Abstract

TREVIZANI, Tiago Marcelo  and  SILVA, Rosane Azevedo Neves da. Hospice letters: Memory and forgetfulness - traces and insurgency. Estud. pesqui. psicol. [online]. 2019, vol.19, n.1, pp. 313-336. ISSN 1808-4281.

This article discusses the use of letters as source of research and their articulation with the concepts of memory and forgetfulness, within the history madness. The authors start from the encounter by chance with some correspondences written, in the beginning of the 20th century, by patients of the former Hospício São Pedro, located in Porto Alegre (Rio Grande do Sul/Brasil), which were kept in their medical records and, possibly, were not sent to their recipients. The procedures of exclusion and the regulation of the discourses of those who were considered crazy operated a silencing of these subjects, taking their writings exclusively as referents of their supposed madness; it is understood that the dynamics of power relations is capable of producing "memorable lives" and "lives not worthy of being remembered". The ethical-political commitment of a historical perspective engaged with the "memory of the oppressed" is highlighted. This study examines some "traces of the past", understanding them as the possibility of insurgency of those who have been relegated to oblivion; in this case, remembering the past is intervening in the present.

Keywords : hospice letters; madness; memory and forgetfulness.

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