Pedagogias da corporalidade e o cuidado de si: corporalidade, experiência religiosa e o exercício de si na Igreja Verbo da Vida

Abstract

As the central objective of this thesis, we investigated if the corporeality model in Igreja Verbo da Vida (IVV), which has the action of the Holy Spirit on the bodies of its believers as its intention, results into the exercise of a self-care which integrates itself or not to the institutional corporeal regimes that regulate the use of the body. Therefore, we analyzed the corporeal pedagogies conducted at IVV, observing on their celebrations, the set of body techniques which are transmitted by the priests and ministers through their discursive and body performances during services, as well as analyzing the believer’s experiences as they acquire the ways of using the corporeality. Thus, we collected data concerning the priests and the believers’ conceptions about corporeality in the chosen community, here defined as enunciation place for the standardization mechanisms of body use in the celebrations and in everyday life. The theoretical perspective we used was grounded on corporeal pedagogy approach, and on Foucault’s concept of self-care. The research had a qualitative character, and we used direct observation, unstructured informal interviews and semi-structured interviews with nonrandom samples from believers. As we observed both priests and ministers in IVV mobilizing and stimulating believers into the use of gestures in the services, we verified that those, in the search for being “Holy Spirit instruments” , feeling on their bodies the “manifestation of the anointing” , activate a set of body techniques. In the interviews with members of IVV, we did not find a possible self-care which would open possibility of breaking with institutional body regimes. On the contrary, the self-work carried out by the believers interviewed, in the services and in everyday life, leads a self-transformation, in their bodies; according to the institutions own body regimes. On those, the believers are compelled to run, dance, jump, speak in strange languages, as well as hug one another and “declare de word” in the most adequate moments as possible, demonstrating publicly what they do in order to be “God’s instruments”, subjecting themselves to the leaders and to the corporeal perceptions which they describe as orientations from the Holy Spirit.