Educação submersa: análise de processos educacionais na obra literária “A Língua Submersa”, de Manoel Herzog

Abstract

This study is based on the work "The Submerged Tongue" by Manoel Herzog. The book projects a post-environmental cataclysm future in which only one region in Latin America survived the advancing waters, receiving the name Bolivana-Zumbi. Its remaining middle class has restructured itself based on evangelical command, Chinese influence, and the obligation to restore nature, but continues with its rivalries and discrimination. Above all, the book deals with the force of human destruction. The general objective of the research is the analysis of the educational processes portrayed in "The Submerged Tongue," a dystopian work by Manoel Herzog, considering the role it plays in the fictional society and in contemporary reality, exploring its use as a means of control and oppression, the inequality of access to knowledge, the impact of the manipulation of history, and the ways in which resistance manifests itself through access to knowledge in scenarios of extreme oppression. In the methodology of the bibliographic research undertaken, the study procedures involved a textual and interpretative analysis of the work "A Língua Submersa" (The Submerged Language), by Manoel Herzog, focusing on the narrative, symbolic, and discursive elements that highlight the educational processes present in the work. Initially, a complete reading of the work was carried out to identify passages that address, directly or indirectly, issues related to education, learning, the transmission of knowledge, and the interactions between language and cultural formation. Methods of literary analysis were used, such as the examination of characters, settings, dialogues, and themes, in addition to an intertextual study to identify possible relationships between the elements of the work and current pedagogical or cultural concepts. The theoretical analysis was conducted based on reflections about the educational processes that permeate dystopian literary texts, through the contributions of authors such as Sacristán and Gómez (1998), Gonçalves Filho (2002), Perissé (2006), and Lima (2022), among others, who offer a dialogue on the role of education as a tool for control, resistance, and emancipation in sci-fi (science fiction) scenarios. The analyzed narrative allows for reflection on educational practices and intellectual resistance, making the book a lens through which one can analyze how Brazilian dystopia deals with these issues. From the analyses, it can be concluded that access to knowledge, conveyed through language and literature, manifests itself as the last hope to bring society from chaos to order, promoting the capacity to question the system and project a future.