Narrativas autobiográficas de jovens em conflito com a lei

Abstract

Eight male youth in conflict with the law were interviewed by using Schütze’s Narrative Interview (1992a; 1992b). Thematic and textual regularities in their autobiographies were studied through indexed and non-indexed propositions. This research was conducted in a discursive-narrative psychology perspective which integrates contributions of Jerome Bruner, Kenneth Gergen and Mary Gergen and other authors who posit the narrative construction of the self. The youth focused peer pressure, the drive for consuming goods and immaturity as reasons for initiating illicit activities and the fear of precocious and violent death as a reason for changing a delinquent life course. Their autobiographical histories constructed a meaning of “conversion” by means of a regressive-progressive skeleton plot which articulated the narrator’s most significant experiences. Passive or active voices and realist or subjunctive styles were used in order to obtain certain effects of meaning about transgression practices. We conclude the image each narrator claims for himself is a result of narrative and discursive reconstruction work bound to the interaction between interviewer and interviewee