalism has also led to changes in the processes of contemporary subjectivation. A circumstance that is impossible to ignore in the reflective analyzes that try to give account of the hegemonic articulations about what is politico-cultural in communicational key. They are dimensions that give new frameworks of comprehensibility in a context where certain classic institutional devices no longer provide (or at least do so in a different way) the subjection mechanisms for the conformation of subjectivities. In this sense, Félix Guattari proposes to think of the media as machinic dimensions of subjectivation.
[...] technological machines of information and communication operate at the heart of human subjectivity, not only at the heart of their memories, their intelligence, but also their sensibilities, their affections and their unconscious phantasms. The consideration of these machinic dimensions of subjectivation leads us to insist, in our attempt to redefine, on the heterogeneity of the components that agitate the production of subjectivity. The technological transformations oblige us to take into account, at the same time, a tendency towards a universalizing and reductionist homogenization of subjectivity and a heterogenetic tendency, that is to say, the reinforcement of the heterogeneity and the singularization of its components (Guattari , 1996, pp. 14-15).
With these assertions, one can adhere to a position that observes the media as factories of statements of subjectivity. Even so, it is necessary to emphasize the notion of device, as the means are, as a “set of praxis, knowledge, measures, institutions, the purpose of which is to administer, govern, control and orient, in a sense that is useful, the behaviors, the gestures and the thoughts of men “(Agamben, 2011). It has a direct relation with a strategy of governability and, therefore, of close connection with regimes of know-power. In those terms that Agamben recovers from Foucault, we can see that the devices allow both the holding and the agency. Another strain that must be stated lies in the homogenizing movement and the singular retraction that the means and the technologies of communication propose to the processes of subjectivation.
In accordance with the above, we avoid falling into a notion of essentialized, timeless subjectivity that remains stable outside of contingency and variability. Subjectivity, as an experience of itself, can only be analyzed in its historicity:
The same experience of itself is only the result of a complex historical process of manufacture in which the discourses that define the truth of the subject, the practices that regulate his behavior and the forms of subjectivity in which his own interiority is constituted are intertwined. It is the same experience of the itself, historically constituted, that is what the subject gives his own being when he observes himself, deciphers himself, interprets himself, describes himself, judges himself, narrates himself, dominates himself, when he does certain things with himself, etc. And this self is produced according to certain problematizations and within certain practices (Larrosa 1995: 270).
The processes of subjectivation do not occur in the same way in all social sectors. Rather, “each social group carries its own modeling system of subjectivity, that is to say a certain mapping made of cognitive points of reference but also mythical, ritual, symptomatological reference points and from which each of them is positioned in relation to their affections, their anguish and attempts to manage their inhibitions and drives “(Guattari, 1996, p.22). The expressive potentiality of discourse is what favors a certain type of statements where different types of subjective constitutions are performatively traced. In language, it is where man (and woman) manifests himself/herself as an ego (Benveniste, 1997). Hence subjectivity, in some perspectives of critical pedagogy, is conceived as the articulation between language and experience, “is a process of action between the ‘I’ who writes and the ‘I’ about whom one writes, the ‘I ‘ that speaks and the ‘ I ‘ spoken to. Subjectivity is sheathed in numberless layers of discourse that simultaneously entrench and discover us, trap us and liberate us “(McLaren & Giroux, 1998, p.26).
The possibilities of subjectively speaking are prefigured by concrete historical possibilities. So it is naïve to consider an immeasurable range of strategies for naming experiences that constitute a process of subjectivation. “There is no independent significance of the dominant significations, there is no subjectivation independent of an established order of subjection. Both depend on nature and the transmission of slogans in a given social field “(Deleuze & Guattari, 2002, p.85). The power traces its operational limits, whether it is in institutions or in seemingly unquestioned meanings, where the processes of subjectivation acceptable for a given historical epoch are played.
Adopting this theoretical perspective leads to transcending certain psychological perspectives and to complex contemporary processes of subjectivation, closely linked with the media and thus to understand some features of the relationship among communication, education and what is political-cultural.
In Foucault’s proposal, the processes of subjectivation are those that constitute the subject, in a game that requires their active participation, through the experience of (himself) and self-government techniques. This non-psychological and experiential perspective is appropriate for studies of media influence as it can provide significant insight into the practices of meaning that occur in the subjects’ links to ICTMs (information and communication technologies and means) and at least understand some contemporary subjective operations (Da Porta, 2011, p.384).
Although the influence of the media is not the only process of subjectivation, it intervenes on other processes of subjectivation with which it interacts in a different way (antagonistic, reinforcement, resistance, etc.) and with other modalities of subjective constitution (Da Porta, 2011). In this sense, the technological convergence expands the fields, the practices of subjectivation in relation to the means and this process makes other processes of subjectivation contemplated in certain institutions to implode.
Despite restrictions, constraints, subjectivity must be seen within a process subject to intense contingencies, diverse heterogeneities in which desire intervenes as an agency factor (Braidotti, 2000). Through desire, subjectivity is linked to the need to signify, to intervene in the productions of meanings. To think about subjectivities, RosiBraidotti proposes the category of nomadic subjects to analyze the strategies of differentiation without anchoring in an axis of determinant subjectivation. The reticulation of power also delimits the constitution of subjectivities, together it allows connections and proximity for certain axes of subjectivation. “However, the nomadic subject is not totally devoid of unity: his mode is that of categorical, seasonal patterns of movement through fairly established paths” (Braidotti, 2000). One of the greatest successes of this conceptualization lies in considering subjectivities from axes, rather than by identifying attributes. This way, we can analyze the subjectivities rooted in practices of media culture, which transcend and make complex the instances of production and reception of media and communication technologies
4.2. Looking disapprovingly
In the great framework of intersubjective relations among the youths of popular sectors, looking disapprovingly is an expression that defines several instances of its process of subjectivation. It emerges as a frequent recurrence to account for a primeval climate to an eventual situation of peer conflict. It maintains an intimate connection with the mentioned traits about lack of respect or its exigency, but where the mediation of the word does not appear as the structuring element of the relations. It is a way of regulating the bonds but it is based on prejudices and suspicions, as if it were about the crystallization of an initial impression that one persists in maintaining. In the face of the unknown or the openly suspicious, to look evil is a tactical response to make the mistrust visible or to point to an insurmountable limit, where transferring it would imply unleashing a conflictive situation. Its occurrence is developed in multiple spaces, it does not have a specific location. That is, there is no single area where the practice of looking disapprovingly is more frequent. Within educational institutions, they may have a less virulent manifestation, but this does not mean that they do not occur there. Rather, it is a widespread practice that crosses each of the scenarios through which young people move and becomes a way of explaining the conflictive nature of intersubjective relationships. Their consequences are difficult to stipulate, but they always have the starting point of the absence of mutual recognition. To look evil entails a denial of the integrality of another human being, who may have identical social, cultural and economic characteristics to each other. It has expressions that can carry physical dispositions, as a way of manifesting relative contempt and degrees of boiling.
As a positive opponent when looking disapprovingly is rest, the others resting as a way to get linked. It is a way of relating to a pair, through humorous comments that aim to ridicule some physical nuance, attitude or interpretation that can make another young. Not everyone can put it into play, it is only possible to rest with those who have such a degree of confidence that any comment can only be meaning from the standpoint of humor. A brief shared history is needed to intervene from this position of enunciation, which has a particular dimension of humor that emphasizes the traits of a subjectivity that anchors it in a subordinate position. One of the first outstanding aspects out lies in the pejorative nature of resting to another, but which is not perceived as such by the one who is the addressee of that comment. At least, these types of comments do not result from capital aggressiveness that can be categorized as disrespect and initiate an experience of harassment or violence.
4.2.1. The polysemy of looks
The development of everyday activities usually confronts them to deal with people who are not part of their immediate environment. The same happens in situations that come from the world of work, as well as in moments of fun or outings with one’s friends. Before they achieve a linkage, a rapprochement, they take refuge in looking, in what they observe in view, and from there to catalog the person in question. Still the word does not intervene, only the looks that take distrust as a starting point and, sometimes, as a point of arrival.
Because I’m very observant with people, see? I look at you, I love you or I do not love you, you see. I with the face of the people and I realize, I do not know why. I always [...] I do not know how to describe it, but when I look at you I realize the kind of person you are. But I do not know how to describe it, as a girl (Mariela, 22 years old).
When I look at someone, I realize what they are thinking or want to do. You realize. Rather than how it is addressed, depending on what you have in hand or what you wear. I am very observant (Maite, 17 years old).
I do not know how I realized. Already seeing his face I just noticed (Abi, 18 years).
They find it complex to describe the operation they perform, but they maintain the intuition that just looking is enough to know the intentions of another person with whom, inevitably, they could come into contact. This may happen, but it is also likely that they will never relate to the man or woman who scrutinized their eyes to break down the potential acts they would have with them. Here they are protected in the refuge proposed by prejudice, as a shortcut link. However, it must be considered that it may be a mechanism to project on the other the look that they feel the rest of society gives them. The suspicion of its origins and the acts that usually adjudicate to it, from a privileged sector of the hegemonic goodnesses, contribute to the generalized mistrust. These considerations move away from the temptation to romanticize certain practices of class antagonisms that the oppressed sectors may have; It is rather an attempt to complicate the processes of subjectivation, at the same time that this looking disapprovingly also causes traumatic experiences in the members of the same disadvantaged social sector.
In another dimension, this operation also extends towards the care of loved ones to prevent events of upset or abuse that could happen to them. There is a close relationship with the knowledge of care, where they extend their precautions regarding another who is about to start a relationship (dating) with a family member or friend.
I tell my sisters, “This boy does not suit you, he’s like this, like that.” I describe everything. “No no”. “Well, do what you want.” It ended up being always like I told you. To my friend, the one I told you is a single mother, I had said: “This kid does not suit you, he’s very small, the life he has, he’s a falconer, the parents he has, jets. Send him away, he doesn’t suit you”. “No, but he’s not like that.” “Remember that he’s going to be jet, he’s going to do this, this.” Said and done. “And he’s going to leave you alone. When he breaks up with you, he’ll tell you: I’m not taking care of the boy.” Said and done, as I told her (Mariela, 22 years old).
But when I saw his face of a fool and I said to my sister: “that kid has a silly face. He pretends he’s grown up to have fun, “I would say to my sister. “He’s going to hurt you,” I said. By the time I finished saying that, after two months he’d left her. My sister did not tell me anything (Lautaro, 16 years old).
The statements here are categorical, they do not admit nuances that aspire to be condescending or the possibility that the subjects in question - in this case - can defend themselves. This suspicious look was always right, never wrong, according to their perspectives. “To see the face” of someone means already registering him in a path of behavior from which it will be very difficult to leave, it seems that his previous stories anchored him in a certain position before the eyes of those who exercise this look. In their testimonies, they do not give the impression of having sufficient information to endorse their judgment about someone, they rather seem to rely on prejudice. Once the conflicting situation was unleashed, there is a kind of rejoicing because it was warned that this could happen, but their careful considerations were not taken into account by those involved and they are now in a position of relative fragility.
4.2.2. The dynamics of looking disapprovingly
In addition to the intentions of warnings, based on prejudices, looking disapprovingly can also trigger situations of conflict between peers and such antagonism that it is likely to manifest itself in events of violence. The quarrels of the neighborhood context and of groups of which they are part feed this type of exchanges that border with harassment, but where the elimination of the conflict never fades.
I am very much noisy. You look at me and you look at me and you do not take your eyes off me and I cuss you back. There was anger with this boy. He was 18 years old. He started to say things and let it happen. I crossed him at 137 and 66. “You’re not going to hit him,” a friend tells me. “I grabbed him and said, ‘I’m going to fuck you, I said.’ No, but look, if this and that. You look disapprovingly at me”, said he. I’m gonna go if I want to,” he said to me, and I grabbed him and turned around and left. On the corner he said things to me. I reached him and hit him, kicked him on his ass and laid him on the floor (Lautaro, 16 years old).
The intersubjective link, in this case, starts from the suspicion that the other has threatening attitudes towards the integrity of the other. What does looking disapprovingly mean to result in a fight? Here everything becomes diffuse and the possible answers are complicated. Probably, looking disapprovingly results from the wild interpretation one makes of the speeches and the bodily stances of another (pair) and that all this is signified as contempt towards the one who felt he was observed. It operates a kind of misunderstanding where the power is not placed in the spoken word, but in the bodies and in the mineralized representations that have of another / young person with whom, surely, they share much more things than they imagine. There is also a fold that exhibits an imperative which consists of defending your own respect, before others, which should be defended with blows, if necessary.
The practices of looking disapprovingly are not exclusive to the masculine universe, where one might think that it intervenes as a reaffirmation of masculinity (although there are topics that indicate it). In the case of women, it has a specificity and a happening that happen in the moments where there is a putting in play of its sexual practices in places of amusement and that are the object of contempt on the part of other young people. These are the characteristics of looking disapprovingly that identify a young woman.
Because sometimes that happens when you’re with a kid like that. With us there is a kid in the ball that, there, the boy pretends he’s single and it turns out that he has a fiancée. Do you understand? Then, around comes the girl and she looked down on me. Several times, it happens that there are kids like that, they are with their fiancés (Antonella, 21 years).
When not knowing if a boy “is single”, when they decide to mix they have to have the absolute certainty that it is so. If this does not happen in the middle of the ball, looking down begins to carve like an observation of contempt for not respecting the couple that another had built. Hence harassment and then the exchange of physical violence can occur. What is curious is how the hegemonic articulation reinforces the sense of patriarchy: the woman is condemned and mistreated, who initially kissed a young man in the middle of a bowling alley and does not do the same with the man who lied about having no girlfriend. The demand for respect that a woman demands from another seems to come from avoiding meddling with her current boyfriend, partly because one of the vectors of the process of subjectivation that they have at their disposal is to present themselves to the community as someone who has a stable male couple.
The limit that goes from looking disapprovingly to the violent exchanges is very labile, it is something that is present as a latent possibility. It underlies certain groups and at certain times, hence it is impossible to totalize all intersubjective links between young people from this logic. It implies a sum of bodily stances where one wants to make others feel that they are been looked disapprovingly, so that they perceive their discomfort and lower their gaze, withdraw in their stances and accept a position of subordination. However, there are moments of strain that are so strong that they can generate fear in the young person because they cannot fully predict the intensity of these moments of exchange.
I do not look at anyone disapprovingly. At the one who looks at me disapprovingly I keep looking, but I do not look disapprovingly. I look at him, I look at him, if he tells me something, I’m not going to tell him anything, but he comes to hit me, well. I started to look at him up and down, I continue like this, I keep looking up and down. There you realize. Nothing, I don’t pay any attention to it because it’s tough. The kid may have a knife or a gun, something, and it is already tough because I may lose my life because the kid was looking at me disapprovingly (Facundo, 15 years).
There is an awareness of how unpredictable this type of experience can be, of its nonspecific character so that whoever does not handle a certain type of code, where the internalization of the pejorative look of society can be transposed into a volcanic resentment expressed against the one who Is closest. From it comes, as the last testimony affirms, the fear of losing one’s life for something that is not yet clear why it might happen.
4.3. Rest
As a positive counterpart to looking disapprovingly, rest emerges; it is a strategy of intersubjective linkage that is ordered from what is laughable. In that context, joking comments are used as safe-conducts that relax tense environments or make more agreeable scenarios that are recognized as their own. It is a way to soften some climates and address a friend. The school is one of the institutions that are most prone to this type of practices of intersubjective linkage. There is a clear intention to make these spaces enjoyable and to find expressive modalities of one’s relationship with friends.
Yes, I know them all. There to bother, because that school is to go to rest, you shit laugh (Carlos, 16 years).
Because there at school I’m at rest, sometimes I have good vibes and I’m like girls. That’s why I think, no idea. I’m like this (Rat, 16 years old).
There is a festive dimension in the encounter with another, who gets the joke as an epiphany of mutual recognition. Laughing with peers is something that places them within a certain type of sociability practices, with codes of rapid internalization to respond in the exchange and avoid resting. The answer has to be immediate, either to raise the bet or to divert the spot from the spotlight. The longer they delay, the greater the inability to get rid of the labels that were assigned to each one. Although this climate places it in the educational institutions, it can also transfer it and be directed towards other social spaces where they cannot direct the fact that the terms of a way of relating to others play in their favor. There they must, resignedly, assume that there is another that imposes the tone of the encounter.
“Don’t you have the new document? Don’t you have the document of the 16?”, they told me. “No, I have the 8’s.” There in Amnesia [a bowling], I show him the document and the guy says to me: “Ah, shit, what happened to you?” I went to rest, what am I gonna say, if I’m not let in. I have to eat my snot in full. The guy said to me: “how ugly you are” and I said “so what?” (Brian, 17 years).
On the other hand, in the nomination itself, certain meanings are inferred that are amenable to problematize this modality of construction of an affective bond. Rest involves not having to make enough efforts to mix with someone, it is to show with their most identifiable attributes without falling into subjective camouflages that lead to assume a position that is not felt as their own. It is based on shared stories, common codes and modes of enunciation that represent a reading of the world of a particular group. All this if we take it, of course, from a perspective that enhances the more positive conditions of rest. On the other hand, in the same movement of signification, rest also implies the exercise of power to nominate another from a place of subordination from some physical or attitudinal trait. Whoever rests, that is, the enunciator fixes a type of meaning destined to spend - to laugh at him or her - of a partner who is the object of that rest. The powerful rests on the attributes, on the practices of the subordinate who cannot dispute his status as such; this does not represent an effort that can threaten their preponderant condition before the others.
5. CONCLUSIONS
The approaches presented herein should be taken as provisional conclusions, which seek to provide instances of reflection about the formation of processes of subjectivation of young people who attend institutional educational areas of youth and adults in the city of La Plata. In that sense, there is re-updating of the problems that have permeated the discussions about adult education, only that it is done here from the perspective of communication / education and other dimensions are added that were not contemplated by certain traditions of research in this area.
“Looking disapprovingly “ and “rest”, as native categories, become traits to understand the modes of building intersubjective links. They both indicate processes, sometimes conflicting, of subjectivation that exceed the educational institutional spheres, although they are also expressed there. In harassment entailed by “looking disapprovingly” and in the communitarian epiphany of “rest” the bonds of antagonism and solidarity are tense to link with another pair. They contain expressive possibilities and forms of naming that emanate from these binding operations.
Looking disapprovingly and rest are manifestations that are linked in the process of subjectivation, where the modes of intersubjective relation are inscribed. Only here they carve the labile bonds that can be given with others in various institutional orders or in everyday scenarios. It operates as a way of regulating links, based on prejudices and suspicions, where mutual recognition is not conferred on anyone who is subject to looking disapprovingly. The word almost does not intervene, but distrust - sometimes unjustified - is the point of departure and the point of arrival to mark the differences of an impossible attempt to link with a pair. It is part of the suspicion that the other person has threatening attitudes towards their own integrality, so it is necessary to discard passivity and face the situation as soon as possible. In the face of the unpredictability that can be combined in an experience of violence or harassment, it is best to face it to demonstrate a tendency to resolve a conflictive situation, while sending a signal to the rest of the community.
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AUTHOR
Darío Gabriel Martínez
National Council of Scientific and Technical Research (Conicet). Laboratory in Communication, Media, Education and Speech (Comedi), Faculty of Journalism and Social Communication. National University of La Plata. Argentina Http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2415-8761