Arte, existências e resistências: produções de Estado, Nação e subjetividades no contexto de espetáculos cênicos no IFRN

Abstract

This research aims to understand how the construction of State, Nation and subjectivities takes place through scenic spectacles in the school space of IFRN and what are the student agencies in these production processes. The investigation started from the observation of shows produced by students from IFRN – Campus Mossoró, which mainly addressed themes related to gender expressions and sexual diversity, but also mental health, beauty standards, social inequality and racism, inserting themselves in disputes that became central on the national scene about the role of the school in society. We treat the school as an institution of the State, elementary in the project of formation of subjects of the Nation-State, which is an abstraction, an effect, that is built from everyday bureaucratic practices and cultural performances. The subjects in question are understood as constituted in their relationships, practices, and experiences, which can be signified, transformed, and interpreted from artistic performances. Students are agents who develop their practices and elaborate subjectivities among disputes of narratives and Nation projects, bringing echoes of confrontations that stand out in nowadays, articulating their experiences from family experiences, social movements, and other groups in the local community. Thus, we focus on the process of producing and presenting scenic spectacles within the sphere of the IFRN, through ethnographic observation of intercampi cultural events, semistructured interviews, and documentary analysis, which are detailed through the interaction with students of the Nuarte of the campus Mossoró. During the research, we observed that, in the IFRN, these productions are involved in disputes around the concept of Professional Education, which pit a technicist model focused on the labor market against an integrated education that aims at the formation of an autonomous citizen. This conflict appears in everyday experience, through bureaucratic practices and institutional documents, which materialize the State and build centers and margins in the educational process. The student narratives, however, characterize artistic activities as significant spaces of formation, integration, self-knowledge and otherness, from which they format youth existences and resistances.