Feminine/Masculine and Emotionality from a Marginalized Childhood

In the context of the Law of Inclusion that promotes social mixing of Chilean students, we study a subsidized school which has always been free and without a selection of students. We try to understand the children’s social inclusion/exclusion processes in this marginalized background. What does it mean “to include” then? What are the boundaries of identity and difference in school? How do the children subjectivize in this environment? We conducted an interpretative and visual school ethnography for seven months. The gender difference was what appeared most strongly in the research results. It is observed both in the adult school devices and in the children’s processes. The fieldwork, the children’s visual productions, and the group interviews with children reveal stereotypes and conflicts between the feminine and masculine. This tension is associated with a difficulty to know and express their intimate feelings and their experience in relation to sexed bodies. The children’s subjectivation processes are marked by ruptures and violence in adult relationships. This experience generates their ambivalence faced with emotionality, as a means of protecting their internal world.

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