Sobre educação e democracia : representações, identidades e ideologia

Abstract

Bolsonarism in Brazil is an expression of the rise of far-right wing in politics worldwide, a result of the times in which post-truth (Dunker et. al., 2017; D'Ancona, 2018; Keyes, 2018) paves the way for emergence of populist leaders, with autocratic projects, who use deeprooted fears, resentments and hatred to aggregate popular support, with digital media as the main vector of their ideas, targeting democracy as the enemy of their projects for transforming society. In this process, in our country, Bolsonaro and his supporters, having internalized Olavo de Carvalho belief system, find themselves engaged in a cultural war (Rocha, 2021; 2023), understanding that the country's cultural area and education would be taken over by an ideology they call “communist”, indoctrinating children and young people, what would be extremely damaging to the future of the country, which would only be successful through the ultra-conservative route. This way, I analyze Bolsonaro’s speech, while he was the Brazilian president, as well as the discourse of one of his Ministers of Education – Milton Ribeiro – in their endeavor to make national education an Ideological State Apparatus (ISA) (Althusser, 1996), in order to spread far-right ideology. State public school teachers, who work and live in Cuiabá-MT-Brazil, have also had their discourse analyzed in this investigation. For the analytical exercise, I use the theoretical-methodological assumptions of Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 1995, 1995b, 2001, 2003; Chouliaraki; Fairclough, 1999; Resende; Ramalho, 2006; Vieira; Resende, 2016), under categories of the representational and identificational meanings of the discourse, with the help of Thompson's (2011) theorizations about the modes of operation of ideology, in order to understand, within the events, the mechanisms that act to maintain social structures of domination and, even, make them more oppressive. The functional perspective of language (Halliday, 1994; Fuzer; Cabral, 2014), as well as the emancipatory philosophy of Critical Realism (Bhaskar, 1998; Barros, 2015), help to offer the theoretical foundations of this work. This is a qualitative research (Bauer; Gaskell, 2015; Denzin; Lincoln, 2003), using documentary and ethnographic research techniques, according to the social nature of my object of study. The analyzes results point to an intention on the part of Bolsonaro and his Minister of Education, Milton Ribeiro, to promote radical changes in national education, placing it at the service of their power interests. Although such intentions found resonance among social actors linked to bolsonarism, the project encounters resistance, thanks to the predominant democratic order of discourse (Fairclough, 2003) in educational institutions, which is also expressed in the discourse of the teachers participating in this study. However, my conclusion is that, despite Bolsonaro being ineligible until 2030, bolsonarism remains strong and active, which requires us to work towards strengthening democratic values at school and outside, with a view to maintaining rights and civilizational advances, which will continue to be attacked by social actors engaged in autocratic and authoritarian power projects.