O espetáculo político e a docilização do corpo na campanha eleitoral de Lula em 2002

Abstract

The 2002 Brazilian election for the presidency featured an intense effort of the press to keep under surveillance the Labor Party candidate, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who was most favorable in pre-election public opinion. Media speculations were principally based on a systematic comparison of Lula.s 2002 image with that broadcasted in previous election campaigns without the help of marketer Duda Mendonça. The relevance of such a phenomenon on current social and historical situation in Brazilian politics triggered current research. Its main aim consists of an analysis on whether the change in the discoursed profile by the press, denounced as body softening fabricated by the Labor party marketer, may be considered as a body softener naturalized by the Brazilian press media itself. The solution for such an important issue in current research has been provided by the construction of a media file with all the editions of the three most popular weekly magazines in Brazil. Six Época, IstoÉ and Veja editions (two of each) published during the election period were taken as research corpus. Since the two historical moments experienced by Lula had to be compared, only those issues in which the candidate featured in the front cover were chosen. Although theoretical and methodological foregrounding of French Discourse Analysis were provided, a dialogue with other theoreticians dealing with Anthropology, Philosophy, Sociology, Communication, Physical Education, Text Linguistics and studies on the image-text were also analyzed. This decision was due to the fact that discourse is not limited to the written text but also comprises body expressions and gestures which are also under analysis. Further, a discussion on the relationships between the social media and contemporary politics is highly relevant from the conceptual point of view. Therefore, within this framework current, research investigated conditions of production of the election period, summarized Lula.s historical and political trajectory to the presidency and endeavored an interpretation of the enunciations and pictures produced by the press on the candidate. Crisscrossing, discursiveness and possible effects of meanings were thus focused. Results showed that press critical texts are based on gesture and behavioral norms which, on surveillance, punish when it produces a pictorial representation that makes possible the meaning effect of a softened and modified body.