Forms of subjectivation in university students from Colombia during the COVID-19 pandemic Formas de subjetivación en estudiantes universitarios de Colombia durante la pandemia por COVID-19

Abstract

This research article is part of a study interested in creative ways to deal with the pandemic; it presents part of the results of one of its specific objectives, which consists of analyzing the processes of subjectivation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in university students. It is a qualitative research-creation exercise with a phenomenological-hermeneutical perspective in which fourteen students participated in three creative workshops and in-depth individual interviews. The results allow us to describe two modes of subjectivity: subjectivity in fluctuation, which includes emotional tensions related to the individual sphere and in relation to the other; and the versions of the self, defined from a temporality past self and present self, in which past self presents a subjectivity flattened and turned outward, and present self, reveals the power of being alone, the consciousness of finitude and the transit towards new ways to connect. This investigation made it possible to recognize that the pandemic, although it implied many challenges, constituted a fertile scenario to understand what it means to be another, and introduced something new in the subjective experience, the possibility of seeing oneself different from what one had been before the pandemic.