Coloniality and Portuguese language textbooks

the epistemic silence of subalternized peoples

Abstract

Textbooks are fundamental material for teaching practice in our country. In this sense, this study investigates how the Portuguese Language textbook (LD) Português: Línguas, through the choices of the main texts of each chapter made by its authors, can contribute to perpetuating colonialist discourses and visions in our society. To this end, we use as theoretical support thoughts on decoloniality (Mignolo, 2007; 2010; Quijano, 2005; 2007; Maldonado-Torres, 2007), on decolonial pedagogy (Walsh, 2009; 2013) and on the production of textbooks (Oliveira, 2017). Using qualitative, bibliographical and documentary methodology (Minayo, 2010; Pádua, 1997), the analyses conducted lead us to believe in the fundamental importance of putting into practice the concept of critical interculturality (Walsh, 2007) in the production of teaching materials, in addition to the need to train teachers who are able and willing to open cracks and fissures in the colonial matrix of power. Thus, in this research, we argue that it is crucial to place differences in dialogue and friction in textbooks, valuing them through a multicultural bias, transforming the absence of knowledge, which we call epistemic silencing, into presence and representation. Including, in an equitable manner, texts by women, black people, indigenous people, LGTBQIA+ populations, quilombolas, and riverside communities in textbooks is a form of resistance to the Coloniality of Power and Knowledge, a form of epistemic and cultural insurgency against the Colonial Matrix of Power and its ways of massacring and subordinating the peoples of the global South. In conclusion, we believe that it is urgent that textbook authors and publishers in our country pay closer attention to equity in their text choices, break with what is imposed as canon, and give visibility to what is produced by subordinating people. Therefore, it is essential to use “decolonial lenses” in the production of textbooks so that they can contribute to the construction of other ways of seeing, living, being, and feeling in the world, especially from the moment in which they pluralize their discourses and promote identification and a sense of belonging on the part of students and teachers, their clients, and consumers.