SHADOW PEDAGOGY: ADULT EDUCATION IN PRISON AS RESISTANCE TO THE PSYCHOCHEMICAL DOMINATION OF SUBJECTIVITY

Abstract

This article, anchored in Critical Pedagogy and Institutional Critique, unveils the ethico-political function of Youth and Adult Education (EJA) within the Brazilian prison system. The objective is to analyze prison-based EJA as a space for symbolic resistance and identity reconstruction against the medicalization of existential and social suffering. It is demonstrated that the punitive regime employs psychopharmacology as a sophisticated biopower device, aiming at the chemical silencing of subjectivity. In contrast to this control strategy, the Pedagogy of the Shadow is introduced as a new paradigm: to welcome trauma and stigma (the "shadow") and transform them into critical consciousness and the capacity for transformation. The methodology is qualitative, theoretical-reflective, and hermeneutic-critical, focused on analyzing the dynamics of power and knowledge in the prison setting. The theoretical foundation articulates Paulo Freire's Liberating Pedagogy, Institutional Critique (Goffman), and Foucault's theories of power, complemented by the contemporary critique of psychiatry by Moncrieff (2008). The conclusion is that EJA establishes itself as an agent structurally opposed to the punitive and chemical control logic. The Pedagogy of the Shadow paradigm offers the framework to transmute drug-induced passivity into a motivation for transforming reality, reaffirming education as the last trench of human dignity in prison.