PLAYING SOCCER LIKE A GIRL: RELATIONS TO KNOWLEDGE AND GENDER STUDIES

Abstract

Drawing an analogy between school failure problematized by Bernard Charlot and girls' sportive failure in soccer, in this essay we reflect about the theoretical approximations and tensions between the writings of this author and the post-structuralist gender studies. We argue that this dialogue, besides contributing to the reflection on the influences of gender relations for the relations with knowledge, is very fruitful, since both perspectives focus on the problematic of agency, without, however, renouncing to the enunciation of political, normative and institutional interpellations.  To develop this argument, we first present the cultural discourses about soccer played by girls and women in Brazil, highlighting and problematizing the way they place them in a situation of sports failure. Next, we make a brief approach between gender relations and learning. Thirdly, we present a problematization of the "sportive failure", based on Charlot's reflections, crossed by the referential of gender studies, trying to investigate issues related to the relations of meaning and mobilization as a way of doing gender. Fourth, we present an alternative argument to the sportive failure, highlighting the relations of meaning and mobilization as a way to perform gender. And finally, we bring the idea of learning as embodiment. Thus, we seek to emphasize the importance of building plural spaces of participation in soccer, so that in the face of cultural discourses that characterize it as a contact activity, aggressive and dangerous for girls, they are able to tense, transgress and make "gender".