Senses and meanings of health socialized by cultural devices: readings of the warning images on cigarettes packs

This article analyzes the images publicized on cigarettes packs that are part of the strategies from the Ministry of Health to combat the tabagism and available from the Cancer National Institute. These images bring the official speech of specialists and build narratives, understood such as truths, based on scientific knowledge. We have supported our thesis on theoretical referential of Cultural Studies, since its reflections help to understand that the subjectiveness is social and culturally built by different speeches and devices. We do not deny what is represented, but we establish dialogues with other possibilities of readings that can be present at these devices.We understand the propagated images as cultural pedagogies that behave as texts to be read, building up representations that can be assumed as true effect, and attributes to the citizen the necessity of constant control of its action. Reassuring the biomedicine and the health institutions, an onedimensional vision is propagated disregarding the complexity of this problem. We understand that the cultural pedagogies are part of competition territories, where the directions and meanings can be re-prepared producing hybrid identities that build up its own identity origins over this tangle of power relations.