Identidade e corporeidade: prolegômenos para uma abordagem psicossocial

Abstract

The thesis here defended may be formuled as follows: the corporality, defined as the social and historical process of human body building, evolves with identity, defined as metamorphosis, in a reciprocal relation of determination". In order to sustain the thesis, we propose to articulate the concepts of corporality, defined along this text, and identity, such as stated by Ciampa ( 1987), in its theoretical and methodological aspects. The living human is corporality, incarnate culture. We are born as a body, around/with which a personal history builds, inside a familial and a cultural history. This body becomes corporality, by means of activity and consciousness - we point out that affects and emotions become feelings, i. e., organic and symbolical processes that occur through the corporality. When recognized as someone, the body receives an attributed identity. Therefore, the corporality, that has inscribed on itself the historicity of subject, allows that others recognize the subject, permits that they speak about the subject's signification. In addition, the corporality permits that the subject may have a self-consciousness like a continuous, like an unifying identity. Such an identity brings a history and this history identifies the subject as an unity, no matter it lives a replacing- or transforming metamorphosis. The human metamorphosis appears in the corporality. The social actor presents itself incarnate. Through corporality the characters are built, and the characters are the empirical matter of identity. We state that the intersection of identity and corporality reveals the concrete aspect of social actor. Through this text, we pointed out some methodological clues and suggested its consequences on research about corporality. Such clues can be referred to some general principles: a) Do not approach the corporality merely as appearance, nor as externality. When viewed so, the corporality tends to be understood as a crystallized phenotype. b) Search the explanation, and not the simple description, of historical and social processes.c) When searching facts and/or situations, although they seem equal or similar, one must search the differences that lay beyond or under their appearances. d) Study the change (the metamorphosis) without overvalue and without ignore that, what was fossilized. Stress the process of overcoming (e. g. the overcoming of character fetish). e) To be aware of the fact that, in narratives, the speech and the meaning stands on the reality, or on lived history. Therefore, one must consider the material basis of experience