Da necropolítica e biopolítica perversa à potência de vida: o cuidado integrativo em uma Associação de assistência a presos

Abstract

This PhD thesis in Collective Health from the Graduate Program in Collective Health of the University of Vale do Rio dos Sinos (UNISINOS) aimed to analyze how integrative and complementary practices in health were used in health promotion and self-care of prisoners attending the Cultural Association of the Development of the Inmate and Egress (ACUDA), located in the prison complex of Porto Velho, state of Rondônia. ACUDA is a non-profit association that provides prisoners with integrative care: integrative and complementary practices in health (ICPH), work practices, learning workshops, spiritual and religious practices, and family and social encounters. The study was characterized as qualitative and ethnographic, involving the stay for four months in Porto Velho. It was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of UNISINOS, with the consent of the association. The researcher attended ACUDA daily making participant observations, applying questionnaires on general and health data of the prisoners who attended the association, as well as conducting in-depth interviews with six prisoners, four employees and the association's management team. The interviews were audio recorded and later transcribed. The fieldwork also involved extensive field journaling. The data analysis was performed based on exhaustive readings of the material, on the production of narratives about the trajectories of prisoners, and on dialogue with theoretical references, especially poststructuralists, circumscribing two articles that make up the thesis. In the first article, titled Necropolitics, perverse biopolitics and the subversion of integrative care for prisoners: ethnography of an assistance association in Porto Velho, we seek to discuss how biopolitical and necropolitical strategies coexist with actions of subversion of this logic through the articulation between institutions, the state and the insistence of prisoners to live their possible lives. In the second article, entitled (Re)Existence and power of life: Integrative and complementary practices in healthfor prisoners, the objective was to analyze how HPHC emerged as a life power in these precarious existences that needed care. From the analysis performed and presented in both articles, we conclude that the state used perverse necropolitical and biopolitical strategies as a way to manage the lives of prisoners, by offering life-sustaining subsidies (albeit precariously), but it continued to hurt and produce the death of the inmates. In contrast, despite having to respond to the state, ACUDA created mechanisms of subversion to necropolitics, through integrative care for participants. The ICPHs, situated within this context of integrality, were also understood as Practices of Affection, Care, Citizenship and Freedom,naked lives were enhanced so that they could survive the system,having spaces of freedom and citizenship (albeit circumscribed), where they could also glimpse possibilities beyond the walls of the association and the bars of prisons. Thus, the findings of this study indicate the need for more articulation between the state, the association and society,in a way that produces changes that can go beyond alterations in the individual, providing them with decent living conditions and alternatives to crime. Finally, we highlight the importance of new research involving the themes discussed here.