Abstract

CANIATO, Angela Maria Pires  and  NASCIMENTO, Merly Luane Vargas do. Vigilance in contemporary society: its meaning and implications on subjectivity. Psicol. rev. (Belo Horizonte) [online]. 2007, vol.13, n.1, pp. 41-68. ISSN 1677-1168.

This is a bibliographical research that problematizes the issue of vigilance as a social practice and as an ideology, disseminated in social relations and accepted by individuals, despite dangerous distortions of meanings constructed by the cultural industry. The meanings of vigilance, care, protection and security are equivalent. Such similarity is an ideological strategy of the media to confuse individuals. In order to elucidate differences in meaning between those categories, the linguistic and etymological meanings of those terms were investigated. Retrieving etymologically the word ‘vigilance’, it was possible not only to make a difference between vigilance and security, but also to identify characteristics of the social practice of vigilance, which prevents us from considering it the population’s care or security. Finally, the psychic mechanisms involved as a result of the acceptance and reproduction of vigilance by individuals are analyzed. Symbolic violence is implied in that process and in the repercussions of all that symbolic mess on social relations and affective bonds.

Keywords : Vigilance; Security; Culture of fear; Ideology; Subjectivity.

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