POLITICS AND EMPTY SIGNIFIERS: AN ANALYSIS OF THE SECONDARY EDUCATION REFORM OF 2017

ABSTRACT: The article analyzes the Secondary Education Reform (Law 13.145/17) and Bill 6840/13, addressing the differences and similarities between them and the different political contexts in which they emerged. We seek to understand the Reform as part of a broader movement of “educational reformism” in light of the concepts of Laclau and Mouffe’s political theory. The Secondary Education Reform became a hegemonic discourse before the Temer government, aiming to fill an empty signifier: the crisis of high school. With the emergence of the institutional coup in 2016 there was a rupture, allowing a heterogeneous range of left political groups, positioned in different fields, to unite against a new common enemy: the coup government. In this new framework, a more cohesive and unified opposition bloc was constituted with regard to the Secondary Education Reform, within which there is the possibility of hegemonizing a position contrary to it.