Discursive articulations and educational meanings for ethnic-racial relations in basic education
Plurais - Revista Multidisciplinar, Salvador, v. 8, n. 00, e023021, 2023. e-ISSN: 2177-5060
DOI: https://doi.org/10.29378/plurais.v8i00.17461 10
We have made progress in recognizing the existence of racism and social
discrimination. This is one of the great achievements of the federal
government in the last decade, with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva as its
icon. But we need to be aware that, despite all advances, we are still not in
power as we should be. Investment in public administration management
facing the challenge of including the historical demands of the black
population contributes to the nation's development because there is no
democracy with racism (Sampaio, 2012, p. 102, our translation).
Therefore, the meanings represented by discourses, "the first ontological element
present in every social or political configuration" (Mendonça, 2015, p. 75, our translation),
protagonized by this Movement, mobilized among other demands and policies, the alteration
of the curriculum, including in it, knowledge and principles of promoting equality, combating
racism, social justice, and valuing diversity and differences.
In this context, the logic of difference was operated through the presence of
heterogeneous elements, represented by the historical demands of the Black and Quilombola
Movements, as well as the logic of equivalence explained by the convergence of different
demands, that is, points of intersection, differences dissolved into chains of negotiating
meanings. These, in turn, mutually converge in the action of these ethnic-racial groups, which
may or may not be universalized, depending, according to Laclau (2011), on the constitution of
an empty signifier, when a particular signifier is hegemonized, coming to represent universality
in the chain of equivalence.
However, in the sense of being the signifiers of the excluded (or simply of
exclusion), the various excluded categories must cancel their differences by
forming a chain of equivalences of what the system demonizes to signify
itself. Again, we see here the possibility of an empty signifier announcing
itself through this logic in which differences dissolve into chains of
equivalences (Laclau, 2011, p. 70-71, our translation).
Comparing the base texts of the curricular policy for ERER (Brasil, 2003b) and (Brasil,
2008b) and their guidelines with the political texts produced during the Dilma government, the
prevalence of six powerful discourses around the signifier ERER is observed. These discourses,
which have remained, been potentiated, or shifted over time, resizing the policy texts and
operating in articulatory practices since the creation of the policy in 2003, include: valuing and
(re) recognizing diversity, social justice, promotion of racial equality, elimination of
inequalities, combating racism, and respect for differences.
These discourses potentiated the production, hegemony, and consolidation of
affirmative and identity policies, proliferated during the last decades, as, according to Laclauian