Eu vejo, tu vês, ele vê: o corpo na percepção de pessoas com deficiência física

Abstract

This thesis investigates the main perceptions people with physical disabilities have regarding their bodies, in relation to the functional and aesthetic aspects, based on the cultural conceptions instilled in the society of the city of Manaus. For its feasibility, it was based on phenomenological epistemology and considered the premises of Pierre Bourdieu and Michel Foucault. Therefore, it relied on the qualitative approach and its methodological objective was exploratory, virtual ethnography was employed as the technical procedure. The subjects of the survey were nine people with disabilities, who are participants in the program of Motor Activities for the Disabled (PROAMDE) and are aged between 25 and 54 years, and are referred to throughout the text as “social agents”. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the suspension of the program’s activities, the instrument for data collection was the technology-mediated interview, subsequently the treatment of the collected material was discourse analysis. The main results indicate that the proposed theme deserves future investigations, and that the voices and perceptions of people with disabilities on the details of the body today denounce a cult to the body and its appearance that is socio-culturally drawn in the timeless imagination of people, thus reporting the dichotomy between the ideal versus the real so present in the tyranny of the stigmatizing ideology of perfection and utility that a person with disabilities experiences.