A vivência dos (meta)documentos do inconsciente: itinerários da organização do conhecimento no Museu de Imagens do Inconsciente a partir do olhar de Nise da Silveira

Abstract

The research aims to identify, describe and discuss the theoretical and applied development of knowledge organization in the historical-political context of the Images of the Unconscious Museum (MII - Museu de Imagens do Inconsciente). The museum safeguards the productions – paintings, sculptures and other forms of manual artisanship – carried out by the clients of the Occupational Therapeutic Section (STO). Both spaces are located at the Municipal Institute Nise da Silveira, a psychiatric hospital complex, and relate, in distinct and complementary ways, to the aforementioned works. They are produced in the context of therapeutic treatment and their formal aspects are evaluated by the STO's staff therapists, aiming to outline a map of the clients' psyche. The museum carries outthe purpose of organizing, preserving and displaying, through exhibitions, this collection of works understood as a source of knowledge to many fields of interest. The general goal of the present research is to investigate the processes of documentation and classification of such works, analyzing these two institutional spaces, as well as their confluences and differences as reflected upon each singular work. The very definition of madness is closely linked to the classificatory procedures regulated by the symbolic regimes that give them legitimacy in the social environment. We examine the idea of information in what concerns mental health and its possible links to the Brazilian Psychiatric Reform consideredin this particular context. In a second moment, we investigate the assignment of the Museum as a safeguard institution as well as its role in the management and display of a particular collection of works, highlighting its role at the frontier between the artistic and the scientific domains. The concept of Dispositif and the historical studies on madness undertaken by Michel Foucault, the concept of experience in Ludwig Wittgenstein, Ernst Cassirer’s philosophy of symbolic forms, as well as the classificatory thinking of Olga Pombo and García Gutiérrez’s ideia of declassification are some of the concepts that will guide our investigation. In the methodological domain, the corpus envisaged for our research is comprised by bibliographic and meta-documental sources (that is, tools with which one manages and files a certain piece of knowledge). As a qualitative research this one seeks to carry out the identification and conceptual description of both Nise da Silveira's works, “Images of the Unconscious” and “The World of Images”, as well as to analyze the documentary languages and the tools of descriptive representation existent in the Images of the Unconscious Museum (MII), namely, albums, the Benedito study guide, the Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism(ARAS), listing books and index cards. As a result, one may easily notice the influence of Nise da Silveira's legacy on the management of the institution's knowledge output. At the same time, one can also notice the remarkable emergence of new, and still uncertain, paths which seem to beunfolding – and shedding a new light on – the work the brazilian psychiatrist once bequeathed to the museum she had promoted for so many years. The classifications hereenvisaged for the works seek tobroaden the perspectives on the metadocuments responsible for managing image information, especially those images shared in our current historical moment.