Abstract

Social occupational therapy has been concerned with dealing with social inequalities, especially with regard to the structure of multiple oppressions. Taking this assumption as a parameter, it is urgent to advance in the consolidation of theoretical-methodological references that allow problematizing the role of the profession, in the dimension of society and the performance on it, in order to offer proposals for a socially referenced practice. Thus, this essay presents contributions to compose the debate about a social therapeutic-occupational thinking/doing for anti-oppression and intended for freedom. It is about turning to a professional action that fights oppressive structures and aims at expanding the life possibilities of subjects, individual and collective, with whom we work. The focus of this praxis is in the dimension of the individuals' everyday life, which is marked by alienation, but also by the possibility of liberation, which is effective as opportunities are created for an untested feasibility and the revolution (humanization) is carried out in this everyday life, while the occupational therapist can be a mediator/articulator in this process. For this, the praxis proposed is permeated by the promotion of interventions that apprehend and deal with violence to everyday life (justified anger and indignation), with the suspension of everyday life (effort to problematize where one comes from and to where you can go) and move towards the permanent creation of everyday life (the transformation).

Keywords:
Activities of Daily Living; Occupational Therapy; Social oppression; Freedom; Social Participation

Resumo

A terapia ocupacional social vem se preocupando em lidar com as desigualdades sociais, principalmente no que tange à estrutura de múltiplas opressões. Tomando-se esse pressuposto como parâmetro, avançar na consolidação de referenciais teórico-metodológicos que permitam problematizar o lugar da profissão, na dimensão da sociedade e da atuação sobre ela, é urgente, de maneira a oferecer proposições para uma prática socialmente referenciada. Sendo assim, são apresentados neste ensaio aportes para compor o debate acerca de um pensar/fazer terapêutico-ocupacional social para a antiopressão e intencionado para a liberdade. Trata-se de se voltar para uma ação profissional que combata as estruturas opressivas e mire no alargamento das possibilidades de vida dos sujeitos, individuais e coletivos, com os quais atuamos. Para nós, o foco dessa práxis se dá na dimensão da vida cotidiana dos sujeitos, a qual é marcada pela alienação, mas também pela possibilidade de libertação, que se efetiva na medida em que se cria oportunidades para um inédito-viável e se exerce a revolução (humanização) nessa cotidianidade, podendo ser o terapeuta ocupacional um mediador/articulador no âmbito desse processo. Para isso, propõe-se uma práxis que é perpassada pelo fomento de intervenções que apreendam e lidem com a violência à vida cotidiana (a justa raiva e a indignação), com a suspensão da vida cotidiana (esforço para problematizar de onde se vem e para onde se pode ir) e se direcione para a criação permanente da vida cotidiana (a transformação).

Palavras-chave:
Atividades Cotidianas; Terapia Ocupacional; Opressão social; Liberdade; Participação Social

Introduction

The debates regarding social inequalities, which involve dynamics and structures of a society historically marked by oppression, are crossed by several themes that concern social contradictions, bringing together issues of social class, race/ethnicity, gender and sexuality, generation, disability, territory, etc. Such themes have been, historically and contemporaneously, guided by occupational therapists concerned with problems arising from them in people's lives.

From our point of view, we are dealing with a task placed in the field of social occupational therapy, aiming to discuss the importance of developing an occupational-therapeutic reading

Thus, we seek to advance in the consolidation of theoretical-methodological instruments that allow us to problematize the social place of the profession, considering an action parameterized by the dialectic between history and life in its context, recognizing its technical, political and ideological function (Barros, 1991Barros, D. D. (1991). Operadores de saúde na área social. Revista de Terapia Ocupacional da Universidade de São Paulo, 1(1), 11-16.; Barros et al., 2002Barros, D. D., Ghirardi, M. I. G., & Lopes, R. E. (2002). Terapia ocupacional social. Revista de Terapia Ocupacional da Universidade de São Paulo, 13(3), 95-103.).

Some questions that arise and motivate us are: 1) What is the possibility of a social therapeutic-occupational praxis that apprehends the multiple historical oppressions and is committed to fighting them?; and 2) What are the paths to be proposed for an action that welcomes and pays attention to issues involving individual/collective, micro/macrosocial, historical/structural and everyday aspects?

It seems necessary to develop a social-therapeutic-occupational praxis for anti-oppression intended for freedom, which aims at everyday life as a dimension capable of combating and breaking with the status quo, in other words, revolutionary movements.

In this essay, a path in this direction is presented, permeated by Paulo Freire's formulations for a technically and politically oriented social occupational therapy, through which propositions are brought with a focus on the elements of the revolution of everyday life, according to Marxist theorists, related to the categories of violence (Kosik, 2002Kosik, K. (2002). Dialética do concreto. São Paulo: Paz e Terra.), suspension (Heller, 2016aHeller, A. (2016a). O cotidiano e a história. São Paulo: Paz e Terra., 2016bHeller, A. (2016b). Sociología de la vida cotidiana. México: El sudamericano.) and creation (Lefebvre, 1991Lefebvre, H. (1991). A vida cotidiana no mundo moderno. São Paulo: Ática.).

Social Occupational Therapy: Anti-Opression, Freedom and Everyday Life

Social occupational therapy works together with subjects that are deprived of rights and participation at a political, social, economic and cultural level. They are social subjects who experience rupture processes in multiple contexts of their lives, with weaknesses in work relationships, social supports, ways of life and cultural expressions, access to fundamental rights, etc. (Melo et al., 2020Melo, K. M. M., Malfitano, A. P. S., & Lopes, R. E. (2020). Os marcadores sociais da diferença: contribuições para a terapia ocupacional social. Cadernos Brasileiros de Terapia Ocupacional, 28(3), 1061-1071. http://dx.doi.org/10.4322/2526-8910.ctoARF1877.
http://dx.doi.org/10.4322/2526-8910.ctoA... ; Lopes & Malfitano, 2021Lopes, R. E., & Malfitano, A. P. S. (2021). Theoretical, practical, and contemporary scenarios in the Metuia/UFSCar experiences of developing social occupational therapy. In R. E. Lopes & A. P. S. Malfitano (Eds.), Social Occupational Therapy (pp. 164-168). Philadelphia: Elsevier.).

The foundation of this action is in the understanding and apprehension of socio-historical and cultural relationships, so that this intervention is carried out in dialogue with the contexts and with the subjects that constitute these relationships, dynamically, in an individual-collective, objective-subjective way, involved in power relations and conflict.

Therefore, the direction of the professional intervention that is desired, becoming a technical/ethical/political imperative, is aimed at promoting the social insertion (Freire, 2000Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogia da indignação. São Paulo: UNESP.) of populations in social vulnerability and with difficulties in negotiating their ways of living, specifically in what involves everyday life. This imperative, then, would be based on a praxis: action + reflection for the anti-oppression intended for freedom, that is, to turn to a daily life subject to transformation.

In Freire (1987)Freire, P. (1987). Pedagogia do oprimido. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra., the category “oppression” can be understood as a set of injustices that promote dehumanization structured¹ 1 Based on Freire, oppression refers to processes built in a social structure, which develops in social relations in different dimensions, micro and macro-social. It is a social structure, which “[...] is, in the last analysis, not the sum (nor the juxtaposition) of the infrastructure [material basis of production, production relations, economic forces] with the superstructure [forms of social consciousness, ideological, artistic, legal, cultural, political, educational, issues, etc.], but the dialectization between the two” (Freire, 1981, p. 69). by the social conditioning that hinders the vocation of human beings to humanization, freedom, to being more. This takes place in a historical reality in which there are agents who oppress and who are oppressed, denying the being of the latter as historical subjects who pronounce and transform their realities.

Oppression engenders actions against the oppressed to “[...] kill life, to stop it, with the reduction [of human beings] to merely things, [to] alienate them, mystify them” [...] (Freire, 1987Freire, P. (1987). Pedagogia do oprimido. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra., p.73), nullifying the power of their movements in/with the world, with others and with history, in the symbolic and material dimension.

The oppressor-oppressed dynamic is complex, ambiguous, incident in micro and macro-social dimensions (Freire, 2000Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogia da indignação. São Paulo: UNESP.), involving contradictions at subjective and objective levels, shaping consciousness, interpersonal and institutional actions that, dialectically, (re)produce themselves in the social structure and conform limit-situations in the lives of subjects, based on hopelessness, on historical fatalism, demanding the search for the untested feasibility (Freire, 1987Freire, P. (1987). Pedagogia do oprimido. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra.).

Freire addresses oppression in several dimensions in his works. He points out that, in the book Pedagogy of the Oppressed , 1968, he seeks to analyze the phenomena of oppression, with an interest in the oppressed as a social class, through the influence of Marx and his own experiences. However, he states that, even with this evidence, his primary objective was to offer certain parameters and theorization about the structures of oppression, as lenses of analysis that are shaped depending on the context of multiple oppressions - aiming, above all, at freer lives for the human beings: “What I would like to think is that, without wanting to universalize oppression, I have made some positive contributions to the understanding of oppressive structures” (Freire, 2001aFreire, P. (2001a). Pedagogia dos sonhos possíveis. São Paulo: UNESP., p. 263).

In this systematization, Freire designates the specificities of oppression, bringing elements of class, but also of race/ethnicity, gender, sexuality, etc., for the debate in later works (Freire, 2000Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogia da indignação. São Paulo: UNESP., 2001aFreire, P. (2001a). Pedagogia dos sonhos possíveis. São Paulo: UNESP., 2001bFreire, P. (2001b). Política e educação. São Paulo: Cortez.), concluding that the fight against oppression is collective, that is, it must occur through the force of the subjects oppressed by these elements.

It is in unity in diversity, bringing together subjects oppressed by equal and distinct specificities, “[...] that liberation and the creation of liberating structures are at stake [...]” (Freire, 2001aFreire, P. (2001a). Pedagogia dos sonhos possíveis. São Paulo: UNESP., p. 266). The “progressive doing/thinking is loyal to the radical vocation of the human being for autonomy and is open and critical to the understanding of the importance of class, sex [gender] and race position for the liberation struggle” (Freire, 2001bFreire, P. (2001b). Política e educação. São Paulo: Cortez., p.46).

The thread that is weaved is what is intended towards the creation of paths of social and collective liberation - between the various oppressed and different levels of oppression (subjective/objective - micro/macrosocial). Thus, inspired by Freire's elaborations, a posture of combating the structuring antagonist (the social relations constituting the different oppressions) is required, building a praxis for anti-oppression.

In our thinking/doing, social occupational therapy is what would be placed on the battlefield, in view of the recognition of its political-ideological function for anti-oppression (Farias & Lopes, 2021Farias, M. N., & Lopes, R. E. (2021). Pensar/fazer como prática da liberdade: a terapia ocupacional e o centenário de Paulo Freire. Cadernos Brasileiros de Terapia Ocupacional, 29, 1-5. http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/2526-8910.ctoED292021.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/2526-8910.ctoE... ). We emphasize that the force of the term to say that it is not enough to operate a praxis is not oppressive: a praxis that is attentive to combating the structures of oppression is necessary, not slacking off on commitment in the midst of conflicts.

Furthermore, in the dimension of anti-oppression, we would not run the risk of neglecting or denying some kind of oppression, given an understanding based on what causes the dehumanization of subjects, individual and collective, in the social structure and macro-microsocial dialectic. Therefore, we have a category of analysis that allows us to understand the different dynamics of oppression, including their specificities (without universalizing them), and, mainly, the power relations that feed back and are directed to equal and distinct contingents of subjects.

Such premises require a therapeutic-occupational praxis intended² 2 The strength in intentionality that we resort to is not occasional, as in a dialogue with Freire, we previously pointed out that praxis as a practice of freedom requires constant reaffirmation of its intention, “[...] it is necessary, that it is, in a conscious way, oriented towards this [purpose]” (Farias & Lopes, 2020, p.1350). for freedom, that expands the possibilities of humanization of subjects who carry important marks of everyday oppression in favor of autonomy, social insertion and strengthening of lives that can find/open individual-collective paths. There is talk of a professional action based on education as the practice of freedom, that is, one that is affirmed in the ethical-political commitment, in the critically-problematization, in the democratization and in the technical-scientific rigor (Farias & Lopes, 2020Farias, M. N., & Lopes, R. E. (2020). Terapia ocupacional social: formulações à luz de referenciais freireanos. Cadernos Brasileiros de Terapia Ocupacional, 28(4), 1346-1356. http://dx.doi.org/10.4322/2526-8910.ctoEN1970.
http://dx.doi.org/10.4322/2526-8910.ctoE... ).

But what do we aim at to think/do practices for anti-oppression with the subjects? For us, in dialogue with Barros et al. (2002)Barros, D. D., Ghirardi, M. I. G., & Lopes, R. E. (2002). Terapia ocupacional social. Revista de Terapia Ocupacional da Universidade de São Paulo, 13(3), 95-103., social occupational therapy focuses on everyday life, in which life happens and relationships of oppression are established as limit situations (Freire, 1987Freire, P. (1987). Pedagogia do oprimido. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra.), in the contradictions between alienation and transformation (Heller, 2016aHeller, A. (2016a). O cotidiano e a história. São Paulo: Paz e Terra., 2016bHeller, A. (2016b). Sociología de la vida cotidiana. México: El sudamericano.; Kosik, 2002Kosik, K. (2002). Dialética do concreto. São Paulo: Paz e Terra.; Lefebvre, 1991Lefebvre, H. (1991). A vida cotidiana no mundo moderno. São Paulo: Ática.).

It is a path aimed at understanding what is need, what is insertion and what is freedom in the face of historical contexts, to help life happen, in the form of the most possible choices of different subjects (individual, collective, historical, cultural). In the thinking/doing of occupational therapy, it is this daily life that interests us, very complex and with several dimensions that are articulated.

Everyday life is the life of each and every day, organized in the distribution of time, repetitions, exceptions, gestures, actions, what is known, etc., in a reciprocal relationship with History – everyday life without History is emptied and History without everyday life is impotent, without becoming (Kosik, 2002Kosik, K. (2002). Dialética do concreto. São Paulo: Paz e Terra.; Heller, 2016aHeller, A. (2016a). O cotidiano e a história. São Paulo: Paz e Terra.). Historical facts always leave and return to everyday life: everyday life tells of the past and its assimilation in the present, in which they are not always visible.

The subjects dive and are immersed in a daily life marked by alienation, which potentiates demands for efforts to be able to deny or transform it, making it necessary to reveal the hidden wealth in this dimension of life to access the extraordinary of the ordinary. This alienation is established, above all, by the complexity of social inequality, based on the division of work, society into classes and the hierarchy of social positions, preventing many from the dimension of freedom, creation and transformation of the life that is lived - engendering dehumanization, the relationship changes between private life (individuality restricted to each one) and the life of the generic-human (collectivity that crosses everyone) (Heller, 2016aHeller, A. (2016a). O cotidiano e a história. São Paulo: Paz e Terra.; Kosik, 2002Kosik, K. (2002). Dialética do concreto. São Paulo: Paz e Terra.; Lefebvre, 1991Lefebvre, H. (1991). A vida cotidiana no mundo moderno. São Paulo: Ática.).

Thus, alienation reflects the consciousness of subjects immersed in a pseudo-concretized understanding of themselves and the world, in which, apparently, contradictions are given, an appearance restricted to the surface of the real (phenomenon). “The world of pseudo-concreticity is a chiaroscuro of truth and deception. The phenomenon indicates the essence, at the same time, hides it” (Kosik, 2002Kosik, K. (2002). Dialética do concreto. São Paulo: Paz e Terra., p.15); this author sees the essence as the inner core of reality, manifesting itself in the phenomenon in an inadequate, partial way or from a limited angle.

The phenomenon denounces the essence, but immediately and superficially, demanding from the subjects efforts to apprehend the unity of the phenomenon and its essence. This shallow dimension crosses everyday life reduced to practical-utilitarian – to do alienated, in which the fetishization of relationships prevails, in which subjects conceive the world as something ready, losing the awareness that this world is creation.

A separation of the subjects from the genesis of the human world takes place, from the culture and humanization of nature, expressing the praxis of daily operations, in which the human being himself is an object of manipulation (of things and of other human beings), and with a lot of becoming in habit and mechanical action.

In this bias, the subjects just occupy themselves without thinking, there is the “manipulation of the world's devices, but not the creation of the human world” (Kosik, 2002Kosik, K. (2002). Dialética do concreto. São Paulo: Paz e Terra., p. 74, author's emphasis); everyday life, marked by capitalist sociability and multiple oppressions, is taken by pseudo-concreticity, clouding the understanding of concrete reality, for the maintenance of alienated daily life.

Lefebvre (1991)Lefebvre, H. (1991). A vida cotidiana no mundo moderno. São Paulo: Ática. points out that alienation dissimulates the place of creation and production of life (in a broader sense), distancing everyday life from its wealth. It is a dissimulation that transforms the creative consciousness into passive and unhappy. This is related to the bureaucratic society and directed consumption, notably for subaltern groups, supported by the appropriation of times, spaces, bodies and desires; a society based on deprivation and exploitation, making everyday life functional to the logic of oppression.

However, everyday life, although conducive to alienation, is not necessarily alienated, being a possible structure to contain the “conscious unity of the human-generic and the individual-particular” (Heller, 2016aHeller, A. (2016a). O cotidiano e a história. São Paulo: Paz e Terra., p. 64). Here is a perspective of the human being in everyday life as a unitary essence, as a co-participant in the collective society.

For Heller (2016b)Heller, A. (2016b). Sociología de la vida cotidiana. México: El sudamericano., Heidegger (1951)Heidegger, M. (1951). El ser y el tiempo. México: FCE. describes everyday life as alienated on principle, the nodal point of his theory being precisely this alienated life. There would be only way one out for the individual and only in a negative sense: the choice of being for death as an authentic being. However, the author highlights the elaboration of a conception that, as a theory of everyday life, does not deny its affinity with alienation, asserting that, together with the intranscendable structure of everyday life and in spite of it, a non-alienated everyday life is also conceivable.

According to Kosik (2002)Kosik, K. (2002). Dialética do concreto. São Paulo: Paz e Terra., the human being is thrown into the world, and its authenticity or inauthenticity must be proved by itself, in struggle and in praxis, in its history and in a reality that can be modified, transformed, while liberation is essential for the encounter with authenticity; the alienated daily life makes this construction difficult, but does not make it impossible.

Finally, this process requires destabilizing strategies in the order of the alienated/dehumanized/mortified daily life, implying mobile life, the conscious existence of being in and with the world, and everyday doing intended for freedom. This aspect can, within the limits of a professional thinking/doing, be placed by social occupational therapy in its praxis.

Revolution of/in Everyday Life: Violence, Suspension and Creation

Life constrained by oppression suppresses everyday experiences in their possibilities of thinking and doing. Based on Freire (2013)Freire, P. (2013). À sombra desta mangueira. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra., despite this daily life structured in oppression, we highlight the critical curiosity that resists/exists, which promotes cracks that can feed a different thinking/doing, in order to critically examine life processes and the chances of transforming the world and enjoying social goods. Here, we observe the path to the revolutionary transformation of everyday life, in dialogue with Heller (2016a)Heller, A. (2016a). O cotidiano e a história. São Paulo: Paz e Terra.. For us, the action of social occupational therapy can, together with the subjects of the intervention, foster this direction.

In addition to the aforementioned, what we previously called categories: violence, by Kosik (2002)Kosik, K. (2002). Dialética do concreto. São Paulo: Paz e Terra., suspension, by Heller (2016aHeller, A. (2016a). O cotidiano e a história. São Paulo: Paz e Terra., 2016bHeller, A. (2016b). Sociología de la vida cotidiana. México: El sudamericano.), and creation, by Lefebvre (1991)Lefebvre, H. (1991). A vida cotidiana no mundo moderno. São Paulo: Ática., are formulations that envision powerful movements – praxis to break with alienation and revolutionize everyday life.

Based on these contributions, as discussed below, we take the risk of using these categories in a path towards social therapeutic-occupational thinking/doing, placing them in a place of relevance for the realization of a professional praxis profiled for anti-oppression and for liberation, in the Freirean sense.

Violence – righteous anger and indignation (hatred that can move)

Kosik (2002)Kosik, K. (2002). Dialética do concreto. São Paulo: Paz e Terra. points out that the transformation of alienated everyday life is only possible in a historical process in which the immediate intimacy of everyday life is removed from the uncritical and supposedly natural experience, overcoming what limits the knowledge of concrete reality (the essence of things). “For the [human being] to discover the truth of alienated everyday life, he must be able to detach himself from it, free it from familiarity, exercise 'violence' over it” (Kosik, 2002Kosik, K. (2002). Dialética do concreto. São Paulo: Paz e Terra., p. 89).

The social therapeutic-occupational thinking/doing, regarding the production of indignant violence that can move, aims at spaces/experiences in which the subjects are faced with conflicts, being able, in a dialogic and experiential way, to elaborate the anger arising from the unjust realities that the surround them, making visible a certain indignation, which can be worked on collectively and directed.

This would configure a social-therapeutic-occupational conduct made of dialectical-critical movements, dealing with everyday life itself, which does not manifest itself immediately, in an exercise to understand the essence. The violence exercised by the subjects of oppression is an act based on just anger (Freire, 2000Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogia da indignação. São Paulo: UNESP.; Kosik, 2002Kosik, K. (2002). Dialética do concreto. São Paulo: Paz e Terra.) and indignation – which can produce a movement towards freedom.

For example, in our experience in social therapeutic-occupational work, with poor rural young people, in a rural school in São Carlos - SP, using the social technology Workshops of Activity, Dynamics and Projects (Lopes et al., 2014Lopes, R. E., Malfitano, A. P. S., Silva, C. R., & Borba, P. L. O. (2014). Recursos e tecnologias em terapia ocupacional social. Cadernos de Terapia Ocupacional da UFSCar, 22(3), 591-602. http://dx.doi.org/10.4322/cto.2014.081.
http://dx.doi.org/10.4322/cto.2014.081... ), we carried out an activity in which these subjects reported what they would claim to improve their lives. Reports emerged, such as: the desire for public transport and places to socialize and have fun; the need for an ambulance in the Basic Health Unit; the desire to have money to eat what they want and to get where they want; among others that bore the marks of vulnerability. It was interesting to note that, based on their own utterances, they faced needs that were naturalized, considered insurmountable, in the sense of conformity, that “it is just that way”. Young people questioned themselves, involved by the mediation work carried out, reflecting on the reasons for these problems that hinder their lives and not those others (the “rich”, in their words), which, initially, generated indignation.

Thus, there was a certain indignation among those subjects about the reality placed there, reality referring to individual experiences, but that make up, above all, the collective life of those who live there. We observed the production of anger, not yet elaborated in relation to “what to do and where to direct” that hatred of oppression, the force of violence, producing “my most sincere fuck off”, as in Figure 1.

Suspension – effort to problematize where it comes from and where it can go (reflection)

Heller (2016a)Heller, A. (2016a). O cotidiano e a história. São Paulo: Paz e Terra. recognizes the potential of individuals to constitute themselves as particular and human-generic subjects, unitarily. These aspects are fragmented by manipulation and alienation, underlining, however, that the subjects have their daily lives functionally linked to the chances of freedom. Possibilities of liberation occur with the suspension of particularities in the face of the human-generic and this suspension can occur in situations where morality, personal commitment and risk in everyday life decisions are more relevant.

The suspension of everyday life happens and, soon, there is a return to everyday life, but in another way, transformed, with catharsis being the summit of this suspension/elevation. Catharsis can abolish the spontaneous, alienated everyday hierarchy (forged in the mute coexistence of the particular and the generic), giving rise to a conscious hierarchy (Heller, 2016aHeller, A. (2016a). O cotidiano e a história. São Paulo: Paz e Terra.).

In this sense, the praxis of social occupational therapy is built on tensioning, together with the subjects, in revealing that everyday life has a spontaneous hierarchy, based on alienated social roles, to foster reflections and experience, a thinking/doing that enables the awareness of contradictions and that wants to lead the life that is lived, even within the social constraints.

Seeking the abolition of the spontaneous and alienated everyday hierarchy prints a conscious relationship of the individual with the generality of society and with the contradictions that move lives, which can find its potential to transform “the very ordering of everyday life into a moral and political action” (Heller, 2016aHeller, A. (2016a). O cotidiano e a história. São Paulo: Paz e Terra., p.68, emphasis added by the author).

In the social occupational-therapeutic action, suspension can be placed as the center of thinking/doing, in which the activity, in terms of occupational therapy, for example, is directed to suspend (elevate) everyday life, or rather, a cut from it, to propose a critical reading of what is lived - in a dialogue between the particularity of the subject and collective issues, local or not, historical, political, economic and cultural.

Using the example of the Workshops with poor rural young people, after the moment described, when a certain revolt/indignation took place, activities and dynamics were proposed to think about social inequalities more deeply, taking the elaboration of a Fanzine, in which we worked with problems arising from: classism, racism, machismo, homophobia, linguistic prejudice, prejudice against rural people, capacitism, etc.

In pairs, the young people took responsibility for one of these problems, which would constitute one of the pages of the fanzine, having to answer: What is this oppression? What is your story? What are the ways to face this [or that] issue? They were able to think about the origins of some of their experiences, understanding how they are constituted, socially and historically, in the face of oppression, which structure their daily lives, as well as their community and a good part of society. If poor people do not have adequate access to public transport, health services, desired food and more, what are the reasons? Surely, it would not be a divine wish, or would it? This debate subverted a certain historical anesthesia imposed by the alienated everyday life.

The suspension process prompted such elaborations as, “Not everything is the devil’s fault!” (Figure 2). Overcoming mythical explanations about the reality socially constituted by human beings, in the spheres of ethics and politics, with the problematization of reality and overcoming indignation, we seek to understand where these oppressions come from and where we can go to subvert them, beyond the anger it could immobilize. That is, when we perceive historical production structures, we understand that they are subject to modification, within a game of forces.

Permanent creation – the transformation (action)

Based on Lefebvre (1991)Lefebvre, H. (1991). A vida cotidiana no mundo moderno. São Paulo: Ática., the alienated daily life makes creative and autonomous life impossible, configuring itself as a strategy for maintaining order based on oppression, exploitation and exclusion of actors that threaten to destabilize the status quo. In this everyday life, there is a split between the everyday (alienated) and the party (a life focused on happiness, freedom), losing the sense of “work” (use value) and everything becoming a product (exchange value) – imperative of the market/consumption and of the instrumental rationality that organizes, programs and dominates life. “Under these circumstances, a gigantic deviation from the creative capacity took place. [...] The creative activity of works is replaced by a contemplative passivity” (Lefebvre, 1991Lefebvre, H. (1991). A vida cotidiana no mundo moderno. São Paulo: Ática., p. 207, author's emphasis).

For this reason, Lefebvre (1991)Lefebvre, H. (1991). A vida cotidiana no mundo moderno. São Paulo: Ática. indicates that it is in everyday life that we must make efforts to develop human consciousness, focusing on liberation from oppressive practices, thus rescuing creative life and seeking a permanent cultural revolution, which permeates the transformation of life, at a sociocultural and economic level.

The creative life is understood in the grandeur of everyday life, in which subjects appropriate the body, space, time, desire and consciousness – the creation of a practical-sensitive world, as a work and not a product (Lefebvre, 1991Lefebvre, H. (1991). A vida cotidiana no mundo moderno. São Paulo: Ática.).

In the social therapeutic-occupational action, this can happen in an articulation, through different strategies, so that the subjects appropriate, in the most radical way possible, the means that involve art, technique, science, philosophy, citizenship, criticism of the world and the environment, and sense of things. That it turns to the “capacity [of human beings] to create a work from everyday life, from its ups and downs – the possibility of making everyday life a work, for individuals, groups, classes” (Lefebvre, 1991Lefebvre, H. (1991). A vida cotidiana no mundo moderno. São Paulo: Ática., p. 43).

With severe criticism of the productivist and instrumental ideology and the logic of oppression, the strength of intentionality is the cultural revolution aimed at the full rehabilitation of the notions of work, creation, freedom, appropriation, use value and the human being (Lefebvre, 1991Lefebvre, H. (1991). A vida cotidiana no mundo moderno. São Paulo: Ática.); this is only possible, taking into account the indignation that moves and the process of suspension on issues that circumscribe spaces and experiences, making visible the opening of paths for anti-oppression and freedom.

The constitution of momentary creation in social therapeutic-occupational praxis is central, as a moment of elaboration between what is indignation and problematization, as a space for experimentation, experience and dialogue. However, this action needs to be directed (not restricted to the subjective/immediate plane of action), to arrive at creation in the broad sense, of permanent creation – something that remains, even when one returns to the immersion of day-to-day life. In the therapeutic-occupational doing/thinking, it is essential to aim at the life that happens outside.

This is a way to create other possible ways of life – in which they recover, “[...] in the face of the irremediable logic of structures, the spaces where subjects transmute structures into processes and insert themselves in history” (Touraine, 1988 as quoted in Lobo, 1992Lobo, E. S. (1992). Caminhos da Sociologia no Brasil: modos de vida e experiência. Tempo Social , 4(1-2), 7-15. http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/ts.v4i1/2.84907.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/ts.v4i1/2.8490... , p. 7), making changes to create destinations and routes – in the face of oppression and possibilities of freedom. We strive so that, in some way, creation becomes a constant in everyday life, beyond the therapeutic-occupational experience.

This aspect dialogues with what Freire (1981Freire, P. (1981). Ação cultural para a liberdade. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra., 1987Freire, P. (1987). Pedagogia do oprimido. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra.) puts as awareness, referring to the awareness of processes that oppress us, as individual and collective subjects, but, more than that, it guides the action for the transformation of concrete reality, even within the limits set.

That is, in carrying out social-therapeutic-occupational thinking/doing, for example, momentary creation processes are possible in spaces of encounter/experiences; however, the aim is the concrete transformation of life, the result of a space of creation of free existence, in the sense of tracing the limits of life, but also of the ways to negotiate them, in the search for untested feasibility.

As the words on the wall in Figure 3, we envision the spaces of our doing as moments of a process in which the subjects elaborate the invasion (with violence and suspension), with many colors of alienated everyday life, so that they can explode/create, dyeing new walls of life.

Still following the example of the work carried out with poor rural young people, between the moment of violence and the suspension and creation (momentary), permanent creation was aimed at, in what was possible to articulate between the demand of the subject/group and the possibilities of a wider and more intentional life for creation.

Therefore, in the Workshops, the activities related to the theme life projects brought to the debate, among other topics, access to the university, a desire of many; however, it was quite invisible as a possibility, because they were young people from lower classes, most of them poor and black. Thus, we tried to elaborate ways to subvert this impossibility, bringing information about public universities (which many thought were paid), the right to Higher Education, access policies (involving registration fee exemption and affirmative action policies), as well as policies of permanence, linked to student assistance, in these institutions. Together with the young people, it was possible to think about the operationalization to seek the realization of this desire, considering the necessary engagement for the creation of untested feasibility, articulating a dialogue in which one talked about desire and effort/individual/group/family strength, about the function of that school space in which we found ourselves, the schooling processes and the school in their lives – microsocial context, but also about Brazilian society, the configuration of collective and structural forces on the scene, in a macrosocial dimension.

In this case, we can think, supported by indignation and problematization, in possibilities of transgression (albeit restricted), such as access to the university - understood as a path of creation that can remain, turning to broader destinations, jointly formulating subsidies for young people to broker social conflicts and negotiations. Social therapeutic-occupational work was essential to contribute to the promotion of dialogues, with emphasis on the articulated work between collective workshops, singular and territorial care, available social resources, such as school, and the dynamization of networks (Lopes et al., 2014Lopes, R. E., Malfitano, A. P. S., Silva, C. R., & Borba, P. L. O. (2014). Recursos e tecnologias em terapia ocupacional social. Cadernos de Terapia Ocupacional da UFSCar, 22(3), 591-602. http://dx.doi.org/10.4322/cto.2014.081.
http://dx.doi.org/10.4322/cto.2014.081... ).

It is noteworthy that violence, suspension and creation are in composition, dialoguing, even if separately, about processes for the revolution of everyday life, being part of our theoretical effort to assimilate this together to inform the praxis of social occupational therapy.

These theoretical-methodological categories can circumscribe a path (which is dialectical) with interesting propositions, certainly not prescriptive, for a thinking/doing of/in occupational therapy, given its roots in practical work.

Occupational therapy is a profession that, in the face of many difficulties for life to happen, wants to work with the possibility of making itself work better; this only seems possible to us based on the reading of everyday life and actions around it, together with individuals and collectives permeated by the processes of oppression. In short, it is an action that moves towards praxis aimed at combating oppression – aimed at anti-oppression, intended for life with more freedom (humanized), in which one deals with the violence experienced, with the suspension of what seems common and with the creation of untested feasibility.

This task is urgent for all occupational therapy, especially for the one that wants to be social, an urgency that is reaffirmed in the current conjuncture, with demands arising from a global context marked by the neoliberal management of the State, with the suppression of access to social goods, by neo-conservatism in culture, to curtail freedoms conquered and to be conquered, adding to the unbelievable effects of SARS-CoV-2 and the pandemic brought by it since the end of 2019, which narrow the lives of subjects marked by dehumanization.

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