CURRICULUM, HEALTH AND SCHOOL: BIOPOLITICAL TECHNOLOGIES IN SCIENCE TEXTBOOKS

Abstract

This paper discusses the formation of subjectivities through the school curriculum and the aesthetics of pictures about the human body three eighth grade elementary school science textbooks. This phenomenon is discussed from the perspective of the concepts of biopower and biopolitics of Foucault’s theories. There are many technologies of power operating through the representations of the body present in these books. Among these technologies, we can mention, as examples, medical discourse, sport, cultural industry, fashion, and advertising. The images present in the books, and selected for analysis, refer to biological explanations of how the body works, and also represent attitudes in relation to health, or sports. However, what we see in the images, in a more striking way, is a certain esthetic standardization of the body, in relation to both beauty and health. What acts in this standardization are complex biopolitical technologies that can create forms of subjectivity in that students that make frequent use of the images, such as distorted notions of beauty and health, and standardization of attitudes, among others.