Atmospheres of possibility. Adolescence and adolescences between infinity and form

Abstract

Adolescence is the age of possibility, in which the individual projects themselves towards a future that they perceive as open to anything and towards which they advance with an atmospheric feeling. This essay moves away from categorisations and false representations of adolescence, because subjectivity arises from the tension between infinity and form. In fact, the typical traits of adolescence should be considered in the light of a singular unfolding that neutralises the homogenising effect of the collective imagination, because every girl and boy represents a unique way of being an adolescent. Through the epistemological function of the concept of possibility, we see that power and action describe the transformation of the individual in the perspective of a being as “permanence that becomes”, because it is precisely from the dialectic between change and conservation that the young person's way of life emerges.