“Places with the child”: Uncovering the adult childhood in the case of historical thematic parks
Abstract
If the “places for the child” suggest an heterogony of adulthood, that is an adults’ intentional intervention to the city’s landscape in order to perform a concept of childhood in an adult manner, if “the places of the child” suggest an heterogony of childhood, an intentional intervention of adults in order to perform a child-centred adulthood, then “places with the child” are called to balance the unique relationship between children and adults in the face of a city which continually reconstructs it. However, education being rather the alibi of a prevailing adulthood is able to reconstruct the relationship between the adults’ city and child aiming at the renegotiation of the consumerist perception of the multiplication of places and modes e.g. historical thematic parks. History, which is represented as the City of the Past, cannot operate educationally when embedded in the adults’ historical marketing, for it refutes critical thinking. Thus, paraphrasing the Lacanian discourse, we might claim that the adult staging the historical environment begins by speaking of himself without speaking to the child or by speaking to the child without speaking of himself. When he can speak to the child about himself, the analysis will be finished, building a dialogical relationship in “the places with the child”.
Article Details
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- THEMATIC FIELD ΙΙ & ΙΙΙ The multimodal intersection of urban and educational spaces & The city as a learning environment
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