Ciclometanoia: poética de um corpo feminino sobre duas rodas

Abstract

The investigation object of this doctoral research emerges from the researcher's concerns in face of the precipitated questions from the decision to learn to ride a bicycle. This is a case study of the experience lived at 57 years of age, in the aging phase, a woman, white, cis, straight, middle class, retired, but active in professional activities related to her academic training in Pedagogy and Psychology , mother, grandmother, married, residing in the city of Salvador. Its structure revolves around a single case study with an autoethnographic qualitative methodological characteristic in which, starting from a single, spontaneous individual subjective experience, the author describes her encounter with herself, in the encounter with the other and the transformations in the self, resulting from these encounters. The use of autoethnography favored understanding the meanings that the person attributes to their own past experience, opening new meanings to this experience. Having as problematic the decision to learn to ride a bicycle and the repercussions in the different spheres of her life, it proposes to understand the resulting transformations. The analysis process engendered its own paths and routes that favored (re)flexing on the experience, planned through images and in the making of a cartography describing the trajectory of the self in transformation. It was observed that, when approaching the aging phase, the late injunction awakens the desire of a child who hibernated for long years: riding a bicycle. The path taken in the fulfillment of this desire triggers the methanoia of the last phase of life, bringing to light issues that crossed it and modifying its relationship with i her body, with people, with the city. She called this process cyclomethanoia, defined as the cyclical experience of methanoia. It validates the importance of the autoethnographic method and highlights the importance of research on themes that highlight the role of women, their relationship with the body and the aging process; the use of bicycles as ways of health care and resistance to bio-power over their bodies; about caring for the environment and the ways in which individuals relate to the city.