The boarding school "O Ateneu": Subjectivity production into total institution

Abstract

We tried to detect the effects of institutionalization on the subjectivity production from a total school enviroment. The study case is the novel "O Ateneu", by Raul Pompéia, which we have analyzed using Goffman´s theory related to total institutions. We have described the moral career which the character Sérgio develops by going to a boarding school, whereby the vicissitudes were mapped into that environment: period of adaptation, evolutive crises, sexual initiation, problems of brotherly rivalry, etc. Total institutions seem to be organized from a particular way and works autonomously. We could only understand the social problems and the effects of subjectivity produced by total institutions, using the studies of power relations underlying those milieus. The absent time that the individual is enclosed as an inmate can place deep marks into his/her subjectivity and turn into an appropriate case of study in itself.