Introduction

We begin this article inspired by Paul ^{Preciado (2020}), for whom writing is a performative practice of life production, understanding that there are things that only writing can afford us. It's about pursuing "[...] a living writing, a writing with life, an inviting writing, an inviting writing, a writing that triggers sensations [...]," since "[...] there is no greater proof of vitality than creativity: to create is of the realm of life, to create is of the world of the living, only what is alive can create" (^{Maknamara, 2021}, p. 204). Making reference to the name of the research group to which we are affiliated, we believe that it's necessary to 'write (live)'. To make one's own life a subject of writing so that writing can, in itself, open up to life. This argument, dear to (auto) biographical research, is the starting point of a work that deals with life and death. About curriculum and the qualification of modes of existence. About politics of death and their possible cracks and escapes. About programmable subjectivities, serialized subjects, windows of subjectivation.

Drawing on the insights of the writer William Faulkner, an investigation like the one unfolding here operates in a similar manner to striking a match in an open field, in the middle of the night. Its small point of light certainly isn't capable of illuminating much, but it's enough for us to encounter and understand the extent of the darkness that surrounds us. In other words, a research from a post-critical perspective, upon which this article is founded, takes as one of its assumptions a "genealogy of problems," in order to highlight that "[...] not everything is bad, but everything is dangerous, which doesn't exactly mean the same thing as bad. If everything is dangerous, there's always something to be done." (^{Foucault, 1995}, p. 256).

The ethical-aesthetic-political choice to delve into some of the dangers that surround us allows us to better focus on those 'clear shadows' that our investigations aim to flicker. In this sense, our writing is conceived in the terms that Conceição ^{Evaristo (2015}) presents in her work "Olhos d’água": a writing like an uncontrollable fever, burning, burning, burning... A writing as a way to bleed, to purge, to make something new and unpredictable seep out. A writing that enables a kind of 'settling of accounts' with everything that wants us sad, incapacitated, suffocated, disempowered. Writing to confront the tyrant, the 'thieves of souls' that make us construe life as a burden and death as a certainty. Writing to face that 'great enemy' that ^{Deleuze and Guattari (2011}) announce in 'Anti-Oedipus': fascism. Writing also to recognize, as ^{Foucault (1996a}) so beautifully showed us in his preface to this work, titled "Introduction to the Non-Fascist Life," that fascism isn't confined to state apparatuses or solely embodied by great dictators, but is present in our everyday lives, embedded within ourselves. In short, it's about writing to declare life as impersonal potency, much like Deleuze's final statement (2002, p. 16), to testify to it as a composition of "[...] virtualities, events, singularities." After all, despite all attempts to stifle it, to extirpate it, life continues onward.

To achieve this, the article retrieves the methodological arsenal of a doctoral research that focused on the curriculum of serialized media narratives, interpreting it as an artifact implicated in the 'pedagogization' of existences and in the delimitation of lives as livable and as killable. In this work, curriculum is conceived as "[...] an artifact that includes and exceeds the limitations imposed by school schemes, disciplinary hours, and assignments given by regulated education professionals" (^{Gurgel, 2022}, p. 19). Grounded in the field of cultural studies, the research from which this article is excerpted aimed to investigate the images of life and death in the teachings of gender, sexuality, and race within this artifact. Thus, this article brings to the forefront some of the questions that emerged when we needed to define our methodological approach, which seemed to resonate in a certain way with an old question posed several decades ago by Donna ^{Haraway (1995}, p. 25), when the philosopher asked: "[...] with whose blood were my eyes made?" As the author herself argues, vision, much more than a sense that enables us to perceive the world, is "[...] always a question of the power to see - and perhaps of the violence implicit in our practices of visualization" (^{Haraway, 1995}, p. 25). Therefore, whatever methodological exercise is employed to scrutinize an artifact such as the curriculum of serialized media narratives, it is necessary to borrow from ^{Haraway (1995)} some of the questions she raises about the limits of our vision as researchers and the meanings attributed to partiality and objectivity.

How to see? From where to see? What are the limits of vision? To see for what purpose? To see with whom? Who should have more than one point of view? Whose eyes have sand thrown in them? Who wears blinders? Who interprets the visual field? What other sensory power do we desire to cultivate, beyond vision? (^{Haraway, 1995}, p. 28).

We could add: what are the 'lenses' that we have been using, merging them so seamlessly with our perspective that, in their absence, we struggle to see the world? (^{Chaves, 2016}). Or, slightly twisting this stance, it's also worth adding a complicating factor for the present investigation: what are the possible frames to be used in relation to different markers of social difference? Do we have a certain 'close-up' focusing only on a part of the possible details, deliberately excluding anything that might pose a risk to what is considered 'normal'? Or are we more susceptible to 'long shot' frames, that is, an open shot capable of capturing the maximum number of elements present? These are relevant questions if we start from the assumption that "[...] the norms that determine who is and who is not human come to us in a visual form" (^{Butler, 2017}, p. 18). Therefore, certain frames might cause us to "[...] fail to apprehend the lives of others as lost or injured [...]," thus becoming "[...] operations of power." (^{Butler, 2017}, p. 14).

The methodological endeavor outlined here is based on a question of perspective. Or rather, a 'double perspective.' It pertains to both our partial, provisional, and contingent perspective in relation to the object under investigation, as well as the multiple - and at times contradictory - perspectives that accumulate and constitute a cultural artifact like the curriculum of serialized media narratives. The 'perspectives' that comprise this curriculum are diverse; an idiosyncrasy of this artifact precisely because it is formed within a culture, which is nothing more than "[...] the sum of different systems of classification and different discursive formations to which language resorts in order to give meaning to things" (^{Hall, 1997}, p. 29). Thus, any artifact that becomes 'cultural' can be approached as a "[...] terrain in which meanings are shared and in which there is a struggle for their imposition within power relations" (^{Maknamara & Paraíso, 2013}, p. 43). Stemming from different perspectives, assumptions, and 'perspectives,' the curriculum of serialized media narratives is directly involved in practices of signification, that is, the ability to "[...] assert particular meanings that belong to a social group over the meanings of other groups, presupposing a gradient, a power differential over them." (^{Silva, 2010}, p. 23).

Numerous elements are 'onstage' in the curriculum of serialized media narratives: the images, the spoken words, the adopted language resources, and the various ways of signifying expressions of gender, sexuality, and race. Additionally, there are different ways of disseminating habits, customs, knowledge, values, as well as the conflicting subject positions made available by its discourses. It's precisely these elements that allow the audience of this cultural artifact to recognize themselves, to feel identified, in such a way that this curriculum can guide, address, and shape their lives, as the media "[...] invades our everyday, exposes us, teaches us ways of being, thinking, existing, and acting" (^{Paraíso, 2007}, p. 24). Armed with these characteristics of the curriculum of serialized media narratives, not forgetting that it's an artifact whose production of meanings is directly linked to specific social and political struggles of a given historical moment, we began to reflect on what would be the most appropriate methodological approach for this research.

As Deleuze reminds us in conversation with ^{Foucault (2017}, p. 132), whatever tool is used by the researcher, "[...] it must serve, it must function." In a post-critical perspective, we are authorized to use "[...] everything that serves us from different disciplines, different theoretical fields, different research methodologies" (^{Paraíso, 2021}, p. 36). Assuming that there are certain peculiarities of a given object that allow the composition of a suitable form of investigation, we argue that, to investigate the curriculum of serialized media narratives, it is possible to draw on methodological orientations from discourse analysis and cartography. Both have enabled us to scrutinize both the necropolitics at play in this curriculum, as well as the creative escapes and affirmations of life.

We understand, in line with ^{Meyer and Paraíso (2021}), that a methodology is pedagogical, as it describes a 'how-to,' in the sense of showing how we conduct our investigations. In this regard, the present article is divided into nine methodological notes that refer to the ways in which we interrogate the object of this research, formulate questions to continue our investigation, construct problems as we engage with the process, as well as describe our interactions with a set of procedures for "information gathering" and for description and analysis. These notes are described using imperative verbs, inspired by ^{Maknamara and Paraíso (2013}, p. 49), to simultaneously highlight "[...] their usefulness for investigative paths close to them and their circumstantial validity." In other words, this is an arsenal that corresponds to the ways in which we have been composing, re/de/composing, cutting, pasting, modifying paths, altering trajectories, re/viewing, re/signifying - ultimately, constructing a unique path that is not given a priori and cannot be copied in the same way in other circumstances.

The remote control is your best friend!

Inspired primarily by queer foundations and philosophies of difference, the methodology developed here is inspired by 'zapping,' a term that refers to the act of taking the remote control in hand and 'zapping' between one television channel and another - or, to better align with the contemporary scene, between the catalogs of different streaming services - in search of something that pleases or moves, that evokes emotions, in short, that establishes some sense for the viewer.

Draw inspiration from this seemingly mundane and ordinary act of those who consume television images, and turn it into a methodological investment in its own right. This is because, beyond the possibility of playing with the semantic field of the object being worked with and composing with the terms derived from it (^{Paraíso, 2019} - not referenced), it's a gamble, as announced by Beatriz ^{Sarlo (1997}, p. 57), about the "[...] power [...]” of the remote control and its “[...] homemade moviola with unpredictable results. ” In other words, here lie some of the assumptions that underlie research methodologies from a post-critical perspective: that of creating new ways to look at our object and to "[...] think the unthinkable [...]" by moving through "[...] the desire to think differently in education." (^{Paraíso, 2021}, p. 42).

Although 'zapping' commonly carries a sense of "[...] frantic repetition of images [...]" (^{Sarlo, 1997}, p. 57), without allowing the audience time to better assimilate them, its meaning multiplies when understood as a particular way of investigating a cultural curriculum. Instead of 'skipping' from one channel to another in a carefree manner, the 'zapping methodology' is more aligned with the possibilities of dwelling on the images that catch our eyes; of 'listening' attentively to the said and the unsaid; of 'tuning in' to different 'channels' in the quest to understand the regularities of these utterances; of having a 'catalog' that corresponds not only to the empirical material to be analyzed - the serialized media narratives - but also to the articulated knowledge and ways of operating with this artifact.

'Zapping' constitutes a 'challenge' to assumed theoretical and methodological affiliations, to a supposed rigid 'loyalty' that wouldn't allow the adoption of new procedures during the course of investigation - something incompatible with the post-critical field, as we assume that "[...] we don't have a single theory to support our work and we don't have a method to adopt" (^{Paraíso, 2021}, p. 33). It's in this sense that zapping is a methodology attuned to the unexpected, capable of multiplying meanings so that what the object enunciates isn't solidified by fixed and unified interpretations, showcasing its contingency and emphasizing that, in the perspective this work is based upon, there's no quest for an essence, but rather an activity that highlights its construction, piece by piece.

It's important to consider that our intention to develop a 'zapping methodology' was, when all is said and done, a methodological decision aimed at resolving an apparent contradiction, as already signaled in the previous section: how could a single investigation accommodate two seemingly distinct methodological approaches? How could a research project simultaneously draw from the insights of Deleuze and Guattari's cartography and Foucault's discourse analysis? How could different post-critical methodological orientations be combined without risking that both would end up becoming merely 'accessories,' without truly demonstrating both needs in the course of the research?

At first glance, the most reasonable option seemed to be making a concession, even if that meant discarding a considerable portion of the work already undertaken, some of which had been published. On one hand, the investigated curriculum could be analyzed through a purely cartographic endeavor or in a research project that solely employed discourse analysis. However, the choices made throughout the journey, in terms of theoretical, aesthetic, and political references, as well as the empirical material analyzed in the course of the investigation, paved the way for this intersection of different post-critical methodological orientations. After all, the very 'behavior' of this curriculum urged us to engage 'serially' with the artifact: sometimes employing Foucauldian analytical tools, sometimes employing Deleuze and Guattari's tools, and sometimes combining both. In other words, what we have here is a certain "promiscuous assemblage" between these philosophers of difference, exploring the potentialities that each offers in terms of multiple perspectives on this curriculum. If the so-called queer times, as pointed out by Jasbir ^{Puar (2005}), demand 'queering' the ways we conduct our research and analyze our subjects, an unabashedly queer investigation also permits the strangeness of the very references we draw upon, twisting them, suspending them, cutting them, highlighting them, and producing something new.

Tailor your 'watchlist' to the purposes of your research.

If no research could comprehensively address a cultural artifact, the same holds true for the curriculum of serialized media narratives. Keep in mind that we are currently experiencing what communication theorists are calling 'Peak TV,' an era marked by an "[...] excessive production, with a huge number of new shows appearing every month, coming from all players in the television market and particularly from streaming services, which do not have temporal limitations [...] to produce content" (^{Castellano & Meimaridis, 2021}, p. 213). Therefore, be cautious not to fall into the trap of the object's mechanisms: attempting to cover the entire artifact might lead you to 'binge-watch' the curriculum in an effort to encompass all its possibilities. Instead of being a 'high-performance' researcher, cover shorter distances and allow yourself to 'feel' the paths you are traversing. In other words, rather than binge-watching episodes of serialized narratives, prioritizing a quantitative dimension, choose exactly those that align best with the theoretical and epistemological foundations of your investigation.

Create something akin to an 'investigative jukebox' that ^{Maknamara & Paraíso (2013}) allude to, in the sense of deliberately choosing which serialized narratives and their respective episodes will compose the analysis. However, ensure that you have selected "[...] empirical material compatible with your research objectives and questions" (^{Maknamara & Paraíso, 2013}, p. 48). If the aforementioned authors use the jukebox image in relation to the artifact they analyze - a musical style - assemble your 'watchlist,' that is, a collection of serialized media narratives 'tuned in' to your investigative purposes. You can even draw upon your expertise as a skilled 'series viewer,' but do not shy away from adapting your selection to your investigative goals. With this, do not assume the position of an impeccable participant in a fandom, nor strive for a pretentious objectivity in your researcher's position. Find a kind of zone capable of reconciling the perspectives of someone who, on one hand, is well-acquainted with the technical intricacies of the artifact's functioning and leverages that to enhance the findings of the research, and on the other hand, someone who still allows themselves to be surprised by what they investigate. In short, do not attempt to 'preempt' the results: as you are well aware, spoilers are displeasing, whether in the consumption of serialized media narratives or in their analysis.

Be a 'showrunner' who values 'plot twists.'

It's possible that during your immersion with this artifact, you might become enchanted by characters, root for a particular protagonist, harbor negative feelings towards a villain, or even feel frustrated with the outcome of a specific storyline. Are you concerned, given that the traditional underpinnings of modern science have revolved around assumptions of neutrality, objectivity, and rationality? Don't worry: these supposed lenses are no longer sufficient to capture our methodological experiences. Instead, it's important to understand the way we conduct our research as no longer a sterile and neutral experience, detached from our desires and wishes. This is because our perspective is "[...] always contingent, dated, limited by the subject positions we occupy and by factors we are unaware of" (^{Balestrin & Soares, 2021}, p. 89). We are transformed when we 'enter the field,' when we scrutinize an object, when we delve into it.

You're already well-grounded in gender studies and feminist theories, which highlight that a researcher cannot remain distant from what they investigate (^{Haraway, 1995}). Allow yourself to be the 'showrunner' of your research: the one responsible for guiding the work, making decisions that encompass everything from the selection of empirical material to methodological procedures and analytical techniques, all of which should be transparently presented in your writing. After all, there's no knowledge that can hide who produces it (^{Haraway, 1995}), and our writing serves as a tool of struggle for meaning through which we shape ourselves as researchers, materializing the disputes and games of truth involved in knowledge production.

Absolutely, to ensure that your research doesn't run the risk of being 'canceled' by veering away from the post-critical framework, avoid assuming the role of an authoritarian showrunner whose voice is the only one to be heard. Allow your voice as the author to intertwine with the voices of many other 'scriptwriters' - those authors who align with the adopted theoretical perspectives - whom you can 'hire' to help refine your writing. Only then will your text avoid falling into the same trap of transcendence and neutrality that a certain kind of 'investigative realism' tried to impose for a long time. Foster in your journey "[...] contestation, deconstruction, network connections, and hope for transformation of knowledge systems and ways of seeing" (^{Haraway, 1995}, p. 24). In short, also value the 'plot twists' of research: if the methodological design of a post-critical research "[...] cannot be closed a priori and cannot be replicated at any time and place..." (^{Paraíso, 2021}, p. 55), remain open to the surprises that this path can offer.

Allow yourself to 'linger' on images

Before moving on to the next channel, give enough time for the images to 'speak'. However, a warning is necessary: the images do not 'speak' in the sense of recording character dialogues or vocally describing what is contained in their scripts. To assert that these images 'speak' is to adopt a perspective aligned with cultural studies, understanding this curriculum as a 'cultural text', that is, "[...] the site where meaning is negotiated and fixed, where difference and identity are produced and fixed, where inequality is gestated" (^{Costa, 2005}, p. 138). Consequently, what is 'said' through the images is not a mere reflection of a preexisting object. Neither do these images serve merely to 'name' the things they depict on screen. What is at stake is 'discourse', that is, a practice of power that not only 'describes' what it enunciates but effectively institutes what it speaks of (^{Foucault, 1996b}). What is said about something is not in the realm of mere representation; it is not a record of a preexisting object, but gains materiality precisely by being historically associated with the "[...] dynamics of power and knowledge of its time." (^{Fischer, 2001}, p. 204).

To align more closely with the adopted framework here, understand by 'image', following ^{Maknamara (2011}, p. 18), as "[...] that which is made visible by discourse." As a discursive effect, the images within a cultural artifact, whatever it may be, should be taken as "[...] vehicles of meaning..." (^{Kellner, 2013}, p. 116), a 'capture in writing' of statements, a 'pictorial record' that frames knowledge and engraves power relations. Therefore, the modes of semiotic production within a cultural artifact "[...] are not arbitrary, but rather historically and economically constituted by the social forms within which we live our lives." (^{Simon, 2013}, p. 64).

Let's consider an example: What does the scene where a mafia boss bravely responds to his therapist, when she warns him about the necessity of getting a prostate exam, with the statement "[...] I don't let anyone even point a finger in my face!" convey in terms of the construction of masculinity? Before you change the channel due to not agreeing with this manner of constructing different gender perspectives, it's important to note that discourse "[...] divulges and provides one of the many ways of understanding the world..." (^{Paraíso, 2010a}, p. 43), and it's worthwhile to invest your analysis in what it incites, constrains, and produces. Therefore, when faced with a given discourse activated by this curriculum, frame "[...] the historical relations, power plays, and concrete practices that the discourse itself articulates, sets in motion, and keeps 'alive'" (^{Maknamara, 2011}, p. 62, author's emphasis). In other words, emphasize the performativity of language, that is, the centrality of different discourses in terms of interpellating, guiding, producing objects, meanings, social practices, and subjects.

Question: What is being said in this curriculum, in the experience of these images, in the situations proposed by these storylines, and not in other times and spaces, in different ways? Utilizing this type of analysis is a very unique way of not seeking a truth, but rather of understanding "[...] in what ways, through which paths, everything that is considered true, became true one day" (^{Veiga-Neto, 2006}, p. 87). It's essential to search for the conditions of possibility, not for a supposed 'personality', subject, or 'author' of the discourse, as it is not the interest of this methodological orientation to "[...] analyze the relations between the author and what he said (or wanted to say or said unintentionally)" (^{Foucault, 2005}, p. 108). After all, discourses "[...] do not emanate from the interior of the subject but are situated on the plane of events." (^{Maknamara, 2011}, p. 61).

As the 'showrunner' of the research, it is advisable to establish relationships "[...] between the things said in the investigated discourse and other things said in different times and spaces ...", as this articulation allows you to "[...] identify how things exist, what their relations are with other things that are said, and what it means for them to have manifested" (^{Paraíso, 2007}, p. 64). Consider mapping out the discourses, questioning the utterances, and seeking the technologies that are activated so that the audience of the serialized media narratives experiences specific experiences and, in the enjoyment of a catalog of positions provided by these discourses, becomes particular types of subjects. Regarding markers of social difference, pursue what the discourses consider as 'normal' and what is assumed to be 'abnormal', in order to make visible how hierarchical notions of 'livable lives' and 'killable lives' have been produced. It was by pursuing these markers that we observed, for example, that "[...] there are lives in this curriculum being targeted for determinations, being subject to searches for normalization, in their possibility or not to live" (^{Gurgel & Maknamara, 2022}, p. 88), although it is also possible to come across certain narratives that "[...] are capable of producing ruptures in gender and sexuality norms, producing modes of resistance relative to regimes of power". (Gurgel et al., 2021, p. 14).

Don't look for 'easter eggs'¹¹

Looking for hidden information or intentionally concealed messages by the creators of a TV series might be an entertaining activity for a viewer, but it holds little methodological value. Instead of searching for these 'easter eggs,' it's more opportune to delve into the historical relationships, the "[...] very concrete practices that are 'alive' in the discourses" (^{Fischer, 2001}, p. 198-199, emphasis added). There's nothing beyond discourse, nothing underneath the debris of what is said: between a given discourse and what it speaks of, there's "[...] no relationship of mere correspondence and continuity [...]," but rather a practice that articulates elements through which power effects are translated into the making of subjects (^{Maknamara, 2011}, p. 129). As argued by ^{Paraíso (2007}, p. 30) in their analysis of the curriculum of educational media, discourse "[...] does what it claims to do [...]," highlighting how subjects addressed by this discourse must be, behave, experience, and conduct themselves.

On the other hand, not valuing 'easter eggs' in the analysis of this curriculum doesn't imply that there isn't the work of an adept genealogist, someone who deals with "[...] shuffled, scratched, rewritten parchment" (^{Foucault, 2017}, p. 15). If these hidden messages are set aside, the exploration shifts to documents, articles, messages, social media posts, interviews, events, historical facts, and more, in order to scrutinize not the origin of a discourse, but its provenance. As ^{Foucault (2017}, p. 15) explicitly states, genealogy is "[...] meticulous and patient [...]," requiring "[...] the meticulousness of knowledge, a large number of accumulated materials, and patience." Yes, it's an "[...] anatomy of details [...]," yet it allows us to highlight, from the "[...] singularity of events, far from all monotonous purpose [...]," the historical and power-laden nature of each element composing the curriculum of TV series narratives.

Indeed, there are things that are not necessarily 'hidden' in the sense of waiting to be 'unveiled' like a grand end-of-season mystery, but rather need to be 'named' in the sense of attributing them meaning and multiplying their significance. This applies to the 'techniques, strategies, mechanisms, and technologies' of power operating through the discourses triggered by this curriculum. These elements enable us to "[...] work with the discourse itself to reveal the statements and relations that the discourse puts into operation" (^{Paraíso, 2021}, p. 29). These pieces allow us to perceive how the various discourses within this curriculum are built upon classifications and judgments that regulate and shape lives as either viable or susceptible to extermination.

Absolutely, so be creative in your processes of naming! But also be aware that within the context of a post-critical framework, language "[...] is produced, maintained, and modified in the context of struggles and disputes over the right to signify [...]" (^{Meyer, 2021}, p. 52), which certainly involves the terms we adopt and choose to describe and analyze our objects. 'Naming' something is an empirical exercise that highlights the framework to which we are aligned and reaffirms the history of things, their contingency, and their artificiality.

It was precisely this approach with Foucault's genealogy that allowed us, at a certain point in the investigation, to identify what the effects of this curriculum would be in a broader sense, "[...] capable of extending to different aspects of our lives, with different effects on our compositions as subjects" (^{Gurgel & Maknamara, 2023}, p. 4). In this sense, a 'practice of binge-watching' has contributed to the production of a lifestyle characteristic of a 'TV series culture,' which sees its logic of urgency incorporated into as many dimensions of social life as possible. (^{Gurgel & Maknamara, 2023}).

Update your catalog of subject positions

'Femme-fatale, sissy-man, libertine, disillusioned prince, asymptomatic, bromance, discreet-and-out, closeted, confused woman, expropriated body, pre-body, support body, gender-traitor, queer undead, hypersexualized black woman, idyllic motherly black woman, violable...' There can be countless ways to 'name' subjects based on the curriculum of TV series narratives, which has led us to multiple and creative ways of thinking, saying, and living in relation to expressions of gender, sexuality, and race. These positions not only signify certain expectations regarding these markers of social difference but also account for the ways in which a specific body takes on the sign of 'livable,' or, conversely, is designated as a 'target,' becoming 'killable.'

It is important not only to pay attention to these 'names' that emerge in the sense of identifying, classifying, and ordering subjects, but also to pursue the ways in which these namings occur within discourses. To do so, it is necessary to identify 'subject positions' - the position that a given individual can or cannot occupy to become the subject of a discourse (^{Foucault, 2005}). Such a position is "[...] contingent, historical, situated in space and time, variable, flexible, plastic, permeable, and multiple" (^{Sales, 2021}, p. 125), corresponding to the 'regions' of discourse to be occupied in a more or less provisional manner. The subject does not preexist the discourse that constitutes it, and it is precisely this field of regularity that causes each individual, faced with the possibility of becoming the subject of a given discourse, to be effectively a composite, an amalgamation of various positions, small components that forge subjectivity.

Therefore, just because the artifact you're investigating works 'on demand,'² it doesn't mean your analytical effort is limited to sitting on the couch, watching episodes passively. In other words, you're not exempt from 'cataloging' as many positions of subjects as you can perceive through your investigation. Your reading will be even more fruitful if you manage to calibrate the resolution of these images to the point of making them 'full HD.' That is, the better you frame the appropriate questions for this analysis, the clearer the power mechanisms that run through the curriculum of serialized media narratives and how they operate in the constitution of subjects will become. It's essential to question: among all these possibilities of becoming subjects, which of these positions are considered 'normal,' and which are marked as deviating from the 'standard'? How is normality and difference produced by the images of this curriculum? And what do these markers offer in terms of qualifying existences as livable or killable?

Focus on power games

Your narrative will be all the more insidious the more you are able to frame the power dynamics at play in this curriculum. Remember that discourse is of the order of war, it has "[...] small battles [...]," numerous "[...] points of struggle" (^{Paraíso, 2021}, p. 39). And no, this doesn't mean that power relations are present only in those serialized narratives that depict military conflicts between peoples and kingdoms, like the celebrated 'Game of Thrones' and 'Vikings.' Signifying power as this 'obstacle,' as a strategic situation, relates to how this curriculum carries the marks of multiple power relations that enable this artifact to speak about the types of subjects it desires to produce. As a floating and indeterminate artifice of discourse, we constitute ourselves as subjects of certain truths or subject ourselves to the truths of a particular historical formation precisely because power relations are waged and because power is above all productive. (^{Foucault, 2017}).

To adequately focus on the different power relations at play in this artifact - those of gender, sexuality, and race - you need to employ appropriate lenses. While a 'macro' lens was used to emphasize the dispersion of discourses, an expanded angle to account for the different ways in which a discourse spreads across various 'material supports,' only a 'micro' perspective would allow you to visualize the production of subjects around systems of differentiation that power in a 'necro' dimension is capable of mobilizing. In short, it's about producing a "topographical and geological summary of the battle" (^{Foucault, 2017}, p. 242), highlighting the traces of the different discourses articulated in this curriculum, emphasizing their distribution, mechanisms of operation, and practices of subjectivation.

Being the discursive practice inseparable from the exercise of power (^{Foucault, 2003}), and the curriculum itself being a 'text of power' (^{Silva, 2010}), pay attention to the curriculum of serialized media narratives in its capacity to prescribe knowledge, provide ways of being and acting conformed to certain habits, attitudes, and values that are suggested, embraced, and valued. In other words, investigate within the discourse of this curriculum, in the interplay of different technologies of power and their related techniques, the ways in which certain particular forms of experience regarding gender, sexuality, and race have been regulated. Start from the assumption that the field of producing meanings and senses in a curriculum is always contested, disputed, and involved in conflicts. After all, "[...] the struggle for meaning is a struggle for hegemony, for dominance" (^{Silva, 2010}, p. 24). In other words, it's a struggle for control over conduct. And this control will be all the more effective the more multiple and insidious the strategies are aimed at normalizing the bodies of its audience and marking them as livable or killable.

Ensure that the anthology nature of the curriculum does not 'go off the air.'

One of the peculiarities of the curriculum of media serial narratives that enables a blend of methodological approaches is precisely its 'anthological' nature. 'Anthology' is a distinctive feature of the audiovisual field and refers to the ability of a particular artifact to present itself in different ways, evolving over its exhibition - whether in relation between one episode and another, or between one season and the next. According to ^{Pinheiro (2021}, p. 52), the notion of anthology serves to highlight that media serial narratives can be connected by a general theme "[...] and not necessarily by a persistent world." Consequently, in an anthology narrative, each episode can encompass new plots or these can be modified from one season to another; new characters can replace those whose stories have concluded; storylines can be concluded and make way for others that make better sense for the overall theme. However, an anthology requires "[...] consistency in the conceptual proposal that unites the episodes under the same theme" (^{Pinheiro, 2021}, p. 52). The episodes or the season should function independently on their own. Nonetheless, they only function independently because, in a broader context, they adhere to a certain regularity - which can be thematic, conceptual, stylistic, etc.

Acknowledging the curriculum of media serial narratives as 'anthological' enables us to harness difference, joy, joyful passions, becoming, and desire within an artifact that, at first glance, might seem to normalize, segregate, separate, and control expressions of gender, sexuality, and race. It also allows us to see life emerging in a territory that presents itself as sterile, dangerous, and threatening. This approach creates possibilities to counteract ongoing necropolitics and to facilitate movements that deterritorialize this curriculum, enabling the production of lines of flight. As ^{Paraíso and Caldeira (2018}, p. 13) point out, the curriculum, while it can be used to "[...] regulate and order [...]", can also be "[...] a territory of all types of escapes [...]", where "[...] unusual paths are defined and constructed [...]", "[...] lighter paths [...]", "[...] paths full of hope to be pursued".

Our initial explorations of the contributions of cartography occurred in the process of trying to understand how gender relations were forged in the curriculum of media serial narratives. The initial goal was to "[...] multiply the meanings we attribute to what we conventionally name as 'curriculum', with the aim of approaching it as a 'machine'" (^{Gurgel et al., 2022}, p. 4, emphasis added). To do so, we were guided by our readings of the works of authors, especially 'Anti-Oedipus' (^{Deleuze & Guattari, 2011}) and 'A Thousand Plateaus' (^{Deleuze & Guattari, 2012}). By employing a 'machinic' notion of curriculum, we began to conceptualize it as an artifact whose pieces "[...] connect to others, even if these are of another order or nature [...]" (^{Gurgel et al., 2022}, p. 5). This understanding now seems to resemble other developments in the investigation, such as the genealogical undertaking we mentioned earlier in Footnote V of this article.

In summary, the philosophies of difference by Deleuze and Guattari allowed us, at this stage of the research, to envision that such a curriculum was not only constituted by 'hard lines' of imposition and domination, but also by more 'flexible', malleable, expanded lines of resistance and affirmation (^{Gurgel et al., 2022}). To address this type of analysis, we composed some 'schizoanalytic notes', arguing that such a curriculum is traversed by a struggle between hard lines, flexible lines, and lines of flight (Gurgel & Maknamara, 2021). Mapping these lines enabled us to highlight, within this artifact, the 'regions of control' - striated spaces whose function is to capture and control nomadism, dominate flows, translating them into predetermined directions and limited movements, resulting in the zombification of modes of life. Additionally, without refraining from constituting the 'zones of escape' - the creation of smooth spaces that generate fissures in hierarchical models, inviting its audience to deform these models, allowing them to fabricate alternative modes of existence by providing less normative experiences. (Gurgel & Maknamara, 2021).

Therefore, in the practice of a 'zapping methodology,' it is possible to connect the 'map of the production of death' with the 'map of escapes' and 'affirmation of life.' The production of these maps will only be possible to the extent that one experiments with other modes of research conduct, 'zapping' through various possibilities of methodological orientations. If the purpose is to make visible the production of ruptures in the points of subjectivation that 'serialize' and 'model' the existences of the audience engaged in series, and thus relying on the "[...] invention of strategies for the constitution of new territories, other spaces of life and affection [...]," seeking "[...] ways out of territories with no way out [...]" (^{Guattari & Rolnik, 1996}, p. 18), one of the possibilities is to do so through the contributions of cartography.

If in a cartography, "[...] there are passages from one theoretical field to another, from one type of text to another, from one perspective to another [...]," utilizing "[...] theories and concepts that move away from the dichotomies that demarcate and impose boundaries" (^{Paraíso, 2019}, p. 181). To do so, follow the lines, the "[...] constitutive elements of things and events [...]," in order to mark "[...] paths and movements, with coefficients of luck and danger" (^{Deleuze, 2013}, p. 47-48). Keep in mind that in a cartographic experimentation, the lines are "[...] stretched, crossed, arranged; they come together to form maps that connect with other maps [...]" and they do not have a single origin, but rather "[...] countless provenances, in whose tracings they delineate ever-shifting edges, mutating contours." (^{Paraíso, 2019}, p. 166).

Learn, following ^{Deleuze and Parnet (1998}, p. 6), that "[...] to find is to discover, to capture, to steal; an encounter is perhaps the same thing as a becoming or a marriage." There are many encounters in a cartographic procedure, and they take place in the unpredictable: encounters with 'territories' that change in the course of the research itself; encounters with 'other forms of knowledge' that provide us with new perspectives and, consequently, update our ways of seeing the artifacts we investigate; encounters with sensations of all kinds, triggering affects and percepts. These are encounters with "[...] movements, ideas, events, entities [...]" (^{Deleuze & Parnet, 1998}, p. 6), which map territories while others dissolve to make way for the new, the unexpected, the becomings.

At first, the focus of this 'zapping methodology' was on inventorying positions of subjectivity disseminated by the discourses activated by the curriculum of media narrative series. Now, it's possible to tune into another 'channel,' to devise a new route, a new tracing of lines, in order to explore the openings, fractures, expansions, and potentialities of this artifact that initially appeared to mobilize necropowers. This is a way to counterpose all those powers that require sad, exhausted, zombified bodies. As ^{Pelbart (2017}) shows us, "[...] power is not an absolute domain, it's a relationship of forces, always in motion, and thus it contains its share of play and margin of indeterminacy - and therefore reversibility. In these "[...] times of danger [...]," of apocalyptic signs and intermittent resurgence of death, "[...] it is not a question of fearing or hoping, but of seeking new weapons" (^{Deleuze, 2013}, p. 220). Weapons that also serve to make us 'believe in the world' again, that is, to provoke "[...] events, even small ones, that escape control, or to give birth to new space-times, even of reduced surface and volume" (^{Deleuze, 2013}, p. 222). In short, it's about using cartography to find a way to unleash forces and fissure the hierarchical forms of the curriculum.

Before finalizing...[concluding remarks]

Signifying a cultural artifact like curriculum has allowed us to question the ways in which life and death are entwined in this process of 'pedagogization' of our existences. With this, we want to affirm that, to a certain extent, our own lives have come to be valued as an expression to be embraced, disseminated, and taught through various curricula. Consequently, selecting a particular form of expression as suitable or legitimate enables other modes of life to be signified as intolerable, unworthy, and exterminable. Therefore, we have conceived the curriculum as a coextensive confabulation with life. An assemblage capable of determining which modes of life will be produced and how they will be presented. A machination in which it is possible to qualify the livability of existences, to the point where the subjects addressed by it have their lives secured or annihilated (^{Paraíso, 2010b}). It's a territory that brings together discourses, images, experiences, knowledge, and reasoning in a web of power, in order to trigger what is 'normal' and 'abnormal', what is 'livable' and what is 'unlivable'. (^{Butler, 2017}, 2019).

What, for example, does a narrative like ^{The O.C. (2003-2007}) aim to teach by signifying the romantic involvement of the protagonist with another woman as one of the 'self-destructive' elements that ultimately leads to her death? What can we learn from ^{Them (2021}) through the repetition of the black body as marked with an inescapable target? We have been trying to understand how a certain 'scale of death' propagated by images in serialized media narratives has blurred the notions by which we identify individuals as human beings and their lives as fully 'livable'. These framings have resorted to a grammar of violence to normalize and give thickness to the dissident forms in which subjects express themselves regarding gender, sexuality, and race. In this sense, transgressions against norms have been configured as a kind of "mileage program" for a preordained death sentence, whose 'score' arises from a matrix in which the determinant is calculated and made recognizable through a gradient of intensities of different social markers, specifically gender, sexuality, and race.

However, far from falling into homogenizing archetypes of 'villain' or 'hero', we consider that such a curriculum is produced amidst tensions, conflicts, and struggles that constitute it as a hybrid artifact. This is because, beyond all the necropolitics at play, all the investments in addressing violence and death towards dissenting subjects, all the attempts to either normalize or annihilate difference, there are also spaces for escape, resistance, and the affirmation of life. It is in this 'in-between space' that this curriculum reaffirms certain meanings, accommodates some, excludes others, and multiplies the senses made available to its serial audience.

This conclusion was only possible through the multiple methodological orientations we adopted in this research. The analysis of discourse from a Foucauldian perspective, for example, allowed us to uncover some technologies activated by this curriculum, which at times contribute to the concealment of gender and sexuality expressions, and at other times engage in a necropolitical action that articulates meanings justifying the purge of the 'intolerable'-whether related to gender, sexuality, or race-through a 'program of death'. These images, while updating a certain 'repository' of gendered, sexualized, and racialized experiences, also teach, through fear, panic, and the uncertainty of tomorrow, the need to conform to normative ideals. It is, therefore, an 'apocalyptic pedagogy' that has been working to summon its audience to associate gender behaviors and experiences with imminent catastrophes of a collapsing world. (^{Gurgel, 2022}).

On the other hand, it was precisely the cartography that highlighted to us that, even though it is embedded within the logic of formatting ways of life and a demand for 'serialized' subjectivity, this curriculum is also capable of activating spaces of resistance, triggering escapes, and inaugurating minor existences. As we have pointed out in other contexts (Gurgel et al., 2021), there is also the possibility of producing a 'minor curriculum' within the very framework of the 'major curriculum' of serialized media narratives. Operating as a 'Trojan horse', some of these narratives take advantage of this normalizing space to promote small ruptures, facilitating 'unlearnings' of gender and sexuality that can disrupt certain stratification phenomena. Going beyond some normative conventions and establishing other ways of life beyond those related to the possibility of extermination, we were also able to arrive at an 'obscene curriculum' and a 'crazy curriculum' capable of articulating love and laughter as vectors to disaggregate what seeks to define, classify, restrain, and provide a certain 'safe grand finale'.

And isn't there, beneath the rubble of death politics and its necro-forces, the possibility of insurgency? May the poetic force of the curriculum help us arrive at some answers...

Concluding remarks

[settling accounts]

Stories matter. Narrating them is an act of power.

Stories tell stories that tell lives.

Stories tell stories that tell deaths.

Stories 'account for' deaths.

Stories 'qualify' lives.

Curricula shade. They enclose. They caffeinate.

Curricula can be narrated by silence, by silencing, by not speaking, by not being

Curricula can kill desire

They make a life intolerable. They make an existence unbearable

Curricula exterminate, expel, vomit.

Curricula make something abject

Curricula supplicate: they tear bodies, they cut into the flesh

'A curriculum can shed blood'

What can be known?

How can it be known?

Why? For whom?

A curriculum can shed blood in its assumed ignorance

[in what it does not allow to be known

A curriculum can shed blood when it defines the limits of what can be understood

[and when it excludes certain existences

A curriculum can shed blood when instead of preserving life

[it acts against it

'A curriculum can spills blood'

My TV perversely smiles in red at me

[and so many glass eyes and their black mirrors stare at me

A curriculum can shed blood when it bleeds itself

When I see myself on the screen being tortured

When I only exist in its images as a killable body

It bleeds because it operates in an episteme of violence

Orgy of the intolerable

Frequent flyer program

[and what if I enter the SERASA of dissidents?

[but my name is already stained

I wanted to postpone my death

What if we agree not to die?

One day I bled

'STOP KILLING US IN DRAMA AND IN REAL LIFE!'

I don't bleed anymore

[of zombies]

But not always not dying means being alive,

[that's what Evaristo told me

I could very well be a zombie just like all the others

programmed in the same existential circuit

strangled desire

suffocated difference

One of these days it came out on TV

'"THE MINISTRY OF HEALTH WARNS"

"Excessive consumption of serialized narratives can cause impotence of desire!"

We've become deaf to the possibilities of expansion

and of being affected

rhythming our existences

in the old cadence already resented

carrying the same burdens of subject positions

surviving in a wholesale logic

serial existences

a marathon runner who doesn't move

drowned in the same competitive lanes

sedated to avoid exploding

[the life...]

But it's always possible to chart a new course

[create a path

not everything is bad

[but rather dangerous

even what was presumed zombifying

can be an affirmation of life

can trigger other events

can tell other stories

islands of respite

drive the curriculum mad

make it obscene

make it smaller

[hack its cracks

'Trojan horse'

crack the fixed states of things

make desire proliferate

The curriculum is coextensive with life

fabulation without measures

thickness of our existences

it can spill blood

[but it can also spill so much beauty

it can tear our skins

[but also be a whirlwind to our intimate fascisms

it can chase us

[but also expand our strengths

it can be full of orders

[but also lift up the difference

'Curriculum spills blood'

'Curriculum overflows with life'