Pandemic dreams. A semiotic analysis of oniric stories of childhood and adolescence in the Argentine Litoral

Abstract

The article presents results of the research project “Effects of preventive social isolation on the Exercise of the Right to Health in Argentine Childhoods”, aimed at investigating the experiences of childhoods and adolescents during the COVID 19 pandemic Isolation and Social Distancing Preventive and Mandatory. This text exposes and analyzes emerging topics in accounts of childhood and adolescent dreams in the Litoral region during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper explores the meanings of the pandemic and the measures linked to it for this population through the analysis of dream accounts of childhoods and adolescents in the Argentine Litoral region (Node Entre Ríos). For the study, 82 stories were collected between May and June 2021, of which this article analyzes a sample of 39 of them.

From a semiotic analysis related to psychoanalysis and gender studies, the initiative to consider dream narratives as material worthy of analysis implies a willingness to interpret them not only to investigate such a population but also to address emerging problems of contemporary culture. Among the topics analyzed in the stories are: a) fantasies about good and evil; b) concerns about security and gender violence; c) anxieties associated with loneliness and absences, and desires for the future associated with independence, education, and love. Far from claiming to represent their subaltern voices, these findings speak of suffering and symbolic struggles, as well as wishes and suggestions for the adult world around the administration of the pandemic, the city and public space, the importance of sociability, the play and physical activity, care, and safety in a disruptive context.