Histórias de vida, histórias de morte: o protagonismo feminino nos crimes contra a vida

Abstract

The violent acts, particularly with regard to murderperpetrated by women, are generally perceived by people as an unpredictable and difficult act to understand, figuring as a "fatality" rather than a stable social phenomenon, psychologically determined, knowable and controllable. Thus, studies that relate to violent forms of crimes remain mostly in the field of psychoanalysis and biology, referring to explanations as passionate crimes or due to a psychopathy, approaching a positivist and limited perspective. We understand such crime as a creation, an act full of meanings and senses, therefore this work focus on murders whose perpetrators are women. By studying crime, especially in a perspective as little explored as the life trajectories of those ‘guilt’ women, it is necessary that we stratify the intentional states of these women, their motivations and reasons, and their symbolic world provided by the cultural context from which they belong. Setting off from the crime as a socially constructed phenomenon placed within a historical process punctuated by gender circumstances, this paper considers the life trajectories of the female prisoners sentenced for murder. Based on the speeches of the interviewees, we sought at best to answer two main questions, (1) Which are meanings the women build from the perpetrated crime and the incarceration process in their lives, and (2) Which are the processes of violence associated with gender social determinants both intra and extramuros. Thus, we tried to contribute to the recovery process of the voice of the incarcerated women for studies of crime, demonstrating the need to introduce a face to these women, in general hidden by stigmas, demystifying stereotypes and revealing their stories beyond the crime.