Os sentidos de público na política educacional do governo Lula: um estudo discursivo

Abstract

This work aims at analyzing the senses of public inserted in the educational discourse of Luis Inácio da Silva government, from 2003 to 2010. Therefore, we work with the sense category which derives from Discourse Analysis’ concepts, represented by Michel Pêcheux. From such perspective, sense is the result of a relationship between subject, language and history in a process intrinsically connected to ideology. Our concept of ideology comes from the Lukács’ analysis and also taking into account Bakhtin/Volochinov’s concepts of the ideological construction of a language. We intend to elucidate the sense effects of the word public, considering that the displacements of senses in the discourse process are directly related to its production conditions. It is clear that, in the last decades, Brazil has been through important changes concerning the educational process, connected to the country’s State reconstruction. Those up mentioned changes regard aspects such as school organizing, management, financing, methods and programs. Through those changes, the conflicts among political groups are brought about, specially over the public-private debates permeating various areas, including education. Becoming a president, Lula, who is apparently identified with the public educational hegemonic senses on the Welfare State model, tries to come against the public/private dichotomy also to the construction of the non-state public sense defended by his predecessor Fernando Henrique Cardoso (FHC). In search for a consensus relating to the necessary changes in the Brazilian education, his educational discourse is supported by the silencing of that dichotomy. Thus, through silencing and the unsaid, a seductive discourse is built, promoting mobility and hiding the commitment to any social segments which compose civil society, the very core of the true public space. We question, from those displacements of senses, whether Lula’s discourse about public can be shown as a discursive event. These events can be considered a break in the previously established discursive structure, we understand it as a possibility of a discourse event, via a construction of a new sense of public deriving from concepts of a “Third Way”. Such discourse presents traces of standing in its original construction, not being able to break the senses by which it has been supported, trying also to guarantee its stability.