As comemorações do sete de setembro no período de 1930-1945: constituindo sujeitos na trama discursiva de uma instituição de ensino confessional católica

Abstract

This dissertation discusses a set of discourses about the commemoration of Brazil's Independence Day (September 7th) held in the period from 1930 to 1945 as a constitutive part of the school curriculum. This is done on the basis of publications of the "Colégio Anchieta" in Porto Alegre, state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. The goal of this investigation is to show the productivity of that commemoration in terms of its effects on the constitution of subjects on the basis of the practices and the investment of power and knowledge that was involved in these practices. It focuses on how this production process took place on the basis of the discourses that pervaded the practices that instituted the mode of commemorating these events and produced subject positions in the process. In order to carry out the analysis, the author looks for inspiration in notions developed by Foucault. In this respect the notion of discourse, inscribed into a post-structuralist perspective, plays a central role. She argues that there were productive, microphysical foci of power throughout the social network and that they were not simply centered in the state and the church. As these micro-powers were activated, modes of behavior, of being and living were established that corresponded to a society that was in the midst of a modernization process as well as to an authoritarian political regime and the postulations of the Catholic Church. The research body is made up of 18 issues of the magazine "O Eco" and 16 annual reports published by Colégio Anchieta during that period (1930-1945). The discourses' statements were organized on the basis of regularities and the definition of the following discoursive sets: disciplining of the body in order to live in the collective; order; progress and freedom; citizenship; sacredness of the motherland; invention of a past. The mutual crossing of these discoursive sets constituted subject positions by establishing specific modes of being a Brazilian citizen: disciplined, educated, patriotic, male and Christian.