Nas telas do tempo, as memórias: Narrativas de mulheres sobre seus corpos e o envelhecimento

Abstract

How women from the CRAS ―Experience and Life‖ group in Boa Vista county, Paraíba, elaborate meanings about their bodies, considering the subjected places by generational memory and gender issues is the main question of this thesis. Thus, it discusses the childhood memories and body representations that emerged from the narratives, approaching the meanings of bodies in youth, subjectivations and identities from aging representations. It analyzes the senses and meanings given from the narrative of nine women, based on their life stories, which were obtained through interviews and participant observation. For such analysis, gender and the body are taken from a poststructuralist perspective, considering these terms as historical and cultural constructs, as territories demarcated by power and by the action of control devices. The body is thought through the relation ―body, capital and aging‖, as proposed by Goldemberg plus the inspirations brought by Le Breton. Old age is understood as Debert approaches, as a heterogeneous and historical construct. Memory is another fundamental concept, taken from Albuquerque Jr.'s perspective as 'invention', as being multiple, mutant, subject to many displacements. This analysis also uses the concept of experience, according to Larrosa responsible for guiding the present paper, besides other authors and theorists. This investigation discussion goes from the research interlocutors‘ childhood memories to the current stage of their existence. Dealing with memories about bodies, addressing gender and aging issues. From the analysis performed, we highlight the meanings that involve labor in childhood, toys and games, and a non-naming of bodies in childhood. In youth, body events such as menstruation are remembered as a "mark" of this phase. At the present stage, the participants expressed concerns about the aging process, diseases, and death, but they brought ―freedom‖ significances, which meant a less uncomfortable old age and a non-passive reproduction to the imposed gender and aging body references. There were also processes of tricks, and refusals.