The Michigan Anthropology Colloquia Series: "The Biopolitics of Baby Talk"
Elinor Ochs, Distinguished Professor, Linguistic Anthropology, UCLA
ais un abus de tout autre importance. . . est qu'on se presse trop de les faire parler, comme si l'on avait peur qu'ils n'apprissent pas à parler d'eux-mêmes (Jean- Jacques Rousseau, Émile ou de l’Éducation, 1762)
Figuring Émile as his pupil, Rousseau’s primer on education argues against Locke’s Enlightenment missive to begin engaging children in verbal reasoning at an early age. Useless, he argues: leave them to their own devices and they will flourish linguistically, morally, and intellectually. More than three centuries later, this essay revives this argument in light of a 21st century ideology that privileges intensive reflective dialogue between caregivers and young children as the bedrock of normal neurocognitive development and children’s talk as evidence of knowledge. This ideology has taken hold in US middle-class households and developmental psychology scholarship, motivating global biopolitical governance of the speaking bodies of economically disadvantaged caregivers and infants in the first months of life. The analysis weighs the complicated entailments of elevating not just a young child’s detached reflectivity but verbal displays of such reflectivity as a biological capacity waiting to be nurtured versus Western civilization’s handmaiden to rationality, scientific progress, capitalism, and the formation of the free ethical subject.
The Michigan Anthropology Colloquia Series presents speakers on current topics in the field of anthropology.
Figuring Émile as his pupil, Rousseau’s primer on education argues against Locke’s Enlightenment missive to begin engaging children in verbal reasoning at an early age. Useless, he argues: leave them to their own devices and they will flourish linguistically, morally, and intellectually. More than three centuries later, this essay revives this argument in light of a 21st century ideology that privileges intensive reflective dialogue between caregivers and young children as the bedrock of normal neurocognitive development and children’s talk as evidence of knowledge. This ideology has taken hold in US middle-class households and developmental psychology scholarship, motivating global biopolitical governance of the speaking bodies of economically disadvantaged caregivers and infants in the first months of life. The analysis weighs the complicated entailments of elevating not just a young child’s detached reflectivity but verbal displays of such reflectivity as a biological capacity waiting to be nurtured versus Western civilization’s handmaiden to rationality, scientific progress, capitalism, and the formation of the free ethical subject.
The Michigan Anthropology Colloquia Series presents speakers on current topics in the field of anthropology.
| Building: | West Hall |
|---|---|
| Event Type: | Lecture / Discussion |
| Tags: | AEM Featured, Anthropology |
| Source: | Happening @ Michigan from Department of Anthropology |
