Silvia Grinberg

Everyday Banality in a Documentary by Teenage Women: Between the Trivial and the Extreme. Schooling and Desiring in Contexts of Extreme Urban Poverty.

In this article, I offer some reflections on a video documentary workshop for students in the first year of middle school. The workshop, which was held in 2008, took place in a school in an area of extreme urban poverty in the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires, Argentina, specifically in one of the more and more common spaces usually called shantytowns. The students were asked to conceive of, produce and film a documentary video. The only restriction was that the project be about their daily life and not be fictional, because the project was constructed as an opportunity to create, in the context of the school, spaces for thinking about and problematising the world. The workshop itself and its product – a documentary about trash and waste in the neighbourhood – confront us with the fact that the material conditions of existence can never be isolated from desire and the will to live. Doing is always constituted in certain conditions of existence and, returning to Deleuze and Guattari, desire is always close to those conditions. This experience of doing entails the life of subjects, the dynamics of school life but also – and here I am going to speak of what these young women made, in which they express their interests, concerns, desires and aspirations – political statements insofar as an affirmation of life and the flows of desire.

Relatos de infancias: Nacer y vivir en las villas del sur global cartografía y devenir de la subjetividad en las sociedades contemporáneas

espanolA traves de una investigacion de base etnografica, donde recuperamos relatos de jovenes que nacieron y viven en contextos de extrema pobreza urbana de la region Metropolitana de Buenos Aires, nos proponemos reflexionar acerca del devenir de la subjetividad en los barrios mas pauperizados del sur global. Se trata de adentrarse en las multiples conexiones, entendiendo que la realizacion de una cartografia no supone un calco, sino atravesar las diversas lineas de ese entramado. Proponemos discutir resultados de investigacion acerca de la complejidad del nacer y vivir, procurando expresar algunos de los trazos que la infancia adquiere en los bordes de nuestra urbanidad. EnglishOn the basis of an ethnographic-oriented research, where we retrieved stories from young people born and raised in extremely poor urban contexts of Region Metropolitana of Buenos Aires, Argentina, we reflect on the development of subjectivity in the poorest towns from the global south side. We get deeper into the multiple existing connections, understanding that mapping such connections is not about copying but about crossing the diverse lines of that network. We propose a discussion on the research results concerning the complexity of being born and living in these places, ensuring an expression of some traces acquired by childhood in the skirts of our urbanity. portuguesAtraves de uma pesquisa de base etnografica, onde recuperamos relatos de jovens que nasceram e moram em contextos de extrema pobreza urbana da Regiao Metropolitana de Buenos Aires, visamos reflexionar sobre o devir da subjetividade nos bairros mais pauperizados do sul global. O objetivo e aprofundar nas multiplas conexoes entendendo que a realizacao de uma cartografia nao supoe uma copia, senao atravessar as diversas linhas dessa rede. Propomos discutir resultados de pesquisa sobre a complexidade do fato de nascer e morar, procurando expressar alguns dos tracos que a infância adquire nas margens de nossa urbanidade.

School in the (im)possibility of future: Utopia and its territorialities

Abstract Utopia makes itself heard as Raphael voices a critique of who we are and configures that no-where which, paradoxically, we want to reach. We look to Deleuze and Guattari when we say that that critique can be envisioned as resistance to the present. In the passage from no-where to now-here, we revisit the territories of utopia as critique of our times, as a way to approach the question of who we are and who we want to be. In our view, education still rests on the image of a future that unfolds in the encounter with others. Education and its need/potential to enable tomorrows, to invent promises that look to places of desire, spaces that take shape as heterotopias. The notion of utopia is strained at root because defined as a no-where. At school, it is bound to the potential to create new possibilities and alternatives for life in the here and now. In this article, we will grapple with the work we do in university classrooms and in educational institutions in the slums on the outskirts of the city of Buenos Aires as a gateway from which to envision and to problematize the world. From there, we will approach the voices where other possibilities are conquered and other spaces created on the basis of the unpredictable, voices rooted in education and the need for it that produce and produce themselves in the tensions of that (im)possibility. In sum, wording the world as creation of worlds.

¿Sólo van a trabajar si reciben los fondos? Management, regulación moral y escuelas en la periferia metropolitana (Córdoba, Argentina)

Las politicas educativas en la era del management asociadas a la “Nueva Gestion Publica” (NGP) vienen ejerciendo, desde la decada del 90, claros efectos en la vida de las escuelas que, en el contexto argentino, adquieren dinamicas, formas y efectos especificos que regulan la moral y las practicas de los directivos, apelando al componente etico de su trabajo. Este articulo se enmarca en una investigacion que analiza el trabajo del director escolar y los procesos de regulacion de las politicas educativas orientadas a garantizar la escolaridad secundaria. Presentamos un estudio de caso donde abordamos el trabajo del director de una escuela localizada en las periferias de la Ciudad de Cordoba a la que asisten alumnos sumidos en crecientes procesos de pauperizacion social. A modo de hipotesis proponemos que el llamado al compromiso para con el alumnado y sus demandas sociales insatisfechas se transforman en el motor que regula moralmente al director y lo obliga a trabajar para y a pesar de no recibir los prometidos fondos que los proyectos ministeriales deben proveer. Palabras clave: Direccion Escolar. Management. Regulacion Moral.

Screaming Silences: Subjects and Photographs in Schools in Contexts of Extreme Urban Poverty and Environmental Decay

In this chapter, we discuss a group of photographs taken by students who live in slums of the global South. The images embody realities often denied or forgotten. In these images, the foreground gains terrain and what Deleuze describes as the process of ‘giving a face’ takes place. We set out to address the outline of a relationship where the word retreats and its bridges to the world dissolve. The silences that urban experience, in the global South, confronts us with emerge in the images produced by these young people. It is this experience that these young people photograph and name as “screaming silences.”

Ihrem Schicksal überlassene Schulen: Schulreform und Raummangel in Patagonien

In diesem Beitrag werden einige Aspekte eines empirischen Forschungsprojektes vorgestellt, das die Rezeption der argentinischen Schulreform von 2006 in verschiedenen Schulen der Sekundarstufe in der Provinz Santa Cruz untersucht. Mittels eines ethnographischen Ansatzes werden insbesondere die subjektiven Erfahrungen der Schulakteure herausgestellt. Wie gehen sie mit diesen Reformprozessen um? Welche Gefuhle, Widerstande, Spannungen und Aushandlungen sind innerhalb der schulischen Dynamik zu beobachten? Hier wird das beschrieben, was Stephen Ball et al. (2011) als real schools bezeichnen. Dieser Begriff umfasst die komplexen Realitaten, mit denen das Schulpersonal in seinem Arbeitsalltag konfrontiert ist.