La experiencia artística y el desarrollo de lo sensible: desaprender y sentir con las infancias

Abstract

The arts are undoubtedly present in schools. However, most often as a secondary subject, decorative, or limited to crafts, preventing recognition of their potential in redefining subjectivity and the collective. In this article, I propose to reflect on a pedagogical intervention project carried out in 2019-2020 at Virgilio Uribe Elementary School in Iztapalapa, Mexico City. I am particularly interested in exploring the pedagogical elements and maneuvers used to construct an affective and aesthetic proposal with children to produce gender unlearning, understanding this as a possibility of destabilizing the terrain of what is normal and natural. The experience was significant because it took place in Iztapalapa, one of the boroughs with the highest reports of child abuse and the highest incidence of gender-based violence (Instituto de las Mujeres de la Ciudad de México, 2018). To do this, I retrieve notes from my field diaries, as well as some of the girls’ reflections on their feelings and un/learning during the project.