"Somewhat Childish": The Infant and the Literary Word as politicos

By deconstructing some correlations between the opposition prose/poetry (also taken as a metonymy of the opposition literature/non-literature) and the opposition adult/child, we take up some bases of reflection on biopolitics to conceive childhood among the series of agents whose exclusion from the political community (along with the figures of the Orient, the woman, the savage and other beings supposedly devoid of speech, of logos) paradoxically reinvests them with force and political interest, either as objects of an expansion of the established regimes of visibility and control, or as possible instigators of other modes of action, which require rethinking what agency and politics mean. Thus, through an analysis of Haroldo de Campos' transcreation of Heraclitus' fragment 52 on the child and Joao Luiz Guimaraes' book Sagatrissuinorama, we seek to outline some consequences of this intricate contemporary phenomenon of the politicization of childhood for the teaching of literature. Keywords: education and literature; poetry and childhood; contemporary literature; biopolitics. Descontruindo algumas correlacoes entre a oposicao prosa/poesia (tomada tambem como metonimia da oposicao literatura/nao-literatura) e a oposicao adulto/crianca, retomamos algumas bases da reflexao sobre biopolitica, para pensar a infancia dentre a serie de agentes cuja exclusao da comunidade politica (junto com as figuras do Oriente, da mulher, do selvagem e outros seres supostamente destituidos de fala, de logos) paradoxalmente os reinveste de forca e interesse politico, seja como objetos de uma expansao dos regimes instituidos de visibilidade e controle, seja como possiveis instigadores de modos outros de acao, que exigem repensar o que significam agencia e politica. Assim, passando por uma analise da transcriacao haroldiana do fragmento 52 de Heraclito sobre a crianca e de Sagatrissuinorama de Joao Luiz Guimaraes, buscamos delinear algumas implicacoes desse intrincado fenomeno recente de politizacao da infancia para o ensino de literatura. Palavras-chave: educacao e literatura; poesia e infancia; literatura contemporanea; biopolitica. En deconstruisant des correlations entre l'opposition prose/poesie (egalement prise comme metonymie de l'opposition litterature/non-litterature) et l'opposition adulte/enfant, nous reprenons quelques bases de la reflexion sur la biopolitique, pour penser l'enfance parmi la serie d'agents dont l'exclusion de la communaute politique (aux cotes des figure