Outlines for a post-Marxism construction in health micromanagement

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to analyze the contributions of Mouffe and Laclau from post-Marxism, agonist democracy, and populist logic that innovated the ways of building collective identities and political viability. The potency of these theories for the micropolitical development of health management was investigated. The theoretical contributions indicate passion as the driving force of politics; they propose to sublimate conflicts into action via institutional channels, establish hegemonic practices as the capacity to articulate heterogeneous demands, and explain the capacity to configure a collective identity with a contingent leadership. The particularities of health work such as the hands-on approach, the margins of autonomy, the micropolitical exercise for its development and the organization as a professional bureaucracy, enable the proposals to be put into practice. We point out that the experience of building identities within the organization from an affective bond and the vehiculation of unmet demands reduces the discomfort in the services and promotes a stance of transformation.