Mulheres Erveiras da Feira do Ver-o-Peso na ordem interditada do discurso

as palavras proibidas

Abstract

Abstract: Through the lens of Foucauldian discourse analysis (FDA), the aim of this research is the analysis of a linguistic taboo — defined by Foucault as forbidden words — and its relation with discursive and non-discursive practices surrounding women herbalists at Ver-o-peso street market, located in the city of Belém do Pará. The sayings of these women sellers in their workplace — with the aim of selling herbal essences, perfumes, scent baths, and oils with purposes of fulfilling women’s affective and sexual needs — are frequently displaced from their place of enunciation and reverberated by media, where different meanings are produced. In our analysis, we focus on discursive events that brought these women’s work into public debate and visibility with media uproars, relying on Michel Foucault’s archeogenealogical method, with a focus on his notions of discourse, statement, taboo of the object, as well as sexuality device. The analyzed discourses pinpoint a circulation of knowledge and power that defies regimes of truth and normative patterns regarding women’s sexuality, insofar as they present regularities in its dissemination, revealing the taboo of the object as directly linked to desires and affections historically silenced and/or inhibited; in its media representation, where they work as a catalyst of discursive fights — those that highlight the “irreverent” aspect of those women’s speech and end up, thus, effacing the ancestral knowledge regarding the “power of Amazonian herbs.”