Quebra-cabeças de narciso: a etnografia defronta-se com o delírio e se “hospeda” no Hotel da Loucura – Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

The present article starts from a debate that aims to understand how the disciplinary regimes of Anthropology lead the researcher to follow a protocol of questions and interests in his research. The objective here is to discuss the existing epistemic, disciplinary and methodological paradoxes in the ethnographic research model. Based on fieldwork carried out with a collective of artists, doctors and users of mental health services in the city of Rio de Janeiro, called Hotel da Loucura, I raise a series of questions lifted in the ethnography developed in this project. Among several events and situations experienced in the spaces occupied by this project, within the premises of a psychiatric hospital, I discuss in this article about a specific event which elucidates many of the issues that had mobilized me when building an ethnographic research project in this context. Finally, I speculate on the paradoxes that seem to surround ethnography and its academic training.