What if the university were ours? belonging, swimming pool, brothel, Instagram profiles... and other things that, in Portuguese, are written with the letter “p”

Abstract

This article is an exercise in autobiographical experimentation about Education and its relationship with Belonging and the body. I bring as a theoretical foundation of autobiographical production while researching the studies of Glória Anzaldúa, Pedra Homem and Jota Mombaça. To think about the issue of belonging, I establish a dialogue with bell hooks. And, as a trigger, I use records made by Basic Education students as part of an extension project at a public University in the state of Bahia. The records aimed to respond to the provocation: “what is missing from this University for it to be ours?”. From all of this, I compose an autobiographical narrative that, I believe, helps to feel and think about how Education at the University, motivated by Modern Science, has separated body and mind, reserving a place of oblivion, or disappearance, for the former. I do not seek a detailed analysis of each record, but following the bell hooks method of composing stories with concepts, I compose a framework of discussions with dissident epistemologies that can be instruments for questioning. I therefore propose an ethical perspective for scientific production: writing with/about/from the body so that we can educate and belong.