Livros e armas: cartografia de práticas discursivas de controle da leitura na ascensão da extrema-direita no Brasil.

Abstract

The objective of this research is to investigate the production of meanings about the book and reading in Brazil, starting with the ascension of the far-right wing to power with the victory of Jair Bolsonaro during the presidential elections of 2018. To this end, materials about three principal topics are being analyzed: the relationship between politics and reading in Brazil; the proposal of book taxation presented by Bolsonaro’s economical team; and episodes of book censorship that occurred during the Biyearly Book Fair of Rio de Janeiro and in the library of the Cultural Foundation Palmares. The research happened under the perspective of discourse studies, using theoretical concepts like cartography, discourse, power, dissymmetry between statements and polemic negation. The results indicate an intensification of control practices towards reading and occurrence of book censorship in the country between 2018 and 2022, i.e., during Bolsonaro’s term as president. The social relevance of this work is based on the need to investigate the processes of meaning production that permeate discourse practices about books and reading in Brazil, contributing to the debates about the planning of public policies against censorship, towards the promotion of reading and the strengthening of libraries in the country.