Researching how to intertwine: gestures and cartographies between practices and policies of inclusive special education

Abstract

This text stems from research conducted at a public university in the State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Using a cartographic approach (as a web), the research was designed based on the concept of the rhizome (Deleuze;Guattari, 2011), tracing lines between relationships that were being produced with the world, with life, with school... entering through the middle, into the field of education in difference. This movement was carried out through the writing of diaries presented as images (in transparency) on a school mural and through collages, devices that recount the way of conducting research that moves like a web, multiplying the thoughts of two authors who, in an implicated way, ask themselves: How to produce research as gestures and in webs? How do policies connect with life? Thus, a web is explored using three legal instruments: the National Policy on Special Education from the Perspective of Inclusive Education (2008), the Charter of Regulations of the Niterói Education Network (2015), and Deliberation No. 35/2017. Without disregarding the importance of other academic research methods, we present a composition of gestures, in the sense that Agamben (2008, 2017 and 2018) gives to this concept, to consider the interplay of a pedagogue between politics and gestures with teachers, families, and students diagnosed with disabilities in a public school in Niterói/RJ. These interplays made it possible to consider the production of knowledge as a research gesture and to expand the word "include" in a more ethical sense (as a gesture) than in a normative/technical sense within the educational relationship.