The category “Woman” as a biopolitical device for body education

Abstract

This text aims to trace the lines that produce the woman as a biopolitical device through public policies, particularly the National Policy of Social Assistance in Brazil. This policy compounds and feeds back a Neoliberal State, economically moralizing, as Donzelot states (1980). I applied the cartographic methodology, which traces lines that make up the production of subjectivities. I performed this study as a psychologist from a Specialized Reference Center for Social Assistance, which works with children, adolescents, women, the elderly, the disabled, and the LGBTQI+ community victims of violations of rights. They went through physical, sexual, and psychological violence. The concept of Device comes from the Foucauldian reading of Power. According to him, the relations of power/knowledge cross our existences through biopolitics in this case. Besides, according to the same author, these relations tell us about governmentality strategies of make live and let die.