Child erotization and affective grammar: discourses about childhood in the 2.0 Era in argentina

Abstract

Based on the sociosemiotic analysis of discourses inspired by Bajtin, Foucault and Angenot, the present work addresses the different meanings of child (a)sexuality in the sexual harassment of children and adolescents prevention discours on the internet–or grooming–in Argentina. We investigate the history of the (a)sexualization device of children, governed by the stratification model of sexuality by age. We will also analyze how in contemporary cultural industry these norms are displaced by another topic: the “hyper-sexualization” of childhood. Both figures are particularly complex in the grooming prevention discourses, which propose a strongly punitive mode of governing the sexual agency of children.