A arte de (res)significar experiências de si na velhice

Abstract

Discussing old age in contemporary society remains a discomfort for many, as, according to Sibilia (2011), being old in Western society often seems to be a denied right. The social death of people aged 60+ intensified with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil in 2020. In response to this situation, the extension project “Desabroche: The Art of (Re)signifying Old Age” was created in 2020, aiming to provide an online space for individuals over 60 years old to express themselves. In this space, discussions were initiated from artistic and cultural productions on themes related to aging. These artistic productions were presented, analyzed, and commented on by the participants aged 60+, inviting them to reclaim memories and subjectively invest in them, thus enabling a (re)signification of the signifiers that confine the subject within the representation of old age. As a mediator in this project, several concerns emerged, leading to the following guiding questions for this research: To what extent can art contribute to a (re)signification of old age for these individuals? How can self-narratives promote a shift in the elderly’s discursive position? What are the effects of potential shifts in the identification networks of elderly participants in the Desabroche project? Thus, this research aims to investigate the process of (re)signifying the representation of old age for this group that identifies or is identified as old, elderly, or part of the third age, among other labels attributed to them, through art workshops and self-narrative practices, in order to facilitate changes in their identity constitution, potentially allowing them to occupy new discursive positions. The analysis material consists of a field diary, as well as the works produced by the participants. Consequently, the corpus of this research is constructed from the Experience Reports (ER) related to the events experienced in the Desabroche space. This is an intervention research with a psychoanalytic orientation (Pereira, 2016), where the methodology for analysis and corpus construction is based on psychoanalytic principles such as free association, identity constitution, and transference. Additionally, the theoretical-methodological assumptions of Psychoanalytic Discourse Analysis (Dunker; Paulon; Milán-Ramos, 2016) serve as a foundation for analyzing the participants’ statements and the meaning effects of representations of old age. From the interpretative gestures regarding the corpus, it was possible to observe that the experience with art and the possibility of self-narrativization can influence the subject’s representation of themselves, potentially promoting a shift in their discursive positions, leading to a displacement from the positions to which the participants were previously alienated. Consequently, it is possible that these participants engage with knowledge through a new discursive logic, enabling the construction of new knowledge about themselves in the face of old age.