1

STELA DO PATROCNIO'S FREEDOM OF SILENCE IN REINO DOS BICHOS

E DOS ANIMAIS O MEU NOME.
Ina Silva Pereira Sodr
1
- inaesodre@gmail.com.
Lydia Stevens
2
lydia.sue.stevens@hotmail.com

ABSTRACT: This article intends to highlight the poetic speaking style of Stela do
Patrocnio, a black woman and poet, who spent thirty of her fifty-two years in the
Juliano Moreira mental institution in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Her words were recorded,
transcribed and organized by Viviane Mos. Stela denounces the cruelty that was
occurring inside the mental institution to silence and deaden the subjects. Violence was
used in the name of reason and under our connivance. According to Descartes, the
division of language places reason as sovereign and madness as subordinate within a
culture, a culture that isolates the "mentally ill" to distinguish those who
are "normal" simply because they are outside of the exclusionary walls of the mental
asylum.
KEYWORDS: reason; madness; literature; representation of identity.

RESUMO: Este artigo intenciona evidenciar a fala potica de Stela do Patrocnio, uma
mulher negra e poeta, que passou trinta anos no manicmio Juliano Moreira no Rio de
Janeiro. Sua fala foi gravada transcrita e organizada por Viviane Mos. Stela denuncia
a crueldade que acontecia dentro do espao manicomial para silenciar e mortificar o
sujeito, a custo de violncia, em nome da razo e sob a nossa conivncia. A ciso da
linguagem, por Descartes, coloca a razo como soberana e a loucura como subalterna
dentro de uma cultura que isola os doentes mentais para marcar os normais por
estarem fora dos muros excludentes do manicmio.

PALAVRAS-CHAVE: razo; loucura; literatura; representaes identitrias.

1
Writer: Ina Sodr was born in Ipir, Bahia, Brazil on 18th February 1976. She graduated in
Humanities and French from the Federal University of Bahia and is doing her Masters in Humanities,
specifying in language studies, at the University of the State of Bahia Master Student do PPGEL UNEB.
Fellow Fapesb. Ina teaches Portuguese to foreigners and is also a poet and a writer. She does many
artistic activities too, such as theatre, music and dance.
2
Translator: Lydia Stevens was born on 4th November 1985 in London, England. She graduated in
Spanish and Portuguese with First class Honours from the University of Bristol, UK in 2008. Her
university degree included studies of the language, history, culture, politics and literature of Spanish and
Portuguese speaking countries. She currently lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina where she works as an
actress, translator and teacher.
2

In the beginning was the Word, then the Word became Speech and Speech
became a Body and that Body, in time, encompassed Language. Words designate
things, translate our emotions, outline a piece of the intensity of life. Words represent
the world. But the words used to understand and interpret our world, so full of tangible
and probable truths, can decrease the possible meanings that the word is able to give.
Language, just like a river in time, divides itself and follows two paths in the history of
thought. One flows into the dictionary and the other flows into poetry. Are the exact
words from the vocabulary of reason sufficient to understand and interpret our world?
According to Viviane Mos, reason is characterized by the capacity of all human
beings to create and articulate words and thoughts. In other words, to unemotionally
think in an organized and clear manner about causes and effects with no excesses or
contradictions (MOS 2012, p. 112). In the modern age or according to Michel
Foucault, the Classical Age, or the 17
th
century, the French mathematician and
philosopher Rene Descartes defined Reason as the model of philosophical thought
fundamental in exact mathematics. I think, therefore I am is the greatest maxim of
Cartesian thought found in his work Discourse on Method about how to apply reason in
the search for the truth in science in which doubt is used as a tool to investigate and
understand the world. He believed this because, for him, even if one doubts fully, one
cannot doubt that which one doubts because doubt is an act of thinking in a way that
thinking itself cannot occur without a subject.
I realized that when I thought that everything was false it became
necessary that I, the one who thought, was firm thing and, noting this
truth I think therefore I am I was so firm and so certain that all of
the extravagant suppositions of the skeptics was not able to shake it, I
concluded that I was able to accept it with the scruples of the first
principle of philosophy that I was seeking (DESCARTES, 2011,
p.50).

What reason has wanted, since its platonic birth, is to reject a part of life; that
which changes, that which makes no sense, that which dies. What reason wants is to
produce a world of identities and truth, a predictable and clear world (MOS, 2001, p.
22). Michel Foucault accused Rene Descartes of dividing language into two parts:
Reason and Unreason. On one side, there was Reason as truth, conscience, clarity,
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normality, sanity and on the other side, Unreason was defined as error, obscurity,
disorder (FOUCAULT, 1997, p.45).
The main concern of Descartes, in the face of a scholastic tradition in
which the species was conceived as semi-material entities, semi-
spiritual, is to discretely separate mechanics and thought, the body
having been entirely reduced to mechanics (SARTRE, 2008, P.13).

According to Viviane Mos (2012), Descartes reduces existence to thinking,
values the world of ideas, searches for truth and excludes the body as a possibility of
interpreting the world, thus excluding the intensities of life and the artistic language.
And thinking in black and white is thinking in causes and effect, in identity, in an
absence of contradictions. For rational thought to make sense, things must be rigidly in
opposition to each other: ugliness against beauty, certainty against error, clarity against
obscurity, normality against the abnormality, reason against silliness. He believes that
the body, feelings and emotions are sources of errors and disorder (MOS, 2012,
p.130). Having said that, man needs to oppose feelings and perceptions and search for
the truth as the essence of things that comes with thinking and ideas. Therefore, reason
is not natural, it was invented at a specific point in time in our history. In other words, it
was constructed through culture and is a product of our civilization.
Reason, as constructed by civilization, was founded by a group of practices
governed by tacit or openly accepted rules. These practices, whether natural, ritual or
symbolic, are intended to inculcate certain values and norms of behavior through
repetitive discourse (HOBSBAWM, 2012, p.12). Standard grammar serves as an
example of how the discourse of reason lasted in time. Standard grammar is based upon
the idea of subject and predicate, in rules, in an absence of contradictions and in the
logic of exclusion. According to Viviane Mos:

This absolute, centered on the notion of Being, undergirds the belief
in identity and the basis of all grammar, causing it to initiate a logic of
identity in all writings that always excludes differences and which
finds support in a subject in the position of a stable, single subject, and
absent of body (Mos 2012 , p . 53 ).

In order for rational thinking to sustain itself as a model of true discourse,
besides repeating the truth of correct speech and wrong speech it sought to intern
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those who opposed it, in other words, all those who were against reason: those who
were delirious, those who went overboard, those who were unstable, those who
exceeded the established norms. As Foucault says:
To doubt Descartes discards the enchantment of the senses, crosses
the landscape of dreams, always guided by the light of things that are
true, but he banishes madness in the name of that which he doubts and
that can not rave more than you can think or not to be (FOUCAULT,
2012, p. 47).

Michel Foucault, in his book The Order of Discourse, argues that the division of
language is in the domain of discourse. It is through words that one recognizes the folly
of the madman. It affirms that since the arcane Middle Ages that the madman is he
whose discourse does not come across like the others or his word is worth nothing and
does not exist, not possessing truth nor importance, not being able to testify on issues of
justice, not being able to authenticate a deed or a contract and cannot, even in the
sacrifice of the Mass, turn bread into flesh; or, on the other hand, strange powers are
attributed to his words: speaking a hidden truth or predicting the future or seeing
wisdom that the wise cannot see (FOUCAULT, 1970, p.10). According to Roland
Barthes, in his book Aula, the power of objects is written through language (BARTHES,
1980, P.11). It is reason that imposes, judges, controls, sickens, silences, isolates,
excludes, tortures and kills.
Among the earliest experiences of hospitalization, we have the leprosy asylums.
These were built in the 4
th
century A.D. and were maintained as a place of segregation
until the disappearance of leprosy in the 15
th
century, at the end of the Middle Age.
These spaces lumped together not only lepers but also other society undesirables such as
beggars, the poor, homosexuals, prostitutes and cripples among others (FOUCAULT,
2012, p.24). After leprosy disappeared, society needed to fill these empty spaces
designed for isolation. The insane asylum was created to isolate mad people and all
those who were different or strange represented in the figure of a madman. Those who
entered the insane asylum encountered the valley of death. People died from the cold
because they slept on the floor, without clothes or blankets or they were thrown out into
the open. They died of hunger, from electric shock, from infection through drinking
dirty water or from eating feces and rats. Many died of pneumonia and many others died
on top of surgery tables as a result of lobotomies. Stela do Patrocnio was a witness to
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what happened in the asylum and denounced, poetically, the medical care and more
violent forms of healing given to those who dared to disrupt the norms of the
institution. Or break the Order and or deviate from the Standard. Stela was able, through
means of her words, to bear witness of her circumstances as a victim of a system that far
exceeded its treatment of madness, that, according to the words of Michel Foucault
used the most bizarre forms of violence and torture as methods to control the body
(FOUCAULT, 1997, p.141). According Daniele Arbex (2013),
() for decades people were tucked away often forcibly into a
wagon train that unloaded them in Cologne. There, their clothing was
torn, their heads shaved, and their names were erased. Nude in body
and identity and stripped of their humanity, men, women and even
children became ignored people. They were epileptics, alcoholics,
homosexuals, prostitutes, beggars, political activists, rebels or people
who crossed someone who had more power. There were young
pregnant girls, raped by their employers, there were wives who were
confined so the husbands could live with their lovers, there were
daughters of ranchers who lost their virginity before marriage. There
were men and women who had lost their documents. Some of them
were just fragile. About 30 of them were children (ARBEX, 2013,
p.14).

Because of the exclusionary thinking of reason, there dwells in each one of us an
empty insane asylum. But why does our culture exclude people? Why are certain
feelings considered pathological? And normalwhat is normal? According to George
Canguilhem (2012), in his book, O normal e o patolgico (The Normal and the
Pathological), within the objective perspective the idea of normal is based upon
statistical regularity, i.e. based upon the measurement of behavior and experience in a
specific population one finds a parameter of normality. And those who deviate from this
standard are considered outside of the normal. Moreover, from a subjective perspective,
it is known that all human beings have a mind, a subjective life that governs their
relationship with others and with their surroundings in such a way that this relationship
with others implies pleasure and displeasure, frustrations and suffering. To suffer, just
as being happy or sad is inherent in the human condition.
For Canguilhem, a normal relationship with someone implies an individual
dealing with the other as an ethical subject, in other words, as an equal. And when he
somehow deprives that person of being a subject, going further to treat him as an
instrument of his pleasure, he will be exceeding the limits and stepping into the field of
6

pathology. Therefore, any judgment that qualifies aspects of a relationship to a norm is
subordinate to that which developed the norms (CANGUILHEM, 2012, p.80). In this
sense it is doubtful if normality is outside or within the exclusionary walls of the
asylums.
In Stela do Patrocinios book - Reino dos bichos e dos animais o meu nome she
presents the voice and words of a black woman, poet and internee of Juliano Moreira, a
psychiatric hospital in Rio de Janeiro in which she spent 52 years, held as a madwoman,
a victim of exclusion imposed by rational thought, by science and by society. She was
also one of the inmates who lived before and after the Psychiatric Reform in Brazil in
1980. Using poetic language, Stela do Patrocinios voice was heard, recorded and
transcribed on paper. This book shows us the breaking of a secular silence imposed on
crazy people by the powers of an epoch and of a culture. Her works came out of an
oral context and afterwards were transcribed into poems and text. Keenly conscious of
her era, her space and her condition, Stela spoke and spoke and spoke:
Days weeks months year round/minute second every hour day
afternoon all night they want to kill me/They only want to kill
me/Because they say that I have an easy life/I have a difficult
life/Then because I have an easy life/I have a difficult life/They want
to know how it is that I am able to continue being born without
easiness and with difficulty/ It is because of this that they want to kill
me (PATROCINIO 2001, p.64).

Stela did not fit the established societal norms: she was black, a woman and
poor. That said, as someone who was different in our patriarchal, slaveocratic, white
supremacist and capitalist society, was she crazy or was she driven crazy? After a fall
on Voluntrios da Patria Street they took Stela to a first aid post. They gave her an
injection, medicine, and electric shocks. They ordered her to take a shower. They
ordered her to find a table, and a chair. They gave her a tray with rice, meat, beans and
then called an ambulance and said, Take her away!. (PATROCINIO, 2001, p.49). I
am in an asylum of old people/in a hospital where everyone is sick/in a hospice/in a
place for crazy people/crazy/nuts (PATROCINIO, 2011, p.47).
Stela was admitted in 1962, at age 21 and remained for 4 years in the Pedro II
hospital in Rio de Janeiro, the first insane asylum in Latin America. Later she was
transferred to the Juliano Moreira Psychiatric Hospital where she remained until her
death, victim of a general infection in 1992. This unique character was described in the
7

words of Viviane Mos: philosopher, poet, psychologist and psychoanalyst, holding a
Masters and PhD in Philosphy from the Institute of Philosophy and Social Sciences
from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. She is the author of 6 books of
philosophy and seven books of poetry:

Stela was a survivor of the life-sucking process characteristic of an
archaic and traditional psychiatric structure the insane asylums.
There, there was the erasure of individuality, of subjectivity, of desire
and uniqueness. People were reduced to a faceless and shapeless
lump. Time was the time of death. Treatment - a scientific word, -
was reduced to the control of the body through violence to those who
dared to challenge the order (MOS, 2001, p.13).

Em Reino dos bichos e dos animais meu nome, the title makes it clear that we
are getting a look at the conditions in a psychiatric hospital: First came the world of the
living/Afterwards, of life and death/Then of the dead/Then of the beasts and the
animals/Only the will remains/As a beast and as an animal (PATROCINIO, 2001,
p.116). Or else gives us a look a the care of the psychiatric physicians: The medicine
that I take makes me sick/I dont like taking medicine that keeps me sick/I walk a bit
and then stumble/I continue to stumble, almost falling and if I fall I pick myself up/I
again walk a little/Falling (PATROCINIO, 2001, p.54). In her poems it is as if she is
describing the steps of a lobotomy:
I was operated upon many times/Ive had various operations/I was
operated on principally on the brain/I thought that I was going to be
accused/If I have something in the brain/No, they said that I have a
brain/a device that thinks well/That thinks positive/And that is the
connection to another that doesnt think/Who is not capable of
thinking about anything nor work/They snatched that which is
thinking/And what is not thinking/And they went to examine this
device of thinking and not thinking/Connected one to the other in my
head, in my brain/Functioning on top of the table/They are studying
outside of my head/I am already the object of study/A category
(PATROCINIO, 2001, p.69).

In 1989, Representative Paulo Delgado initiated the process that would
progressively end the insane asylums and regulate the rights of the mentally ill, but the
law of Psychiatric Reform was only approved in 2001. That law is also known as the
Law of Paulo Delgado (FERREIRA, 2006, p.77). The Psychiatric Hospital was
8

eliminated and gave way to a new model of treatment. The creation of the Center for
Psychosocial Attention C.A.P.S. has as its goals the prevention of patients being
shut away and forgotten in confinement as well as to put the patient in contact with their
family as well as society as a form of social adjustment. In these centers the patient has
psychological and pharmacological follow-up, besides integration in the unit with
persons from the neighborhood or the city.
As reported by Goncalves & Sena (2001) and Ferreira (2006), Psychiatric
Reform in Brazil occurred in the decade of the 1980s, at the time of the implementation
of the Unified Health System (SUS). Stela benefited from this period since the doors
that remained closed for centuries, were opened. We are dealing with a period of time,
not too long ago, where mental patients were treated as irrational animals and, for this
reason, were isolated, caged, chained and punished. And, like animals, they were guinea
pigs for the progress of science. After the Psychiatric Reforms, a new era opened up. It
was the time of giving voice to those who were silenced. Stela talked and talked and
talked.
The words of Stela do Patrocnio were not bound by syntactic construction and
composed another rhythm. The rhythm of haggard eyes. Words streaming out without
taking a breath. And through this withheld breath, the poet saved on commas in order to
imbue the rhythm of the river in her words. And into this world empty of so-called
Unreason, empty of symbols, of dreams, of poetry, of art that Stela structured her new
thoughts. Her dialogue organized itself in the tension between order and disorder. Stela
spoke like a speaker and her words unrolled as she talked. She spoke of her speech. And
she spoke in her own style. Her extremely well-pronounced words were always charged
with much emotion (MOS, 2001, p.28). Aware of herself and of her being in the
world, Stela affirms her identity from the perspective of others
I am Stela do Patrocnio, well sponsored/I am sitting in a chair nailed
to a table/I am black and Creole/I am a black and creole
woman/Thats what Ana tells me/I was born crazy/My country wanted
me to remain crazy/The normal people were jealous of me because I
was a crazy (PATROCINIO, 2011, p.66).

The book wasnt written by Stela, despite the knowledge that she wrote on
cardboard. Her words were spoken and recorded over two years, from 1986 to 1988, by
the fine artist Neil Gutmacher and Carla Guagliardi. Afterwards they were transcribed
9

by the psychologist Mnica Ribeiro and organized by Viviane Mos. The organizer, in
one of her statements in the book, says This book is the result of a collective process,
put together over time, in anonymity and nurtured with a feeling solidarity with those
who do not have a tomorrow or yesterday (MOS, 2001, p.15). According to Viviane
Mos, Stela was diagnosed as a carrier of a psychopathic personality or top of
hebephrenic schizophrenia generation psychotic actions. And of her existence, Stela
says:
I was pure gas, air, empty space, time/I was air, empty space,
time/And pure gauzes, in that way, empty space/I had no training/I
hadnt graduated/I couldnt get my head together/My arms, my
body/My ear, my nose/Make a sky with my mouth, doing/Speech/My
muscles, my teeth/I was unable to make any of these things/Couldnt
get my head together, couldnt think of something/To be useful, to be
rational/I didnt have any place to pull in any of this/I was pure empty
space (PATRICINIO, 2001, p.21).

The book was released in 2001 by the publisher Azougue Editorial under the
genre Brazilian poetry. The layout and introduction was done by Viviane Mos. The
sections of the book are a Thank You section, Epigraph, Summary; Feature;
Introducing Stela do Patrocino A Poetic Trajectory in a Psychiatric Institution,
Part I A Man called Horse Is My Name, Part II I Am Stela do Patrocnio, Well
Sponsored, Part III I Was Educated in the Gauzes, I had Color, Part IV I See the
World, Part V The Wall is Still Not Painted Blue, Part VI My Name is
Kingdom of the Beasts and Animals, Stela on Stela Interview. In the interview of
Stela do Patrocnio, conducted by Neli Gutmacher and Carla Guagliardi, they highlight
some of the passages that give us an idea of what her experience was like in the insane
asylum.
How is your day here in Cologne?
Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday
Sunday January February March April May June July August
September October November December Morning afternoon night I
continue grazing at will I continue to graze, grazing at will and Im
not even a horse. He already said that a man called horse is my name
Are you very sick here?
I am sick because I constantly take injections. Injections for
the men and the liquid goes down
10

Who gives you these injections?
The invisible secret police who have no color.
What is the purpose of these injections?
To make one mentally ill.
On the days that you stop taking injections will you be
cured?
I will be completely cured if I dont take injections. If I dont
have electric shocks. If I dont remain full of poisonous venom.
Do you study Stela?
I was educated by books Languages Comment allez vous?
Como voce est? Thank you very much The coffee pot is full Ca
va bien. The madam is well?
You are a teacher?
I am not a teacher but I worked learning letter for letter,
sentence for sentence, page by page.
Your name is Stela. Do you know what Stela means?
Star. Star of the sea.
You are going to give us a poem?
No. I dont remember any poetry.
Everything that you say is poetry, Stela.
It is only a story that I am telling, an anecdote.
(PATROCNIO, 2001, p.153).

The story of Stela had significant repercussions. The book My Name is
Kingdom of the Beasts and Animals, put together by Viviane Mos, became a finalist
for the Jabuti Prize in 2002 and 2005. Her words were used in shows and musicals by
the musician and fine artist, Cabelo. They were adapted for theatre in the monologue
Eyes of Stela do Patrocinio, dresses in blue, black shoes, white purse andcrazy
interpreted by Clarisse Baptista and directed by Nena Mubarac. Stela was portrayed in
the movie theaters in STELA DO PATROCINIO A WOMAN THAT SPOKE THINGS
(documentary, 14 min, DV, RJ, 2006), produced by Marcio de Andrade. Her works
have also been transformed into an opera by the composer Lincoln Antonio. The
following poem comes from the title of the book:
11

My real name is coffin/ Burial/Body dead in the
cemetery/skeleton/Insane asylum for the aged/hospital for everything
disease/World of beasts and animals/ The animals: dinosaur camel
tiger lion monkey dinosaur giraffe turtle/Kingdom of the Beasts and
Animals is my name/A zoo/Thursday of Boa Vista ((PATROCNIO,
2001, p.118).

To Viviane Mos, the work of Stela do Patrocnio brought in a new milestone in
Brazilian literature, reviving it with major importance and significance. The work joins
many other books containing the testimony of writers who related their experiences in
the insane asylums. And it arrives with force, becoming part of history. In the chapter,
titled STAR, Viviane Mos begins and ends with an epigraph from the Cuban singer,
Paulo Milanez, referred to by the Star Stela What shines with its own light no one can
put out (MOS, 2001, p.13).

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