Pela possibilidade da não violência: a experiência ética de educadores(as) em Minas Gerais que atuam em contextos de violência e criminalidade

Abstract

How does the defense of non-violence constitute the ethical experience of educators who work in contexts of violence and crime? This is the question that guides the research, using as a reference social educators who work in a public crime prevention policy of the Government of the State of Minas Gerais, Brazil. These educators work directly in the Homicide Control Program - Stay Alive! This is a program focused on working in territories with high crime rates. From this brief presentation by educators, it is important to highlight that the research is not interested in analyzing this public policy, but in understanding the experience that these professionals have around violence and the defense of non-violence. Violence and non-violence emerge as two central points in the life trajectories of these workers. Many of them have already had criminal involvement and report having experienced countless forms of violence, such as police violence, drug trafficking violence, violence against the body, in short, they appear as bodies traversed by various forms of violence. In this sense, I will argue that I am talking about bodies that at some point in life or even today, that the condition of precariousness was or still is a living element. From there, I intend to articulate that ethical work will involve confronting this precarious condition, provided by a biopolitical and necropolitical action on peripheral bodies. In this way, I turn to Judith Butler, Michel Foucault and Achille Mbembe, among others. Changing the focus of interest, I use Michel Foucault's notion of experience to argue that there is another layer, a smaller layer in which the ethics of non-violence must be addressed. It would be a kind of micropolitical layer, as these bodies put themselves in front of the knife that threatens a young person, they pay debts to free a life, they contradict the legalistic dimension of the State, in short, there is a set of actions that appear as actions for non-violence which is not directly linked to a government of life by the State. Therefore, I argue that these two dimensions - micro and macro politics - come together when the issue is the invention of an ethics of non-violence. I start from the hypothesis that in this experience there is a transition from the pain of violence to a way of life guided by positive affects in favor of the life of others. In this endeavor, I turn to many theoretical partners, but, above all, the two main ones are Michel Foucault and Judith Butler. From the first I mainly seek notions such as biopolitics and experience of self and, from the second partner, the notions of non-violence, precarious life and mourning, notions that become tools in the research journey.