Rethinking Childhood Subjectivity: The Psycho-Politics of Socialization, Private-Language Formation, and the Case of Bosnian Youth

Under the guise of socialization, the child-subject born into the modern society is subjugated by a familial childhood trauma that appropriates the infantile psychosis caused by the incommunicability of early childhood. This appropriation, put to instrumental ends, results in a psychology of commodified object relations. In fact, there is a close relationship between the historical narrative of a culture and the trauma to which children are subjected as they become members of the social organization. The psycho-politics of the human condition are thus revealed in the realm of the progressive political discourse under which socialization occurs. This project concerns the psycho-political reading of trauma and socialization of children amidst the radical social transition in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the 1990s. The psycho-social situation of the youth raises questions about the social construction of identity, political subjectivity and the possibility of a democratic polity. I experiment with new concepts of political psychology to understand the relationship between the historical society and its infant citizens. Furthermore, I imagine ways of reconstituting theories of war trauma and memory to rediscover a democratic empowerment through a social education that pushes the notion of empowerment beyond its present scope.