IMAGE AS BURDEN: VISUAL SUBALTERNITY AND THE ROLE OF EDUCATION IN VISUAL CULTURE

This article seeks to analyze what I call school’s visual culture, especially the visual universe of textbooks. Using classic references, such as Pierre Bourdieu and Michael Apple, and readings from cultural and decolonial studies, we seek to outline a framework to analyze the role of images in school’s scientific/visual culture. This issue becomes particularly important in the so- called multicultural context, where the claim of visibility of subaltern groups becomes a central dispute. In this sense, we present an analysis of eight textbooks adopted in a second public school in Rio de Janeiro, Brasil. The central purpose is to interpret the extent to which these representations make up the imaginary of what we know as scientific knowledge, building a network of meanings that support the idea of a restricted humanity. Finally, we make some reflections on the role of social sciences’ education in the critical analysis of the image and in the confrontation of the hegemonic visual culture