Para além dos muros do preconceito: a produção discursiva sobre pessoas soropositivas no processo de escolarização

Abstract

This thesis is situated within the field of Public Policies in Education, Formative Processes, and Diversity, and problematizes the school curriculum as a space for the production and management of differences. The research investigates the regimes of truth produced about seropositive bodies in the schooling process, focusing on perceptions of HIV and AIDS in the context of high school education in the State of São Paulo. The main objective was to analyze the school experiences of seropositive individuals and perceptions of HIV and AIDS in the educational formation of differences. To achieve this objective, a mixed-methods approach was adopted, combining qualitative and quantitative procedures, organized into three interdependent studies corresponding to the specific objectives of the research and understood as parts of a single analytical trajectory. The theoretical framework is grounded in Foucauldian and post-structural thought, as it enables the questioning of regimes of truth, power relations, and processes of subjectivation involved in the production of discourses about HIV, AIDS, and seropositive individuals. The first study, of a documentary and bibliographic nature, analyzed scientific and non-scientific publications on HIV, AIDS, and seropositive individuals, as well as documents and guidelines related to high school education in the State of São Paulo, using Foucauldian archaeology. The results showed that the history of HIV and AIDS has been constructed under regimes of truth marked by stigma and prejudice and that, in the contemporary school context of São Paulo, the theme appears in a limited way in the documents and materials used by students. Once this limitation was identified, the study sought to understand students’ perceptions of the topic. Thus, the second study, combining quantitative and qualitative approaches, investigated students’ perceptions through an online questionnaire. The data revealed superficial, confusing, and poorly grounded understandings of HIV, AIDS, and seropositive experiences, indicating significant gaps in school formative processes. Based on both data sets, the focus turned to understanding the role of the school through the perceptions of seropositive individuals, both in HIV prevention and in the comprehension of living with HIV. In this context, the third study, of a qualitative nature, analyzed narratives from four seropositive individuals who had completed high school, obtained through semi-structured interviews using the snowball sampling technique. The analysis indicated that schools did not systematically address themes related to HIV and AIDS, thereby fostering processes of stigmatization, silencing, and suffering, leading to experiences of exclusion and symbolic death. Taken together, these interconnected studies demonstrate that the school curriculum functions as a central device in the production, maintenance, and potential transformation of regimes of truth about living with HIV. It is concluded that schools, when guided by the care of the self as an aesthetic of existence, can contribute to breaking down prejudice, welcoming differences, and building a culture of care, in which seropositive individuals are recognized as subjects of rights, knowledge, and existence, beyond the walls of prejudice.