foucault, a loucura e o cuidado de si: confrontaçãoFoucault, the insanity and the care of the self: dialogical confrontation between “Holocausto Brasileiro” and “O Alienista

Abstract

Diving in the lines of subjectivity is intrinsically linked to the discursive practices that cross subjects and, in turn, are crossed by power relations. In Western thought, the subject is viewed through the bias of normality and/or its counterpoint, abnormality. In this same line of reasoning, when thinking about insanity, the reason-unreason dichotomy is established. Thus, the mad man, caught up in the pathological discourse of unreason, loses his possibilities of existence, of appropriating it and exercising The Care of the Self. Thus, from the conception of truth production about madness and the exercise of power that is found in the intricacies of these discourses, we conducted a dialogical confrontation between the works O Alienista, by Machado de Assis and Holocausto Brasileiro, by Daniela Arbex, with the objective of questioning the way in which the insane (and not insane), even suffocated by domination, can, from the exercise on themselves and their existence, come to assert themselves as singular subjects and, from the Self-Care, be resistance and put into practice the ethics of freedom. With this, we consider that the mad man, as a subject, is also the author of his productions and has a voice that cries out to be heard, with the objective of asserting himself as a living being, despite being inserted in a web of power that seeks stifle those possibilities.