Representation and Diversity in Art Textbooks
A critical analysis of images of Black people in the "Jornada Novos Caminhos" collection (PNLD 2024/2027)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.48075/rt.v20i2.36936Keywords:
textbook, art education, ethnic-racial relations, regimes of visualityAbstract
This article critically analyzes the modes of representation of Black people in Art textbooks for the 6th grade of Brazilian Elementary Education, taking as its object of study the Jornada: Novos Caminhos collection (Saraiva Publishing House, 2022), distributed through the National Textbook and Teaching Materials Program (PNLD 2024–2027). Grounded in Cultural Studies and in the contributions of Stuart Hall (2016), José Carlos Libâneo (1994), and Vera Maria Candau (2012), the study understands the textbook as a political-pedagogical device and a medium for the circulation of regimes of visuality that produce meanings, identities, and racial hierarchies within the school context. Methodologically, the research is based on documentary and iconographic analysis, combining quantitative and qualitative data regarding the presence, framing, and contexts in which images appear. The results reveal the centrality of whiteness as a silent norm and the controlled management of Black presence, marked by numerical asymmetries, stereotyping, and recurrent associations between Blackness, territorial vulnerability, and social deprivation. Although images of Black empowerment and protagonism are present, they appear as depoliticized exceptions, often detached from critical pedagogical mediation. The article concludes that, without a critical, intercultural, and anti-racist didactic approach aligned with Brazilian Law No. 10.639/2003, the material tends to naturalize racial inequalities and reinforce symbolic hierarchies in the visual curriculum of Art education.
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References
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