Quem somos hoje? Um estudo sobre a precarização da vida com Foucault, Judith Butler e outros autores

Abstract

Who are we at this moment in history? It is not by chance that this work begins with this question. It calls the present into question and clearly invites us to reflect on ourselves in relation to the “now” in which we find ourselves. It is not enough to ask: what is this today? But, yes, what relationship do we have with this today? What elements of the present cross and constitute us? By questioning the present, we will realize that the precariousness of life is the element of historical singularity that is startling in the eyes and that constitutes our way of being, being and thinking about the world. Our study starts from the perspective that precariousness is a manifest continuum, inseparable and homogeneous to capitalism and that, despite its relative differences throughout history, it has something invariable and common within them, namely: the manifestation of violence. Our central thesis is that the precariousness of life happens with the decrease, weakening, obsolescence, devaluation, exhaustion of life through the violent exercise of power. Today, with neoliberalism, violence intensifies, updates itself, becomes an instrument in power relations and finds the desired conditions for it. It is due to the greater exposure of our vulnerability to the action of violence that our lives are being precarious. There are different ways of distributing precariousness to certain groups of people, articulated within a field of power where some people become more susceptible to arbitrary violence than others. Seeking to understand the functioning of the exercise of power in the process of precariousness of life, we weave an analogy between the power lines of power and the lines of force of the kite. We verified that violence, biopolitics and neoliberal normalization are the threads that weave the precariousness of life, being subjection in these terms, the best knot in this plot. The precariousness that characterizes our days is woven into the intimate relationship between power and life. The way out to face this problem was constituted from the aesthetics of the self as an ethical attitude of the subject articulated to the use of criticism in the relationships between oneself and oneself and with others. To criticize yourself is to know how to renounce what oppresses and violates myself and reduces the possibilities of action with myself, and which also, to a certain extent, violates the other. In this way, we bring to the problematization of these questions some tables that illustrate well the dynamics of the precariousness of life from the operationality of violence in the following fields: social and political life, work and school. The framing of these pictures will enable a better understanding of the subtlety of the mechanisms engendered for the precariousness of life, implying, including, the development of a critical analysis of the framing.