Manifesto Negro: experiências negras da formação à prática em terapia ocupacional

Abstract

In order to investigate how racism and raciality are present and interfere in the process of graduate training in occupational therapy, from the experience of black people, this Thesis-Manifesto is made from a participatory investigation, which, under a critical postcolonial perspective on the production of knowledge and an Afrodiasporic perspective for the production of knowledge, it is extrapolated as a militant-investigation in the production of complaints. This thesis has its genesis in the Brazilian racist context: anchored in eugenic attempts to prove the inferiority of Black, Indigenous and mestizo people, to the myth of racial democracy created by Gilberto Freyre as a political proposal to whiten the population. In contrast to eugenics theories, anti-racist movements were solidified, especially with the entry of a few Black intellectuals into Brazilian universities from 1930 onwards. Thus, the myth of racial democracy came to be constantly and rigorously criticized. Important works such as those of Florestan Fernandes, Abdias do Nascimento, Lélia Gonzalez, Beatriz Nascimento and Sueli Carneiro, contributed to analyses of Brazilian society and socio-racial inequality that demystified the supposed existence of a racial democracy. From the Amefrican perspective of Lélia Gonzalez, we follow the theoretical perspective of "racism to Brazilian", which is manifested both by violence against those who represent a Black, Indigenous or mestizo identity, and by the denial of the violence perpetrated. In addition to other notions of racism already explored, we have constructed the concept of rhizomatic racism – a network of connections so complex that it is no longer possible to identify the beginning or the end, it is necessary to map it in all its ramifications of life, as well as to understand its past-present-future temporal extension and its spatial dimension of occupation of inhabited territories. Inserted in the Brazilian social historical processes, Occupational Therapy also has its contribution to the maintenance and reproduction of racist health structures, from the development of its epistemologies and foundations, through the training of new professionals, to what comes in practice to the people who are served. The first phase of the research, with trained professionals, was composed of three stages: 1) Mapping of professionals; 2) Selection of professionals for the interview; and 3) Unstructured interview. The material of the first phase was analyzed from the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). The second stage was performed with occupational therapy students, from an online form, analyzed under the Thematic Analysis (TA). And the third phase comprised a Document Analysis (DA) from the Curricular Projects of the undergraduate courses in Occupational Therapy in Brazil. In the end, it is up to us to undertake criticisms of the past and present of occupational therapy, in the search for an Afrofuturist, ancestral, countercolonial process for the formation and practice of occupational therapy. In our analysis, racism operates in the lives of Black people, going through their education to their professional life. We point out, from Abdias Nascimento and Beatriz Nascimento, the idea of community around the concept of quilombo, as an updated institution of grouping among Black people, as a political-cultural strategy, a creative unit of resistance against colonialism and everyday racism, historical continuity, survival, and cultural resistance of Black communities.