Educação, poder e discurso: a imprensa aracajuana e a AIDS na década de 80

Abstract

This study analyzes the discursive forms through which AIDS was narrated by the print media in Aracaju from 1983 to 1988, from the perspective of an educational form of power within local society. The selected newspapers, Jornal da Cidade, Jornal de Sergipe, and Gazeta de Sergipe, were examined through a post-structuralist lens, viewing them as non-school curricula and as sources of education that transcend traditional educational institutions, thereby shaping alternative narratives within social memory. Multifaceted and tracing diverse paths in a plural nation, AIDS was narrated in a particular way by the Brazilian press, which, undergoing transformations during that period, seemed to race against time to deliver information to society about the exotic “plague” that primarily affected homosexuals. News articles were selected to construct a chronological narrative throughout each year. The initial selection was guided by the presence of the signifiers “AIDS” and “disease” in their headlines or content, in accordance with the analytical approches of Hall (2016) and Silva (2011). These were later re-evaluated through Deleuze’s (1992) concept of “repetition”, which determined the reports analyzed in this study. The research reveals, through its treatment of AIDS during the 1980s, how the press in Aracaju reflected discourses shaped by dominant powers of the time, how images carry “striae” (Foucault, 1987, p. 51), and how these images populated the collective imagination. Ultimately, it was possible to observe that the media, in its various forms, and particularly the printed press, was able to structure and capture the attention of its audience within a society of spectacles.