Health production as a life statement

Abstract

This paper discusses the concepts of health and disease as an attempt to contribute to both the debate on and implementation of the Brazilian Health System (SUS). The possibilities of articulation between Social Psychology and Levinas' Phenomenology have been explored. Such an articulation allows for the trajectory from the construction of health as absence of disease, to health as a form of production of difference, otherness, and life. This text discusses the concepts of health and disease according to the modern episteme; from this point on, the reflection is directed to the discussion of new markers, such as name, simulacrum and time, identified as other forms of operating with health, one which is disassociated from the concept of disease, allowing us to think of the concept of health as being articulated with those of production and otherness.