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This paper explores the place of the experiences of adolescence through an historical and political reflection on the sense of community. Youths were always on the front lines of civilizations movements of insurrection and emancipation, although the disasters of the 20th century have left their mark on human achievements and have profoundly disturbed relations between plan and action and confidence in the future. The violence of the act is within us, even in the external forms we use to protect ourselves from it. Imagining how to approach adolescence and fit its manifestations into the more vast rhythms of the generations would require us to acknowledge the damage and the contradiction at the heart of our community and to take care, at every moment of human life, of the ongoing metamorphosis in which we are involved.