Is it possible to talk about “young potentiality?” Challenges and perspectives for thinking about contemporary youths

Abstract

The aim of this text is to discuss the concept of “young potentiality” outside the essential and humanist record, which is bound to the action proposed by the representation of the young protagonist individual – almost a hegemonic model in youth-directed actions in Brazil. We seek to think that other senses of young potentiality could be offered by other youth experiences in contemporary times. To this end, we have established a debate about the central concept of the text – the one of potentiality – starting from the discussions developed by Giorgio Agamben. Methodologically, the study was oriented to a proposal of ethnographic inspiration, emphasizing on an idea of “participant presence,” developed from July to November of 2015 in Sábado Cultural: Circuito de Cultura e Arte [Cultural Saturday: Culture and Art Circuit], a youthful experience marked by cultural meetings at different points on the outskirts of Porto Alegre, state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. We have selected a few elements of Sábado Cultural practices to show how the meetings promoted in this space enabled us to make assumptions about young people and their multiple forms of experiencing their youth and how this is currently linked to another type of “young potentiality.”