Experiences of listening to teacher disease and suffering in front of neoliberal rationality: building policies of care and resistance

Abstract

This article contemplates reflections on the discomfort and suffering of teachers in contemporary times, based on listening experiences within the scope of university research and extension. We present two studies, where we proposed listening spaces through interviews and written experiences, both with teachers from public educational institutions. The clinical oriented intervention research is the method that underlies the text and the discussion is based on clinical discourse analysis, which made it possible to collect significant research that intertwines, giving names to teacher discomfort and suffering, such as: silencing, helplessness, exhaustion, bureaucratization and productivity. In view of these manifestations, we understand that teacher discomfort and suffering are also produced and managed by the State and sustained by the neoliberal rationality, intrinsic to it. We insist on the creation of experiences that produce space-time, speech and shared care, without retreating in the face of the lack of alternatives that seem to impose themselves. Thus, we join the efforts to build testimonies of how this rationality and its violence are expressed in Brazilian society and in educational institutions, and our interventions echo the establishment of reception, mental health care and psychosocial support in the field of education, giving rise to resistance policies.