Abstract

DOMINGUES, Eliane  and  ROSA, Miriam Debieux. Violence, social humiliation and struggle for recognition: the experience of MST. Rev. Subj. [online]. 2014, vol.14, n.1, pp. 115-125. ISSN 2359-0769.

The objective of this article is to investigate how the militants of the Rural Landless Workers Movement (MST) experience and confront the violence in their everyday lives. This is an excerpt from a doctoral research aimed to investigate the difficulties faced by militants in the daily struggle for land, the tensions and challenges that accompanied their trajectories in MST. Among these difficulties, violence is seen in various forms: physical (arrests, torture, and risk of death), psychological (threats, the criminalization of those who struggle for land, being regarded as bums and criminals), and "naturalized" (denied access to basic rights of health, education, and housing). The research was based on a field work named psychoanalytic intervention research and that aimed to serve a dual purpose: to create a space for listening to the MST militants participants of the research and, at the same time, make reports that could be themed as object of study. In militants' reports social humiliation was highlighted as the main form of violence experienced by them, fact that drew our attention because it usually goes unnoticed. However, although the militants have their bodies marked by social humiliation, they found in MST the possibility of elaboration and coping with this experience. The favorable social environment enabled by MST contributes to formation of "informed men" aware of their rights and that the collective struggle takes the subject of the humiliation passively tolerated and enables that their pain is transformed into resistance.

Keywords : social humiliation; MST; militant; psychoanalysis; violence.

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