Woman, matrifocality and violence: a "transformative" listening to Clarice

Abstract

This article addresses an interdisciplinary listening to Clarice, a woman – in her condition as a subject of rights, desire and the social tie that experiences matrifocality permeated by violence. The research was conducted under the theoretical foundation of Critical Social Theory – from the perspective of social service and production of the subject – in interlocution with psychoanalytic premises. The theoretical framework is based on an interdisciplinary narrative and considered the institutional locus – the origin of the first anxieties that mobilized the study – followed by a critical, historical, and social reading of women in society, in light of societal transformations and their resonances in family arrangements. The method privileged listening under a psychoanalytical guise, through free interviews recorded and later transcribed, in a specialized institution where Clarice was assisted. The analysis pointed to the importance of listening to subjectivity as an indispensable position, articulated to social interventions in a network of care, protection, and guaranteed rights. Thereby, in transformative listening the power of the subject’s reinvention was found, articulated with the primordial reaffirmation of rights of this societal segment, fostered in freedom and social justice, using a sensitive and daring encounter as an opportunity to strengthen the confrontation of degrading setbacks in the contemporary social field.