Body, care, and resistance in teaching: an ecofeminist and autoethnographic reading

Abstract

This text, an excerpt from a dissertation constructed through an autoethnographic narrative, revisits personal and professional experiences marked by symbolic and explicit violence, emotional overload, institutional silencing, and practices of resistance in the context of teaching. The objective is to understand how body, self-care, and leisure are neglected dimensions in the teaching trajectory, revealing tensions between the school routine and the social constraints that permeate women's lives. Autoethnography was used as both material and method, serving as a tool for critical analysis and connecting lived experience with reflection. The results indicate that teaching is permeated by patriarchal, capitalist, and colonial structures that naturalize female self-abnegation, render suffering invisible, and devalue care as a pedagogical practice. Subjective reconstruction, stemming from the confrontation of domestic violence, reveals that education can be a space for transformation, provided it is sustained by affective, critical, and liberating practices. It is concluded that autoethnographic writing is a tool for understanding teaching as a situated, political, and sensitive practice.