Kicking the Leather in the 90s Suburbs

An Approach from Autobiographical-Narrative Inquiry on a Territorial Bodily Experience

Abstract

This article unfolds an investigative exercise of narrative-autobiographical reconstruction of an embodied cultural experience located in the suburban area of Buenos Aires (Aldo Bonzi, La Matanza) during the 1990s. The objective of this work is to explore the plurality of senses and the network of meanings of a childhood motor experience in the public space of the Buenos Aires suburbs during the 1990s, through narrative-autobiographical inquiry. The hypothesis outlines the hermeneutic analysis of bodily memory focused on childhood motor practices from a micro-indicia scale in favor of consolidating the existing intersection between personal experience, socio-cultural history, and public space. The results highlight the finding of a biographical epiphany within childhood agency, expressed in the shift from privatized domestic consumption toward the re-appropriation of public space, the invention of playing fields through the normative bricolage of urban infrastructure, and the sedimentation of an affective "atmosphere" capable of contributing to the shaping of a teaching identity. The discussion aims to contrast the power of spontaneous play and "wild soccer" against the hyper-institutionalization and risk-containment logic of modern bodily pedagogical regulation. The conclusion brings to light the ways in which narrative-autobiographical inquiry contributes to the formation of epistemic-analytical frameworks that serve pedagogical decolonization, capable of reclaiming community autonomy, free play, and the poetics of territorial heritage memory.