Gender, race and class: The inmates of the Esquirol Section beyond madness
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.22478/ufpb.1807-8214.2020v29n1.48729Abstract
This paper analyzes the psychiatric and institutional practices aimed at crazy and poor women in the first decades of the Brazilian republic. It also circumscribes what was characterized as feminine madness and reflects on how this conceptualization interacts with other discourses that define the period. To this end, it analyzes 24 medical records of the patients transferred from the National Hospital to the first exclusively female psychiatric institution, the Colony of Engenho de Dentro Psychopaths. The information from these documents was complemented by others, located in the National Archives and IPUB, such as: memos, requests, reports and correspondence that narrate daily aspects of the colony. Data analysis is based on the concept of intersectionality, a category that incorporates one of the central axes of feminist epistemology. Through the results, it is possible to analyze the action of the interconnected institutional powers in the treatment processes aimed at hospitalized women and how much they reflect the patriarchal, classist, and slave aspects of Brazilian society at that time.