The discourse about medicalization of childhood: formulation and circulation of meanings about the child's body medicalized in digital materiality

Abstract

The aim of this undergraduate research project is to understand how discourses work concerning the medicalization of childhood, i.e., to study their ways of formulation and circulation of meanings in the constitution of a child's body silenced by medicalization. Regarding this, it is intended to problematize the relationship between medicalization practices and consumption in contemporary society, observing how meanings are made which mean the subjects and their bodies. Therefore, a corpus is considered constructed from a thematic analysis in digital materiality, understood as an observatory of discourses, i.e., the action of making a file consists of capturing discourse fragments about the medicalization of childhood on the internet, extracts from posts and blogs, as well as social networks on the topic. The discourse analysis elaborated by the philosopher Michel Pêcheux and developed by Eni Orlandi, as well as lacanian psychoanalysis are the fundamental theoretical assumptions which, between description and interpretation, the meanings produced for medicalized child's body are examined. Concerning the material conditions of producing discourses about health and well-being, an injunction to the power of the body and an imperative of normalization of the child's behavior are now observed, materialized in discourses that require listening/reading being attentive to ideological and inconsistent processes that determine them. (AU)