Social occupational therapy, anti-oppression and freedom: considerations about the revolution of/in everyday life

Abstract

Social occupational therapy has been concerned with dealing with social inequalities, especially with regard to the structure of multiple oppressions. Taking this assumption as a parameter, it is urgent to advance in the consolidation of theoretical-methodological references that allow problematizing the role of the profession, in the dimension of society and the performance on it, in order to offer proposals for a socially referenced practice. Thus, this essay presents contributions to compose the debate about a social therapeutic-occupational thinking/doing for anti-oppression and intended for freedom. It is about turning to a professional action that fights oppressive structures and aims at expanding the life possibilities of subjects, individual and collective, with whom we work. The focus of this praxis is in the dimension of the individuals' everyday life, which is marked by alienation, but also by the possibility of liberation, which is effective as opportunities are created for an untested feasibility and the revolution (humanization) is carried out in this everyday life, while the occupational therapist can be a mediator/articulator in this process. For this, the praxis proposed is permeated by the promotion of interventions that apprehend and deal with violence to everyday life (justified anger and indignation), with the suspension of everyday life (effort to problematize where one comes from and to where you can go) and move towards the permanent creation of everyday life (the transformation).