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versión impresa ISSN 0104-4060versión On-line ISSN 1984-0411

Educ. Rev. vol.36  Curitiba  2020  Epub 01-Dic-2020

https://doi.org/10.1590/0104-4060.75686 

DOSSIER

Democracy and difference in contemporary political-curricular plots: the School Without Homophobia under analysis1

José Rafael Barbosa Rodrigues* 
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5893-885X

Josenilda Maria Maués da Silva* 
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4480-2331

*Universidade Federal do Pará. Belém, Pará, Brasil. E-mail: rafaelrodrigues92@outlook.com – E-mail: josimaues@gmail.com


ABSTRACT

In this work, we show an analytical approach to contemporary discourses on sexual difference in their references to education and more specifically to the curriculum. We aim to expose the discourse of sexual diversity, as a device for controlling and regulating life and the production of specific subjectivities that tries to close, once and for all, the flanks of the democratic radicality of difference, but also as a space where life can rise up and produce other possibilities in education. The empirical material used for this exam was the content book of the School Without Homophobia Project, document produced in the context of anti-homophobia policies, assumed by the State in present days. In its theoretical-methodological articulation the analysis is carried out post-structuralist bases using Michel Foucault's thought of difference in his political-discursive articulations. The results point to the fact that, although the School Without Homophobia program is centred on a discourse based on identity and in the diversity of tonic neoliberal, it is possible to find cracks where the difference vibrates and allows the visualization of resistance and escape lines, indicting other ethical-political references to the experience and treatment of sexuality in curriculum, compiling collisions for a democratic horizon in education. Although there is an attempt to determine the final experience sexuality in anti-homophobia policies guided by the fixation of identities, this becomes an impossible project, given the strength of the difference.

Keywords: Curriculum; School Without Homophobia; Difference; Democracy

RESUMO

No texto, apresentamos uma aproximação analítica sobre discursos contemporâneos em torno da diferença sexual em suas referências à educação e, mais especificamente, ao currículo. Objetivamos expor o discurso da diversidade sexual como um dispositivo de controle e regulação da vida e de produção de subjetividades específicas que tenta fechar, de uma vez por todas, os flancos da radicalidade democrática da diferença, mas também, como um espaço onde a vida pode insurgir-se e produzir outros possíveis na educação. O material empírico utilizado para esse exame foi o caderno de conteúdos do Projeto Escola Sem Homofobia, documento produzido no contexto das políticas anti-homofobia assumidas pelo Estado na contemporaneidade. Em sua articulação teórico-metodológica, a análise é realizada em bases pós-estruturalistas recorrendo ao pensamento da Diferença, de Michel Foucault, em suas articulações político-discursivas. Os resultados apontam para o fato de que, embora o programa Escola Sem Homofobia esteja centrado em um discurso pautado na diversidade sexual de tônica neoliberal, é possível encontrar fissuras onde a diferença vibra e possibilita a visualização de linhas de resistência e fuga, indiciando outras referências ético-políticas para a experiência e tratamento da sexualidade nos currículos, compilando colisões para um horizonte democrático na educação. Ainda que exista uma tentativa de determinação final da experiência da sexualidade nas políticas anti-homofobia, pautadas pela fixação de identidades, esse se torna um projeto impossível, frente a pujança da diferença.

Palavras-chave: Currículo; Escola Sem Homofobia; Diferença; Democracia

Introduction

Since the late 1980s of the 20th century, driven by the context of the country’s re-democratization, social movements linked to "identity" markers began to organize around political demands for the recognition of the diversities and differences that constitute ethnic-racial, sexual and gender plurality constitutive of human subjectivities. In the most diverse fields of struggle, movements and activism demanded, on the one hand, the recognition of their rights and, on the other, the reparation of historical processes of prejudice, violence and discrimination. Thus, various negotiations and tensions were articulated to trigger a set of strategies that would ensure these reparations for equality and for the recognition of the inequalities produced historically.

The historical denunciation against the process of invisibility, prejudice and violence against the LGBTQI+ population was one of these triggers of the discussions on the recognition of rights and sexual differences, as a guideline assumed by governments. In this context, the partnership between social movements, specially those of "cultural minorities", and the state, led to the formulation and implementation of social policies for this population in education, culture and health.

Accompanied by the defense of the democratization of society, these political and identity demands, especially since the 1990s, were contingency incorporated into curricular decisions, such as the adoption of cross-cutting themes related to "cultural plurality" and "sexual orientation" in the National Curriculum Parameters (BRASIL, 1997) .

In 2003, with the victory of Lula da Silva, of the Workers' Party (PT), the anti-homophobia agenda gained important notoriety with the definition, in the Government’s Multi-annual Plan, of the Brazil Without Homophobia Program, that was directed as a central policy to combat gender inequalities and sexuality, as well as to confront the prejudice and discrimination of the so called LGBT population, from its execution in 2004.

At the heart of Brazil Without Homophobia, he was, from the action V "Right to Education: promoting values of respect for peace and non-discrimination for sexual orientation" (CONSELHO…, 2004), the strategy of developing guidelines that could guide education systems to promote actions for non-discrimination by sexual orientation in educational spaces, such as school (CONSELHO…, 2004). In 2009, financed by the Ministry of Education (MEC) , in partnership with the Secretariat of Continuing Education, Literacy and Diversity (SECADI) , the Project "School Without Homophobia" was created.

Directed to schools, the project aimed, through changes in school practices and curriculum, to promote an environment conducive to equality and respect for diversity in everyday school, with the main goal of recognizing moral differences, cultural and social of Brazilian society, and the commitment to human rights and the inclusion of LGBT people (CADERNO..., 2009).

The School Without Homophobia Project, as well as the Brazil Without Homophobia Program and the entire anti-homophobia political arsenal, since its origin, suffered constant attacks, which caused its disassemble and the discontinuity of these policies. After attacks by conservative forces in the National Congress, the ESH was vetoed. In other words, the ESH was not "implemented" in schools; did not arrive directly as it should arrive - as a pedagogical-curricular material - but, in fact, produced and still has produced frequent discursive articulations, being one of the decisive factors for the results of the 2018 elections, as we will demonstrate in the final remarks of the text.

The purpose of this text is to problematize the extent to which the entry of these political demands for recognition of identities, guided by the discursive articulation of diversity and democracy intend the deconstruction of hierarchies of gender and sexuality built historically and reinforce the permanence of essentials, reproducing these hierarchies and precarious the path to democratic educational opportunities. Therefore, the text seeks to establish relations between the discourses of diversity-identity and possibilities that bet on the democratic radicality of the affirmation of sexual difference to think about the relations of desire, body, and love in education.

In particular, it focuses on an analysis of these relations established between state political agendas, the curriculum and subjective processes. It moves, for this, the political agencies established for the anti-homophobia agendas, in the educational configuration in Brazil, notably, the Content Notebook of the School Without Homophobia Project, this document being the central empirical material. Specifically, the text seeks to understand the relationship between the discourses produced within the School Without Homophobia, and the production of sexual subjects/subjectivities: "[...] as objects relating to governmentality, that is, as an instrument relating to government, or, more precisely, as an important part of the disciplinary and biopolitical apparatus concerning the governance of the bodies of children and young people" (CÉSAR, 2010, p. 226).

With this intention, bet on the strength of the discursive constructions, and actions of practices that prohibit, regulate and form very specific relations between the subjects and their sexualities, their behaviors and their ways of life. This is, methodologically, a Foucaultian investment aimed to "[...]mobilize reflections that help us to think about the new forms of government in the contemporary world, that is, about this new governmentality, the neoliberal biopolitics" (CÉSAR, 2010, p. 228).

In the discursive perspective of Foucault (1989; 2002; 2014), it is possible to identify the various governance devices programmed for the subjectivation of subjects and the political-aesthetic experiences that are demanded by political forces. Under this key we identify, still, that the speech, as Foucault (2014) reminds us, is not what hides or manifests desire, but the very object of desire. The sexual experience of politics, such as the School Without Homophobia, as a discursive practice, is the very object of sexual desire, produced in the political contingency now demanded by the economy and by the sociocultural disputes and antagonisms of our time. It is not only the aspects that translate the struggles, "[...] but what we fight for, the power that we want to seize" (FOUCAULT, 2014, p. 10).

In this text we will not deal with denouncing what worked or not in the School Without Homophobia, but try to find the ways that make it as planned as it was, its reverberations and, consequently, its effects of subjectivation, in order to demonstrate that they can work in other ways, produce other lives, other stocks. If in the school curriculum we are (re) produced, it is also there that we resist. If the curriculum speaks of our subjectivity, there it also speaks of subjectivity. Thus, it is a theoretical and analytical exercise of contemporary education, of the devices of power that produce subjects and make us what we are. But first of all, a political-aesthetic investment that affirms the sexual difference, to provide other meanings for school and curriculum, disputing demands that place themselves in political contingencies for the present.

In the first part of the text, we present an analysis of the composition of the School Without Homophobia, and the discourse of sexual diversity, of neoliberal tonic , assumed within the document. Later, we try to show how even in the midst of these discourses that try to regulate sexuality, it is possible to find fissures and affirmative forces of sexual difference, able to produce other possible for education and for the curriculum. Finally, some general considerations will be made about the anti-homophobia policies taken on by the state, and their implications and effects from a general policy point of view in times of conservative advance.

School Without Homophobia and the discourse of sexual diversity: lines of subjectivation in the curriculum

Since the 1990s, resulting from the historic struggles of the LGBT movement for the recognition of rights and against forms of discrimination and prejudice, an anti-homophobia agenda has been built across education and school, as a strategic space of resistance to overcome violence by sexuality or gender.

In the educational field, especially in the curriculum, an agenda of policies that say about sexuality and gender relations, sexual orientation, sexual diversity, gender identity, among other topics, has been implemented by the Brazilian state since the mid-1990s. The speeches and utterances that permeate the relationship between education and the inclusion of the "subject of rights" speak of a policy concerned with including the "other" of sexual diversity, one that by expressing itself performatically in a way other than heterosexual, is massacred existentially amid discursive apparatuses, which marginalize and dull it, while bodies resist through the power gaps and other ways of life.

By gender and sexuality, in this research, it is understood that the devices produced historically and culturally by the varied discourses that seek to control and docilize the bodies, in the webs of knowledge/power (FOUCAULT, 1989). Therefore, the "orientations" and sexual diversities, as well as the relations and gender identities, figure as discourses produced in the political articulations between the various social groups to say of a "truth" about the body about sex, now fulfilling a normative role that reduce them to the biological role given to subjects, sometimes as the differences constructed also discursively by society and institutions (LOURO, 2008; BUTLER, 2008).

In the context of the national policy against discrimination for sexual orientation at school, with a special focus on the production of guidelines that guide Education Systems, and with the aim of meeting the demands of the Federal Program "Brazil Without Homophobia", the project "School Without Homophobia" also known as the "anti-homophobia kit", it was the most controversial project among the materials produced by anti-homophobia policies in the first decade of the 20th century.

Ironically nicknamed "Kit Gay", the material was heavily attacked by conservative and neoconservative forces operating in the National Congress and elsewhere at that time and now in power. In 2011, President Dilma Rousseff vetoed the Kit, on the grounds that she could not take sides on a controversial issue. Notably, the government gave in to conservative groups in the name of political governability, considering that already at that time the advance of political and economic groups that threaten democracy today were already in incubation. As pointed out by Junqueira (2018), they are the same groups responsible for the political-discursive articulations of the "gender ideology", which further threaten the human and sexual rights of the LGBTQI+ population, as well as deepening inequalities in access to health and education for this population.

Composed of videos and booklets, among other materials with approach to homoaffective sexuality, the kit would be distributed to about six thousand public schools in Brazil, through the Program More Education. In order to articulate the fight against homophobia and discrimination by sexual orientation in school spaces, the project resulted from a meeting between the Ministry of Education, which used resources from the National Education Development Fund (FNDE) , with the non-governmental organization "Communication on Sexuality" (ECOS). The School Without Homophobia was a program that sought to contribute to the implementation of positive actions in favor of political and social environments favorable to the guarantee of human rights and respect for diversity of sexual orientation and gender identity in the school environment.

The School Without Homophobia Content Notebook refers to this political framework:

The inclusion of an LGBT rights policy in a human rights policy is a consequence of the various instances of dialogue and negotiation between the government and civil society. Important progress has been made with the Action Plans of the International Conference on Population and Development (Cairo, 1994) and the Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing, 1995) for the recognition of sexual and reproductive rights as human rights. The II National Policy Plan for Women (2008), the I National Conference on Public Policies for the LGBT Population (2008), the National Human Rights Programme 3 (2009), the LGBT National Citizenship and Human Rights Promotion Plan (2009) and the creation of the LGBT National Council (2010), are unequivocal responses to the Brazilian government’s commitment to equality and social justice for all people (CADERNO..., 2009, p.11).

Notably, the lexicon that composes the statements of the School Without Homophobia, triggers democracy, equality, justice, human rights, concepts and themes very dear to social movements. When we use language in its constitutive force, we admit that the use of these concepts produces something. It produces certain realities, certain political experiences, certain poetics of existence. In this discursive field that has been recognized, the practices of subjecting sexuality of this population are being produced and redefined. Homophobia, for example, has been the object of constant discursive advances for the understanding of this phenomenon, and the possibilities of its confrontation.

This text does not claim to deny the advances presented by these policies for the recognition of rights historically denied to the abject sexuality: those who experience other performances of body, gender and sexuality - gay, lesbian, transgender, transsexuals, transvestites, bisexuals; marginalized groups inside and outside the school space, by heteronormative standards. However, as warned Mouffe (2003, p. 22), "The struggle for equality that was on the agenda of social democracy needs to be faced in a more comprehensive way, taking into account the multiplicity of social relations in which inequality exists and should be challenged".

Foucault (1989), in his History of Sexuality, talks about the historical plane that deals with sexuality, about the discourse that has come to be delivered on sex, and the importance of the latter for the mechanisms of power that scare us and build us and, in the same way, on the forms of resistance of the body that is built by these devices. The way in which one exercises power over a given population, as already announced by the philosopher, is given by the truth spoken about this body and about sexuality. Based on power-to-know relations and truth regimes, normalities and abnormalities about these performances, whether gender or sexuality, are discursively produced.

This time, the curricular policies, like the School Without Homophobia, produce meanings and incorporate subjectivation practices that focus on ethical and aesthetic relations; existences poetics, which occur in an antagonistic way in different dimensions and group various demands and statements, as observed in the excerpts:

The problem before us is how to deal with sexual diversity, whether in school or in society at large. In other words, how can we learn (and also teach) that, in fact, there are multiple ways of experiencing affections and sexuality? This also implies that heterosexuality, still regarded as the standard, continues to be seen as the "only" "correct" way of expressing eroticism and conjugal union. So it’s not easy for someone to admit that they’re not straight, that is, that they’re gay or bisexual. Those who feel a strong desire for someone of the same sex (or both) are affected by the adverse climate that condemns/as immoral or perverted/o, as abnormal and even as mentally ill (CADERNO..., 2009, p. 29).

There are practically infinite varieties of style of behavior, of identities - understood as the image that one has of oneself/o and of/of others/os - and of affective and erotic attraction. This plurality is the touchstone of the colorful and broad universe of sexual diversity (CADERNO..., 2009, p. 29).

The above excerpts, although they question the patterns of heterosexuality and adopt a pluralistic view of sexuality, attest to the need to "deal" with Sexual Diversity in school and society, being a political demand, seen as an "identity" sometimes posed as an elementary condition of human sexuality: a condition in which sexual differences are seen as identities and, although plural, finite and nameable. Sexual conduct is thus conditioned by the plurality of sexual practices. Diversity is the celebration of differences. Following this logic, it is necessary to "respect" diversity, "tolerate" diversity, "accept" diversity, promote diversity, understand that diversity is part of us. We are diverse, plural.

However, in activating diversity, the relationships that produce sexual differences, cultural processes and dynamics, and the politics and poetics of existence that regulate bodies and lives are not questioned. The way diversity discourse is assumed in the fragments and excerpts tells of a way of dealing with sexualities, with desires, with sexual performances, assumed by the official politics produced by the state and its multiple capillaries of power. Otherwise, diversity has been assumed as a sexual practice, an interdiction, a truth about the subjects' sex. Using Foucault (1989), it is a true discourse about sex. For the philosopher,

“Sexuality” is the correlate of this slowly developing discursive practice. The fundamental characteristics of this sexuality do not reflect a representation more or less confused by ideology, or a lack of knowledge induced by interdictions; they correspond to the functional demands of the discourse that must produce its truth (FOUCAULT, 1989, p. 67).

It is clear, then, that the discursive formation that gravitates around "sexual diversity" and "identity" is, in one way or another, functioning as a device of sexuality. Sexual Diversity, in this way, takes on the character of a discursive event, because it presents itself as a discontinuous homogeneous series, one in relation to the other. The recurrent use of Sexual Diversity, as a sexual experience, in educational policies, in theoretical texts that have subsidized the discussions of confronting homophobia, as well as the very politics required by the LGBT movement, focuses on how this event has been absorbed as a discourse. The discursive event of Sexual Diversity has a place, a position, "[...] and consists of the relation, coexistence, dispersion, cutout, accumulation, selection of material elements; it is neither the act nor the property of a body; it is produced as the effect of and in a material dispersion" (FOUCAULT, 2014, p. 54).

Highlighting identities and giving them "visibility" in the discourse of the School Without Homophobia works as a way to confront violence against LGBTs. The notion of sexual diversity, then, is conditioned to a policy that wishes to break with repressive processes towards those who escape the heterosexual norm. The act of enunciate a visibility of cultural identities, although it registers their plurality, does not lead to the deconstruction of what is considered and legitimized as "normal". It does not put in check the relations of production of differences.

If on the one hand this idea of a representative politics serves as a political means to produce visibility and legitimacy for certain individuals, such as LGBTs, in the excerpts from the School Without Homophobia, as a text that locates them as political subjects, on the other hand it can also be used as a form of normatization of this population, acting as a "[...] normative function of a language that would reveal or distort what is held to be true about the category" (BUTLER, 2008, p. 18).

Thus, we find a range of concepts that have much to say about which subject wants to forge: the subject of equality, respect, justice, universality, moral values, the citizen. In the same way, it is possible to understand that it is in an investment in Diversity, or rather, in respect for Diversity, that it is possible to end violence against homosexuals, lesbians and transsexuals by assuming this rationality. As it is possible to verify:

The ideal is that, on the other hand, actions are developed at school where the range of possibilities is open and comprehensive in relation to human diversity in general and sexual diversity in particular. This could lead to the question of the fact that there is not a single positive word for LGBTs (CADERNO..., 2009, p. 36).

Experts have been mapping violence, prejudice and discrimination involving all who participate in school and proposing a culture of coexistence with sexual diversity that can make use of information, but that should be used, mainly, of debate and questioning to confront discourses and practices of discrimination and violence for gender prejudice and sexual orientation, a set of attitudes called homophobia (CADERNO..., 2009, p. 49).

One way to reach a homophobia-free school that respects diverse sexual orientations and gender identities is to develop action plans that institutionally focus on discrimination against sexual diversity in daily school life (CADERNO..., 2009, p. 97).

The above-mentioned excerpts from the content notebook of the School Without Homophobia expose on their surfaces what they wish to produce at school: a way of dealing with sexual diversity, constituting a culture of coexistence among diversities. A school that has at its core the respect for diverse sexual orientations and gender identities. An education that still sees the distant "other", the one who is not me.

Wouldn't the fabrication of "legitimate" identities, adequate to the standards prescribed in the statements, be imprisoning the Difference that can emerge from the bodies? The conduct of certain sexual practices in the School Without Homophobia indicates that, in order for them to be accepted, respected, or even for their rights to be effectively guaranteed, the subjects they speak of need to elaborate with themselves, as an ethical relationship, an aesthetic and performative clothing of their experiences of gender and sexuality that is in line with what is acceptable, within the very logic of diversity in its connections and distances from the heteronormative pattern still referring when we situate ourselves in the field of identity.

Faced with this, the discourse of Sexual Diversity, contained in the ESH, and which imprints meanings of the human condition of sexuality, of the place of the curriculum in the processes of subjectivation, is inserted in a political-economic logic, peculiar to the historical time we are going through: the neoliberal logic of regulation of life and bodies.

In this regard, Sierra (2013), in describing the relationship that has been established between the discourse of sexual diversity and the devices of biopolitics in the field of educational policy making, indicates that, in this new configuration, these discursive practices end up producing devices and mechanisms of governance of lifestyles, capturing sexual differences. For the author, contemporary social movements, especially groups from the so-called "cultural minorities", act on the basis of dynamics organized by the request of their demands, by the recognition of their specific characteristics, or by the representation of their identities. Education, for example, is a field in dispute and social struggles where several minority groups demand representation, either in the production of school knowledge or for their inclusion in school.

Brown (2018), in this line, points out that the neoliberal economy of subjectivities and politics, in contemporaneity, is notably driven by a discursive production of conversion of life into human capital, as he states:

While neoliberalism manifestly seeks to emancipate individuals from the networks of state regulation and intervention, it involves and binds those same individuals in every neoliberalized sphere and institution in which they participate. By pointing out entrepreneurial behavior everywhere, it constrains the subject to dress in the fashion of the capital in every place (BROWN, 2018, p.7).

Brown's (2018) description of how neoliberalism has participated in/determined the regulation of life and subjectivities through a disguised economization of subject emancipation seems to us quite current to explain the recent anti-homophobia policies, guided by governance: if on the one hand these policies are concerned with the emancipation of the subject, they can affirm specific practices of subjectivation, which seek to close the gap.

For Mouffe (2003, p. 20), understanding modern democracy with political pluralism brings consistent consequences, because "[...] we can understand why such democracy requires the creation of collective identities around clearly differentiated positions, as well as the possibility of choosing between real alternatives". For the author, it is precisely the radicalization of position-taking that configures the democratic dispute in the formation of experiences, whether individual or collective, of identity.

In view of Mouffe's (2003) contributions, the idea of diversity-identity present in the School Without Homophobia does not break with the hegemony of liberal democracy present in contemporary political discourses. On the other hand, "It is clear that the absence of a dynamic democratic life, with a real confrontation between a diversity of democratic political identities, prepares the ground for other forms of identification of an ethnic, religious or nationalist nature" (MOUFFE, 2003, p. 20).

On the relationship between democracy and neoliberal projects of society and politics, Brown (2018) has pointed out that democracy that passes through the state economy typical of neoliberal rationality transforms the practices produced within this conception of democracy in relation to the production of subjectivities. "They lose their political validity and gain another, economic: freedom is reduced to the right to entrepreneurship and its cruelty, and equality gives way to ubiquitously competitive worlds of losers and winners" (BROWN, 2018, p. 8).

In general, this neoliberal rationality of democracy and subjectivation is deeply associated with the production of state social policies, among them the educational and curricular ones, following the example of the conceptions of sexual diversity and identity found in the statements of the School Without Homophobia Project.

Faced with this, the problem to be faced is to understand what these policies, like the School Without Homophobia, can produce as a human formation project. About this relationship, Brown (2018) highlights:

Formally freed from legal interference in their choices and decisions, the subjects remain, at all levels, identified and integrated with the imperatives and precepts of capital. Thus, while neoliberal citizenship leaves the individual free to take care of himself, it also commits him, discursively, to general well-being - demanding his fidelity and potential sacrifice in the name of national health or economic growth (BROWN, 2018, p. 10).

The bet on aesthetic-political signifiers guided by the neoliberal logic of diversity tries to close the possibilities of affirming the inevitable and powerful difference that overflows the definition of any curriculum document. However, the fissures that affirm difference are unpredictable and inconstant, leaving room for the postulation of other possible ones, as we explore below.

The difference that sprouts in the midst of discourse: radicalizing democracy, investing in other ways of life in the curriculum and in education

The curriculum, this "journey towards becoming what we are", indicates effects achieved at school that are not always made explicit in the plans and proposals, and are therefore not clearly perceived by the school community (CADERNO..., 2009, p. 61).

The excerpt in prominence, although not totally free from the design of curriculum as a prescription announces the inevitable: the curriculum is a place of construction of subjectivities. As highlighted in the previous section, the School Without Homophobia is strongly marked by a political-aesthetic articulation based on neoliberal governance, identity as an essence, and sexual diversity, in an operation that blocks the fluidity and strength of difference and democracy. However, the theoretical approach adopted here prevents us from seeking a unique and inevitable reading about the meanings of politics and curriculum.

What is the curriculum if not that place of strength and coalition where energy and life flows? It produces, it pulverizes the soul, it condemns the body, and it describes the will: "A curriculum is always full of ordinances, of fixed lines, of organized bodies, of majority identities” (PARAÍSO, 2009, p. 278). However, a curriculum-life "[...] is always full of possibilities of breaking the lines of being; of contagions that can be born and move along unsuspected paths" (PARAÍSO, 2009, p. 278).

Wouldn't it be possible, then, from the reading made of the School Without Homophobia, to find lines of fragmentation of the curricular discourse in the very practice of subjectivation under analysis? Would it be possible to dig in the document of the School Without Homophobia an ethics-aesthetic of difference, which bets on the creative power of life and which aligns itself to a more open perspective of democracy?

With Foucault (2002), to survey discursive formations also means to understand that the enunciative units that form discourses "[...] can sometimes coincide with sentences, sometimes with propositions; but they are sometimes made up of fragments of sentences, series or pictures of signs, game of propositions or equivalent formulations" (p. 120). In this way, the dispersed field of an enunciative function and the ways in which it appears are as diverse units, open to interpretation and re-reading that operate other possibilities of subjectivity formation. For Foucault (2002, p. 124),

Enunciative analysis is, therefore, a historical analysis, but one that remains outside of any interpretation: it does not ask what things are said, what was said in them and what is not said that they involuntarily recover, the abundance of thoughts, images or ghosts that inhabit them; but, on the contrary, in what way they exist, what does it mean for them that they have manifested themselves, that they have left traces and, perhaps, that they remain for eventual reuse; what is for them that they have appeared - and no other in their place.

Thus, there is no last and closed reading of the curriculum policy that is not related to the agency and the multiple interpretations of the subjects and in different contexts. This aspect is central to enhance the analysis of school curriculum, either in the prescriptive documental dimension or in the practice dimension, since the dispute for the production of directions of the curriculum is entirely demarcated by processes of antagonism of demands among the various social and economic groups of our society, as it is perceived in the fragments below:

As we have already tried to highlight, every school follows a curriculum. Consciously or unconsciously, those who act in the school context are directly involved in the elaboration of the curriculum and, therefore, in the formation of human identities. In the current school environment, the debates regarding the possibilities of curriculum action to confront discourses and practices of discrimination and violence resulting from gender prejudice and sexual orientation may be the most controversial, since they involve much more than scientific concepts. Many times, the references are dogmatic, speculative, prejudiced and naturalizing concepts that lead to the elaboration of a curriculum that ignores or treats superficially or disregards issues related to sexual orientation and gender identity (CADERNO..., 2009, p. 74).

Making compromises with changes is not a simple task, but a good start can be not accepting ideas, postures and behaviors spread in various environments - among them the school. There is a thematic range that requires searching for other perspectives of thought and risking dismantling certain deep-rooted concepts, especially in the area of education. One way of systematizing or organizing the curriculum with transversality in mind is to explicitly include the themes, elaborating projects that make it possible to glimpse the continuity and deepening of discussions in the schooling of students (CADERNO..., 2009, p. 76).

How, then, can we integrate learning processes into school knowledge to confront these discourses and practices that are being intensely lived by society, communities, families, students and educators in their daily lives? How to answer the urgent questions about human life in the midst of the homophobic culture of the school? How to work on reality and the transformations in personal attitudes, which require so much teaching and learning of these dimensions (knowledge of reality and attitudes)? (CADERNO..., 2009, p. 74).

As evidenced in the first excerpt highlighted, the ESH does not place in combat one of the issues of the current scenario involving the problems of prejudice and discrimination, produced especially by the Judeo-Christian tradition: the "gender identity". Junqueira (2018), states that the so-called gender ideology arises from a reactionary political-discursive offensive and religious matrix, especially by ultra-conservative sectors of the Catholic Church, which seek to inculcate the idea that the transformations postulate by gender studies and feminism. [...] would mean depriving children of the right to family, transforming schools into "fields of gender indoctrination," annihilating the symbolic order, extinguishing "the family" and humanity, among other "catastrophes" announced by anti-gender activism" (JUNQUEIRA, 2018, p. 486). Therefore, the genesis of the "gender ideology" surrounds the precariousness of access to human, sexual, and reproductive rights in Brazil today.

However, in spite of this fragility, the fragments shake the senses given to the curriculum, and the ways in which the curriculum acts to "become what we are", that is, its "effects" on the school and our lives. In common, the statements that mean what is curriculum within the School Without Homophobia work with a more open understanding of what it can be. The curriculum desires, it wants, it produces, it is politics, it makes us things. "After all, in it dominion, regulation and government are intertwined; but in it also people, forces and objects meet, conquer, produce, revitalize". (PARAÍSO, 2016, p. 1). The excerpts therefore indicate a curricular experience that may, in some way, come close to a politics of difference; a post-binary, post-identity politics.

Therefore, as the excerpts point out, those who act and are in the school context and what is done in and by the curriculum is, in one way or another, linked to the formation of subjectivities, even though in the text these subjectivities are pointed out as "human identities". In some way, things are done by the curriculum, they exist in it, and by it power relations, hierarchy and forms of freedom are produced.

The curriculum, in turn, according to the Notebook of Contents of the School Without Homophobia, enable practices and experiences aimed at "confronting the discourses and practices of discrimination and violence" (CADERNO..., 2009, p. 49). And although there are forms, "dogmatic, speculative, prejudiced and naturalizing concepts" (CADERNO..., 2009, p. 74-76) one can also look for the forces: "other enchainments and other perspectives of thought to risk dismantling certain ingrained concepts".

Questioned by Paraíso (2010, p. 588), we questioned:

But, if even with the investments to control the difference in the curriculum, everything still leaks there, why not think about the curriculum through its bifurcations? Why not try the game of difference in the curriculum? Why not think of the curriculum through its leaks, leaks, its leak lines, distortions and variations? Why not prioritize difference over identity and follow the ramifications that arise from that thinking?

But if... "There are lives impossible to feel, to touch, to perceive. Lives of others, in other places, in other times. Out of us. Out of here. Without reach, without capture" (SKLIAR, 2003). Are other lives possible? Are other aesthetics-performances possible? What freedoms are possible?

To shatter the possible existence, the already given, the already common, the already done, the sameness; to affirm the potency of life, of other bodies, other dwellers, other inhabitants; to bend language; to annihilate existence itself. In the School Without Homophobia, although the problem of the effects of modern truth and science is the annihilation of life, the force of art as redeemer of human nature opens the power-resistance-creator. It is within language as a constitutive operation that these cracks occur. It is with language and through language that difference is affirmed/created.

To broaden the language, to create words, to say beyond what has already been said, or not to say what cannot be named, is thus the most urgent task one can have to confront the capture of Sexual Difference in the field of education, or to think about an investigation of discursive practices that says of the manufacture of the subject of rights, like the LGBT population.

Not limiting itself to knowledge, but within it, the curriculum at the School Without Homophobia, can depart for "[...] the confrontation of these discourses and practices that are being lived intensely by society" (CADERNO..., 2009). A curriculum, then, is desire, is life, for it deals with "[...] urgent questions about human life" (CADERNO..., 2009). What is more urgent than life itself? What are we becoming?

The relationship between the school and the curriculum and the production of subjectivities are projected not only for the capture of a device or even for the processes of subjections, but, like these relationships of subjectivation, of resistance, of escape, "[...] of the constitution of the subjects in the midst of the relationships between sexuality-verdity-subjectivity" (FERRARI, 2014, p. 102).

So, if it is the language that says of the body, that builds, that destroys performances and subjectivities, that produces culture and reality, to imagine a language without margins, without language, but with infinite depth, is to try to find the freedom and the Difference that we want for our lives?

On the threshold of good encounters with desire, with experience and with the difference in basic education, to invest in other ways of life, is to force the mobilization of a thought that sets in motion the curricular-identitarian sedentarism, recurrent in the current educational policies, allocated in the discursive practices of governing life and in the management of the body and sexual desire. Betting on the positivity of the curriculum as ethical and aesthetic resistance, affirming life, and creating other possible ones, is to flag the lines of escape and of the creative-experimenting powers of the curricular fetishism in the political-performatic production of the existence and the ways of life produced in, with and by the fetish-event.

Is this relationship established by the subject with himself, far from the relationship established between the subject, knowledge, power, discursive practices, regimes of truth, ethical and aesthetic fabulations? On the contrary, is the subject of modernity subjectivized by the relationship that crosses his Ethical constitution, without causing fractures with other devices of governance and regulation of life.

But if creating other lives means establishing other relationships with oneself, overflowing the aesthetic performatization of gender-sexuality is throbbing encounters with one's own body. It is being and living that which cannot be named; it is creating infinite possibilities, infinite ethics, infinite bodies. It is not to submit to arbitrary language; to create new words; to pulse heterotopias. To affirm life; to create other possible ones. Other lives, other times, other places, other languages, other subjects. Outredade.

Final considerations

The analytical elements gathered in this research refer to the reasoning, perhaps risky, about the way in which the School Without Homophobia engages in the production of sexual subjects and experiences. We point out that the statements reveal an experience still based on sexual diversity and identity as essence. as an aesthetic of existence, and on respect and tolerance for this "other" who is not me. Without problematizing the very language policies that produce us as subjects of certain experiences, the curricular policy does not overflow normative lifestyles, and the ethical and aesthetic performances of being/living. The recurrent discursive alignment to sexual diversity thus flags a discursive practice that entangles, captures, and sequesters difference, leaving little room for the ethical-political collisions of other life experiences to sprout.

It is in these complex and winding aesthetic and ethical relationships that subjects establish their lives, their bodies, their desires, wills, loves. An endless process of subordination and resistance, where we learn to be what we are, as well as, we produce the "other", the one who is not me. The Difference.

These are questions that mobilize this incursion: what are we becoming? What are we? What lives are being indicated for curriculum and schools by different political agencies? What other relationships with yourself and with others are possible from the point of view of the experience of bodies in the world? What other subjects and other political, ethical and aesthetic performances are possible? For this movement, distrusting the pedagogical discourses that go through contemporary politics is perhaps an important clue for mobilizing the necessary virtues-forces for other performative-sexual encounters. If the subject is produced by the devices of governance that schematize subordinations and resistances, it is also fitting to say of these devices as cracks and as endless and incessant gaps where knowledge-power negotiates collective and individual agency.

If, on the one hand, the anti-homophobia political agenda adopted in the midst of neoliberal diversity contained traps, the (in)existence of these policies is dated to a period that is no longer the current one. In 2011, all the material from the School Without Homophobia that would be distributed in Brazilian public schools is vetoed by President Dilma. Since then, the anti-homophobia and sexual diversity policies, designed since the 1990s and with more vigor since the election of Lula da Silva, have been discontinued and are currently non-existent.

It should be questioned: would discontinuity, and currently the inexistence of policies to confront LGBTphobia be as perverse as the very affirmation of sexual identity? If the policies of sexual diversity guided by the neoliberal tonic of regulating life, such as the School Without Homophobia, had reached the schools, would we be experiencing another political-aesthetic process, or experiencing an even more acute obscurantism in society as a whole?

What is known, however, is that although it did not reach schools in the form of teaching materials and resources, the ESH produced political antagonisms in society that have reverberated until today. The legal-parliamentary coup of 2016 against Dilma Roussef and the 2018 presidential elections brought to light that the flirtation with the liberal logic of sexual diversity experienced in the governments from PT did not produce enough political convergence to advance in the democratic siege for education. Contradictorily, the neoliberal discourse of diversity has contributed, in Brazil, to the advance of conservative and neoconservative forces that now govern the country, showing how dangerous the bets on this political rationality are for the advancement of a democratic society, as Chantal Mouffe warns:

There is an urgent need today to re-establish the centrality of politics and this requires drawing new political boundaries capable of giving real impetus to democracy. These new political frontiers need to incorporate a multiplicity of democratic demands, but there is no denying that one of the decisive bets for democratic politics is to begin offering alternatives to neoliberalism (MOUFFE, 2003, p.21)

We defend, therefore, that it is not possible to provide democratic lines in political-curricular plots while these are based on essential identities, which flirt with neoliberal governance. On the contrary, the sexual difference can offer subsidies for the desired performative-esthetic figurations in the curriculum in order to indicate other possibilities of existence, and of education

1Translated by Gabriel Garcia. E-mail: gabriel.rib96@yahoo.com.br

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Received: August 03, 2020; Accepted: September 21, 2020

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