HARASSMENT BASED ON POWER ASYMMETRY IN THE LEGAL-ACADEMIC FIELD: A SOCIOCRIMINOLOGICAL, GUARANTIST, AND DECOLONIAL ANALYSIS

Abstract

This article investigates the phenomenology of affective-sexual harassment in contexts of institutional asymmetry within the Brazilian legal field, challenging the sufficiency of the dogmatic category of consent to interpret relationships marked by profound power inequalities. Through a theoretical articulation between sociology (Bourdieu, Foucault), in dialogue with decolonial intersectionality (Lélia Gonzalez, Segato, Lugones) and penal garantism (Zaffaroni, Ferrajoli), three borderline episodes involving professors and students/young lawyers are analyzed. The research demonstrates that voluntary consent is a liberal myth that obscures the structural production of intersectional vulnerabilities (race, class, gender, and sexuality). The analytical category of consent traversed by power is proposed to describe the adherence obtained under hermeneutical privilege and affective governmentality, where refusal is factually hindered by institutional dependence or the epistemic solitude of the victim. It is concluded that the response to this phenomenon should not lie in the expansion of punitive criminal law, which reinforces state selectivity, but in an approach to administrative law, with ethical protocols that recognize the conflict of interests inherent in such relationships, shifting responsibility from individual morality to the institutional architecture.