Regular o corpo, governar a vida : a política de saúde na escola

Abstract

How to learn to be a healthy subject today? How are school practices involved in this process? What processes and techniques of subjectivation are put into operation? What is prescribed for this individual and a portion of the so-called healthy population in school? These questions guided the paths of this research in order to defend the thesis that different discursive and non-discursive practices operate life and body governing processes and have the school as a place of propagation and incitement for the construction of these healthy subjects. The path of the investigation began with the selection of the corpus, at first, artifacts / practices produced in the name of health in the school were researched, they were didactic materials, materials and instruments used in the formation of teachers, activities, architectural spaces and professional functions present in the school, as well as reports, publicity materials for state policies. After this moment, the selected corpus was composed of the practices produced from 2000 to 2017, addressed to the health of one of the portions of the school population, the children. In the process of analysis of the empirical material discussed we trigger concepts of the theoretical tools provided by Michel Foucault, such as: Subject, Speech, Biopolitics, Biopower and Governmentality. The empirical analyzes, in the management with the theoretical tools, highlight that the so-called healthy individuals and population groups are manufactured by specific biopolitics. The practices and techniques of institution of the healthy child subject operate in multiple and simultaneous ways in the school and they keep the focus on the regulation of the body and the subjectivity, by techniques by which this subject is governed from the discipline, the control and the contemporary devices that they function (dis) continuously from the perspective of hygienic, food-motor and (neuro) psychic health. In these processes, occupying the position of a healthy child is manufactured by mechanisms and procedures that work from the establishment of norms triggered by power relations that are instituted at both individual and collective levels. It is these norms that define and classify child subjects as healthy or sick, normal or abnormal, while at the same time guiding the conduct of deviant individuals. It is worth noting that scientific knowledge enjoys a central position in these processes of subjectivation and normalization. It is especially through the medical, psychological and pedagogical knowledge that circulates in the school and in different practices / artifacts that the boundaries between normal and pathological are established, as well as the technologies used to control, administer and (re) conduct the that fall outside the norm of “being healthy”.