A idiota da primeira infância: Forças que operam a segmentação da vida

Abstract

This work starts from a discomfort with the correlation between early childhood, defined in Brazil as the age ranging from zero to six years, and the productive future of workers in the neoliberal context of accountability of individuals for their “success”. Early childhood has been promoted by different actors in the social area, such as civil society organizations, governments and multilateral organizations, based on an understanding, developed in dialogue with neurosciences and with the idea of human capital, that at this age it is possible to potentiate brain development so that damage is prevented. According to the defenders of this perspective, the greatest damage comes from poverty and, by investing in human capital in the first moments of life, children would be able to break the “poverty cycle” in which they find themselves. This research investigates the governmentality of early childhood in order to give visibility to the mechanics that operate the segmentation and conformation of this field in which discourses of its priority are formulated and public policies that have the control of poor families as a target. From the conceptual character of the idiot, formulated by Deleuze based on the work of Dostoevsky, we put pauses and doubts to the certainties and urgencies of this field, analyzing discourses of different actors such as The Lancet journal and specialists that bring the legitimacy of the scientific field to define universal stages of child development, and focus on politics. Likewise, we analyzed documents from the Criança Feliz Program, a national home visitation public policy for families with children in early childhood. In our analyses, we perceive an attempt to conceive early childhood as a “scientifically proven” shortcut to fight social inequality. This conception produces the effect of making mothers responsible for their children's poverty and a way of subjectivizing childhood/human capital, focusing on “under-stimulated” children in whom it would be necessary to invest, for an increasingly competitive and excluding future.