Multiculturalisms and the regulation of meaning: representations of black subjects in art textbooks

Abstract

This article analyzes representations of Black subjects in photographs featured in three volumes of the art textbooks from the Por Toda Parte collection, approved under the 2017 National Textbook Program (PNLD) call and intended for the final years of lower secondary education. Grounded in debates on multiculturalism, curriculum, and coloniality, the study adopts a qualitative documentary analysis informed by critical multiculturalism as well as postcolonial and decolonial perspectives. It first examines CNE/CP Opinion No. 3/2004 as a normative landmark for Education for Ethnic-Racial Relations, situating the legal assumptions that guide the production and evaluation of PNLD materials. The photographs are analyzed in terms of their distribution, discursive framing, and the positions of enunciation attributed to Black subjects. The findings show that, while the collection invokes cultural plurality, it largely links Blackness to popular cultural expressions (often folklorized or relegated to the past whereas) white subjects appear more frequently in diversified positions of cultural protagonism. Such framings restrict the construction of Black identities as contemporary historical subjects and as producers of knowledge, aesthetics, and technologies. Despite advances in acknowledging diversity, the textbooks remain within the limits of descriptive multiculturalism, indicating the need for more critical criteria for the selection and organization of visual content in Art education. This discussion is situated within Brazilian educational policy and textbook evaluation debates.