Subversive childhood

the rupture of heteronormativity in Seis vezes Lucas, by Lygia Bojunga

Abstract

This study analyzes Seis Vezes Lucas (1999), by Lygia Bojunga, highlighting her transformative writing, which breaks with the notion of idealized and pedagogical children's literature. In contrast to the representation of the child as a passive and naive subject, Bojunga constructs child characters endowed with creative autonomy and critical sensitivity in the face of adult-world conflicts. The analysis focuses especially on the caóide environment experienced by Lucas in his relationship with his father, marked by symbolic violence and male domination. We emphasize how, affected by chaos, the character establishes a zone of proximity between becoming-artist and becoming-child, as theorized by Deleuze and Guattari (2012), finding fissures in the patriarchal system that attempts to imprison him, thereby deterritorializing the hierarchical family structure in which he lives. The analysis is also grounded in the contributions of Pierre Bourdieu (2002), regarding symbolic violence and male domination, and in Chimamanda Adichie (2017), concerning gender construction and the urgency of a feminist education for children. It is concluded that Lucas represents a childhood marginalized by heteronormative and patriarchal logic, yet one that resists through the creation of its own universe, where new ways of being and existing as a boy can be elaborated. Bojunga’s narrative, therefore, not only reconfigures the place of the child in literature but also offers a powerful social critique by portraying childhood as a creative force capable of subverting established orders and reinventing affections and territories.