Childhood in Augusto Cury: an analysis of the government of childhood in the overflow of self-help literature in Education

Abstract

This article aims to analyze and comprehend of which childhood Augusto Cury speaks when talking about childhood in his self-help works geared toward education, seeking to trace discursive traits that contribute to understanding to which government it is linked. The analysis produced in this text is based on an alliance with the theoretical framework of Foucauldian studies, examining power-knowledge relations that lead — according to a particular regime of truth about childhood — to how we categorize individuals seen as immature as having specific characteristics. By focusing on the discourses in which Cury serves as a nexus of meaning and, at the same time, disseminates particular discourses about childhood, I was able to organize two childhood characteristics that are central to his arguments: immaturity and dependence. Thus, I seek to contribute to discussions on the proliferation of self-help literature geared toward education in order to denaturalize discourses that affect us in order to invisibilize the relations of production of meaning on how we understand certain individuals as children.