Subject and belonging: psychoanalytic twists in the face of public policies of affirmative action

Abstract

What methodological reflections are required of Psychoanalysis when it works with subjects who have been systematically segregated in Brazilian society, particularly within the university setting? We propose a psychoanalytic reflection on the subject and the notion of belonging within the context of public policies of affirmative action. Based on clinical listening and conversation groups, it is noted that when public policies promote the access of historically excluded groups to institutional spaces such as the university, subjective effects are produced that strain traditional forms of recognition and identification. Drawing on psychoanalytic theory, we seek to elucidate the relation between the capitalist discourse and the inscription and perception of the effects of massified signifier production. The concept of monosymptom is used as a theoretical tool to support this reading. Thus, the proposal with the conversation groups involves offering a space of listening to the twists subjects make in order to belong to the university territory, without losing sight of the marks of the unconscious and the collective history that traverse them. Belonging, therefore, more than a fixed identity, constitutes itself as a process in constant elaboration.