Entre discursos de normalização e resistências possíveis: uma análise de caso de acolhimento institucional de crianças e adolescentes em BH

Abstract

This article's goal is to reflect on the technologies of power that operate throughout the whole social, political, and economic system and is articulated, for instance, by the government’s institutional intervention regarding children and adolescents (typically from low income families). As such, this study primarily investigates the consequences of such interventions on the families of the aforementioned children and teens. In addition, questions will be raised regarding the responsibility of social service professionals, and their fundamental role, in the provision of spaces to receive and foster the unique knowledge and ways of life of these families. The reactions of the families, and their resistance and strength in response to the technologies of power, are also an object of reflexion. As a method, we opted for the discussion of fragments of a narrative related to a woman who experienced institutional intervention involving her children. Some of her reactions to the technologies of power have been critically analyzed in order to show her resistance, and ability to fight, in face of an asymmetrical power situation. In the analysis of the case the concepts developed by Michel Foucault were reviewed, given the relevance of his theoretical research on technologies of power and how they affect the life of each individual, and the population in general. The medical, the psychiatric, and the judiciary institutional powers, and their body of knowledge, were debated because their discourses emerge, recurrently, during the analysis of the aforementioned case. The idea of normalization was also explored, as well as the concepts of "abnormal" and the notions of dangerousness and perversity, given the present-day use of such notions in power relations established by the institutions that implement control over, and subjective conformity of, the poor and against all of those who introduce forces of transformation into a system that serves the forces of exploitation, domination, and disinformation. Some considerations will be made as a contribution to the formulation of other projects in the academic research scope.