Struggles to Mean Social Justice: The New High School in Brazil

Abstract

This paper departs from the political dispute surrounding the revocation or improvement of the New Secondary School (NEM), a nationally centralized curriculum policy approved in Brazil at a time of democratic rupture (2017). It aims to understand some of the paths that the restructuring of public policies for education has been taking in Brazil in the new Lula government and its potential effects on the lives of vulnerable populations. It starts from a post-foundational conception of politics, understanding it as a dispute over the power to signify, in this case, terms such as social justice and reduction of inequalities. It presents positions defended by the two groups constituted in the political dispute for and against the NEM in the mainstream media, in social networks, in academic debates, as well as in official documents and websites. It argues that the groups signify social justice, respectively, from an economic or critical standpoint, and argues that social justice cannot be achieved without a commitment to alterity