Os corpos que podem: uma etnografia nas plataformas digitais do "Cantinho dos Cadeirantes"

Abstract

What does it mean to be normal? Is there only one way to be a disabled person and a wheelchair user? This is the reflexive challenge of the research which resulted in this Master's dissertation. The focus of its discussion is the body of the wheelchair person seen as a transgressor of the social conduct norms, taking into consideration that digital technologies and media create new experience possibilities. From March to September of 2018 and from April to May of 2019, we have executed an ethnography and a documental research focusing on the digital platforms (website, Facebook and Instagram) of the "“Cantinho dos Cadeirantes”", a virtual space of socialization created by Carolini Constatino that counts nearly 45,000 followers on Facebook and 15,000 on Instagram. The metodology has included the interaction with the participants of these spaces, the analysis of the content published on the platforms and the application of questionnaires with four participants and the administrator of the platforms. The determination of the corpus analyzed in this study has obeyed the succeeding criteria: number of likes, comments and shared posts, and the recurrence of the topics covered. We identified that the narratives related to corporal experiences, as well as the sociabilities which resulted from the use of the platforms were plural. In addition, such aspects favored distinct possibilities for the existence of their actors in multiple aspects of social life, as the political, the ones related to sexuality, and the existence or not of acceptance of one's own body. By means of the ethnographic insertion, we observed manifestations of diversity when it comes to being a wheelchair user though the “Cantinho dos Cadeirantes”, by evoking discussions which deal with themes directly related to the daily life of these people. Therefore, we concluded that the "Cantinho" is an agency which potentializes the deconstruction of prejudice and ableism regarding people with disabilities. As a theoretical support, we applied the ideas of ableism and normative body (Anahí Guedes Mello, 2014), agency (Sherry Ortner, 2007), technology and its socio-political impacts (Bortolazzo, 2016; Bauman, 2018; Serres, 2018), and of social construction of the body (LeBretton, 2017; Mauss, 2003; Mary Douglas, 1988).