Dinâmicas da memória sobre infâncias abandonadas: narrativas e micropolíticas de um grupo de ex-internos de uma instituição para menores

Abstract

The article investigates how a group of former inmates of a governmental institution reunited in search of reestablishing a social context that would provide them with the social conditions to remember their institutionalized pasts. Based on research that collected data over the years, it was possible to understand the political dynamics surrounding the interpretation they constructed of this common past. The work involved shared accounts and narratives from (i) social media pages and groups, (ii) in-depth biographical interviews, (iii) collective interviews, and (iv) ethnographic and netnographic data. Using a relational and processual theoretical approach grounded in Andreas Glaeser's Sociology of Understanding, we observed that the involvement of the daughter of the institution's former director in the network of former inmates ultimately wove a dynamic that involved a strong moral entrepreneurship, aiming to recast episodes of institutional violence under the guise of care and discipline. This conservative form of interpretation was responsible for shaping emotional regimes that covered these difficult memories with “positive” feelings.