ABSTRACT
This paper aims to analyze the emergence and uses of the notion of biopolitics in Brazilian educational research through a compilation of the articles published in the main journals of the field, in which the notion was proposed, in the period from 2001 to 2016 - more specifically, fifty-one texts published in twenty-one journals. Five main argumentative categories were created from the analyzed data. The first one encompasses historiographical approaches; it’s followed by studies that focus on the body/health and by those that focus on sexuality/gender. The two other types of appropriation are associated with the theme of governmentality: in the first case, the matter of inclusion stands out; in the second one, neoliberalism and its effects on educational practices is the center. The final discussions of the article present three main topics: the vigorous nexus between the biopolitics radium and its materialization in educational practices; the undisputed strength of a pedagogical governmentality based on the mutually regulating games between citizenship, education and truth of oneself; and the need for analytical attention to a normalizing crusade of a biopsychopedagogical and formative-instructional nature that seems to have undermined most, if not all, of the existential spheres.
Keywords:
Biopolitics; Governmentality; Michel Foucault; Educational journals