Margins of childhood. Heterotopic spaces and the pedagogy of beginnings

Abstract

This article proposes a philosophical-pedagogical reading of the margin as a heterotopic space within which childhood takes shape in the contemporary cultural fabric. Drawing on Foucauldian heterotopias, the margin is conceived as an 'other' space that sustains a relationship of normative suspension with the social order, making visible both the limits and the potentialities of educational dispositifs. Childhood emerges as a heterotopic figure: a liminal presence between recognition and governance that generates displacements and unexpected possibilities within the institutional order. This reading is interwoven with Manno’s reflection on beginning, a mode of existence that introduces discontinuity where cultural order tends to reproduce itself. Margin and heterotopia, childhood and beginning, read together, allow us to approach the alterity of childhood as a critical resource for understanding the transformations of educational and social contexts.