Elderly subjectivation in materials on health education/communication: an analysis from a Foucauldian perspective

Abstract Recent investments in the elderly population show a change in the general way of thinking, which implies the construction of new power dynamics, mainly the biopolitical one. The growing discourse of “active and healthy aging” marks a displacement from the scope of social assistance to that of health, with prevention and promotion actions. In this article, backed by Foucauldian notions on power/knowledge, emphasizing the biopower matter, we put into context some articulations between old age subjectivation processes triggered in a neoliberal scenario, presenting part of an analysis made in a 2013 research, about materials of education and health prevention and promotion directed to the elders. From this, we examine the means through which a governmentality technology - the Elderly Health Handbook, of the Brazilian Ministry of Health - enables normalization practices of the behaviors and meanings concerning health and old age, acting as a power dispositive related to discourses constituted within a given sociohistorical and cultural context.