From curiosity to fear. body experience of a group of internals to the confinement and discipline in a religious school

Abstract

Conceiving the body in three dimensions –individual, social and political– we approach to explain a constellation of emotional responses that guide human interaction and configuration of a body tensed by the discipline and confinement. The stage and experience come from a group of teenagers from the religious-educational boarding school called “Villa for Girls” located in Chalco, Mexico. In this paper we aim to show that the educational training of internal codes and social contracts remains taming the individual body as required by a social and political context. Within this order, generated in confinement, a set of emotions are produced, transmitted, controlled or resignified towards achieving a disciplined and docile body. The methodological approach is guided by the ethnographic work that combines a multitude of techniques which starting point is in the recovery of the actor’s perspective through in-depth interviews. This presentation will describe and analyze the experience of a group of former internals of the Villa, coming from various communities in the state of Veracruz. This work is part of the project “Psychogenic disorder and body language. Socioanthropological explanation of reality as lived in Villa of Girls, in Chalco”.