The subject-position of women police officers in brazil's public security forces: the discursive event and the circulation-clash of meanings in networks

Abstract

In this study, we aim to analyze the entry of women into public security forces in Brazil as a discursive event and discuss the effects of this dynamic within digital media networks. To this end, we draw upon the theoretical framework of Discourse Analysis (DA) from a materialist perspective, founded by Michel Pêcheux and further developed by other scholars. For the construction of the research corpus, we began by observing discursive regularity and followed a thematic trajectory, which introduces novelty through repetition (Guilhaumou; Maldidier; Robin, 2016). First, using the Lightshot application, we captured screenshots of posts related to the mentioned theme on digital networks and compiled an archive of discursive materialities. From this archive, we then extracted segments to construct both a main corpus and an auxiliary corpus, following the guidelines of Kramer Wanderley (2020). The main corpus consists of eleven discursive sequences from posts published by various profiles on the social media platform Instagram, as well as selected comments on those posts. The auxiliary corpus comprises five discursive sequences from Facebook, as well as from the websites Defesa em Foco, the São Paulo State Legislative Assembly, and Agência Gov. The results indicate that the presence of female police officers in security forces in Brazil constitutes a discursive event, as it disrupts and (de)regularizes the memory of both militaristic and sexist discourse, establishing a new set of meanings for the Brazilian police force—one that now includes both men and women, with women occupying a space previously restricted solely to men. However, given the interplay of memory, militaristic discourse—now featuring the presence of women—continues to be influenced by and subject to the discursive effects of sexist ideology, creating tensions within this discursive process. Within this framework, the imaginary formations of the female subject and her social role, as well as the institutional imaginary of the police and the police officer as a subject, not only determine meanings but are also affected by the event, thereby shifting the various subject positions in discourse within and across digital networks. Furthermore, based on Pêcheux (2014a), we recognize that the possibilities of meaning transformation, under ideological tensions, impact the class struggle and intertwine with the gender struggle within the discourse framework. Nonetheless, in light of Pêcheux’s (2014a) reflections on ideology, the visibility effect of the "female police officer" subject position within social and digital networks generates resistance effects, as it challenges the determinations of interdiscourse, which, in this context, is predominantly governed by sexist ideology. In this scenario, digital and social networks become arenas for the circulation and confrontation of the discursive event, where meanings undergo metaphorization under the tensions of paraphrase and polysemy (Orlandi, 2020a). In this way, the discursive event introduces ambiguity in meanings and destabilizes the memory networks of Brazilian militaristic discourse, while simultaneously establishing a new subject within this discourse: the female police officer.