DISCURSOS E REGIMES DE VERDADE SOBRE AS MULHERES E A PROSTITUIÇÃO EM A PÉCORA, DE NATÁLIA CORREIA

Abstract

The discourses and regimes of truth regarding women and prostitution, as the title announces, are the central issue of this dissertation, which is circumscribed within Foucaultian Discursive Studies (FDS). The aim of this work is to think, discuss, and point out the effects of knowledge and power in relation to the subject in history, in order to answer the question: Who are we today? To this end, a history of women in the West – of productive work, prostitution, and sanctity – has been articulated with Foucauldian concepts of discourse, knowledge, and power, in order to situate the female subject in these social relations, objectified and subjectified by discourses. Also, the concepts of body, gender, and governmentality are used to understand the antinomy that runs through women in history, marked by the materiality of their bodies and their reproductive capacity. The material of analysis consists of the play A Pécora (1990), by the portuguese writer Natália Correia, who, in the aforementioned work and in other sayings and writings, criticizes power devices – Church, State, Capitalism –, denouncing that they operate together, subjugating bodies and strengthening fundamentally Christian wills of truth, sometimes misogynistic. Indeed, the dissertation describes the functioning of truths, power effects on the bodies and lives of the female subject, focusing on how this subject is exploited by different devices, which end up invisibilizing her work and taking her reproductive capacity in terms of duty.