Tristes psicotrópicos: narrativas de sofrimento ético-político e resistência na PUC-SP

Abstract

This dissertation reads the trajectory of PUC-SP (1946–2020) as a laboratory of the tensions shaping Brazilian higher education: between public mission and market logics, democratic memory and management by indicators, epistemic plurality and technological standardization. In three moves, it (i) reconstructs the historical formation of Brazilian higher education in Latin American perspective, highlighting colonial marks (elitism, fragmentation, dependence on metropolitan canons); (ii) analyzes neoliberal restructuring and platformization, which redirect institutional priorities through performance metrics and cost containment; and (iii) deploys feminist autoethnography to inscribe lived experiences at PUC-SP (2012–2016) — surveillance, disciplinary processes, assemblies, networks of care — as evidence of ethical-political suffering and its counter-practices. The methodology combines institutional documents, public datasets, and autoethnographic vignettes, with triangulation and thick description. Findings indicate that preserving the university’s critical function requires “public proofs” of mission — participatory governance, crosssubsidies to protect socially strategic fields, careful curation of technologies (without abusive monitoring), community-based outreach, and policies of care and student support. The dissertation proposes the notion of an “unstable equilibrium” to name the arrangement through which a community university sustains research and critical formation while facing market pressures and datafication. By integrating coloniality, neoliberalism, and platformization with embodied writing, it offers an analytic vocabulary and operational criteria to safeguard formative depth, social bonds, and an ecology of knowledges in community-based universities