Os constructos modernos e pós-modernos sobre corpo, saúde e doença em discursos de mulheres de três diferentes gerações

Abstract

The importance given to health care nowadays encouraged the questioning of the subject, taking as a guideline Foulcaldian studies. Such studies are in search of contextualization and correlations between the medical and scientific discourses (knowledge / power) and the modern and postmodern constructs about the body, sexuality and health. Several authors, Foucault [1963] (2008), Chammé (1996), Scliar (2007), Coelho & Severiano (2007), Prado Filho & Trisoto (2008), agree that the concepts of body, health and disease, are reflection of social, economic, political and cultural circumstances. These concepts depend on the time, place, social class, individual values and on the scientific, religious and philosophical conceptions. From this benchmark, it was interviewed women from three different generations. The objective was to evaluate, from a qualitative and exploratory approach, as produced discourses about health / disease, what relationships they establish with the devices knowledge/power, if there are specifics in relation to female bodies and these subjectivities, and if it presents difference in relation to times. To evaluate the interviews, it was used Foucault’s Discourse Analysis and as theoretical contribution, it was used studies which talk about modern times, discipline, sexual devices, biopower / biopolitics, and the development that followed these studies. The women interviewed were divided over the descent as follows: G1 (Generation 1) - women born between 1925 and 1946, G2 (Generation 2) - women born between 1956 and 1966, and G3 (Generation 3) - born between 1979 and 1997. The discourse analysis, in this research, found evidence that there is a female bodies production and a social construction of health-disease dyad. The comparison between the three generations showed different devices of power / knowledge related to each of the times demonstrating that the body, sexuality / femininity, health and disease are not inert and independent concepts apart from the economy, politics, science and culture; it changes with and because of these.