Corpos de branco e rosa: as transformações corporais nos espaços prisionais femininos.

Abstract

This dissertation was developed under the figure of imprisoned women from the Regional Women's Penitentiary of Campina Grande, located in the city of the same name. Perceived by me as a category, I discussed this and others like prison and body, which revealed particularities in the field of study. In the research, through the support of theorists such as Michel Foucault, Erving Goffman, Pierre Bourdieu and Anthony Giddens, I approached the theme of corporeality in imprisoned women. My desire was to understand which are the body changes of these women and how it occurs in the face of social dynamics in Brazilian prisons. To accomplish this central goal, I engaged with concepts such as protective cocoon, ontological security and habitus to reveal the manner how these women inmates deal with these changes, how they also incorporate and develop behaviors, standing out from the women who are circulating on the streets. Hence, I sectioned my findings into two forms: In the first one, I make an effort to raise an analytical-theoretical discussion involving these and other authors, then I present the data collected from the research field and how it relates to the chosen theory. To achieve the objectives, I also exercised the listening and speaking processes, with the analysis of participant observation and techniques established by ethnography. The complete study was carried out for months, amongst backwards and forwards to the prison, although the application of interviews succeeded between the months of December 2019 to January 2020 in Serrotão’s neighborhood . It is the architecture of the prisons and their entire physical body, which were observed under the prism of how they (re)produce not only the subjectivities of these women, but also how they influence the bodies of these subjects, transforming them into bodies marked by scars, self-care procedures or even disciplined. This writing was based on the story narrated by these women, who revealed peculiarities stem from their imprisonment, stitched together with theoretical contributions, which enabled paths to be unraveled in Social Sciences. In the results, I identified several bodily transformations and that they affect the life and social dynamics of the group studied in the prison environment. There were changes in the nourishment, in the way of dressing, self-care and even signs of body wasting. Notwithstanding, they also suffered from the internal processes enhanced in the form of abandonment, longing and loneliness behind bars.