Care practices and health production: forms of governmentality and otherness

Abstract

This text aims at articulating health production, culture, and otherness as a resource to analyze health care practices. The condition of possibility of such a reflection lies in understanding the human as a historical, cultural artifact, formed in practices of signification, freedom, and government. The starting point is a set of daily actions to understand the human, in this case, the forms of health care produced by the health reform. The field of reflection that has allowed this analysis is constituted by ideas proposed by Foucault, Deleuze, Levinas and, mainly, Derrida. The theoretical tools provided by these authors have enabled considering health production as life potency from otherness, i.e. it has been constituted as practices of freedom among forms of governmentality in health.