Education of the body

biopolitics and power in Belém do Pará (late 19th to early 20th century)

Abstract

This article seeks to address ways of viewing and educating the body in Belém do Pará. It shows how forms of gymnastics and sports were selected and assembled in such a way that they became supposedly correct, instrumentalizing the body as a target of power. The time frame for this study covers the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. The documents analyzed are taken as monuments to be dismantled, that is, the so-called archives are interrogated in their production and with the intention of scrutinizing the power relations that affect the disciplinarization of bodies. In order to better delimit the focus of the research, we raise as a primary question the ways in which discursive and non-discursive practices instituted ways of educating the body in Belém do Pará, between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. The empirical material was gathered in an inventory and organized by the origin of the archive (newspapers, magazines, pedagogical journals, etc.), creating a unity capable of entangling biopower as a technique of power that identifies the education of the body.