CABAÇA, SACRED WOMB AND INSTITUTIONAL FEMALE RENAISSANCE: A look at the history of the IPCN in the light of complex psychology.
Gourd, Fertility, Black Women, Complex Psychology
This research engages in a dialogue with the memories engraved in institutional records, photographs and administrative documents of the Institute for Research on Black Cultures – IPCN, on the threshold of its fifty years of existence in Rio de Janeiro - RJ, Brazil, based on Jungian psychology, to present a reflection on the strength and importance of women in the institutional management of the IPCN. Through the methodology of case study in qualitative research, the presence of these women was observed in the narratives of the daily life of the Institute, in contrast to the records and documents. The research divides the course into 03 (three) periods of the institutional existence: (a) the first twenty years, at the height of the fecundity of anti-racist thought, born and disseminated there; (b) an emptying of the institution in the subsequent 20 (twenty) years; and, (c) the current moment of its revitalization. As a “common thread in the labyrinth”, the footprints left by ancestry dialogue with one of the itans of Ọṣùn in the creation of the world, from the mythology of the Yoruba people. And, an intertwining according to C. G. Jung's psychology: alchemical vessel, sacred uterus, is an institutional psychic space of transformation. The study presents the stages of institutional overcoming of “an unconscious hereditary conglomerate” on gender roles and the work on rebalancing human relations through connections between the gourd – a symbolic object in various cultures; and the uterus organ as a consecrated and mythical territory of the female body. In the concepts of anima and animus, there is the presence of the symbolic representation of experiences lived by those who came before: ancestry. In the archetypal representation of the Orisha Ọṣùn, feminine energy that symbolizes the strength and persistence of fresh water, which has cultural and biological importance for all humanity. Water as a mythical element of beginning again. The process of individuation, in the institutional collective body and the power to reexist through looking at oneself. The continuity of social strategies and achievements driven by the resilience of the women of the IPCN, from the inside out and from the outside in. These are incursions present in the body and soul of this dissertation...!