FROM DEMOCRATIC UTOPIA TO DYSTOPIAN EXPERIENCE: HUMAN DIVERSITY, HUMAN RIGHTS, AND PUBLIC INCLUSION POLICIES IN BRAZIL

Abstract

This article analyzes the relationships between democracy, human diversity, human rights, and inclusion policies in Brazil through the theoretical articulation of the categories of democratic utopia and dystopian experience. It assumes that democracy should not be understood exclusively as a form of political and institutional organization, but also as a normative horizon committed to human dignity, equality of rights, social participation, recognition of diversity, and the creation of conditions for the effective exercise of citizenship. Within this horizon, democratic utopia represents a historical possibility of a society founded on the expansion of rights and participation, while dystopian experience constitutes an analytical category for understanding situations in which formally recognized rights remain partially or unequally experienced. Methodologically, this is a qualitative bibliographical and documentary study based on research on utopia, dystopia, human rights, disability, diversity, public policies, and inclusive education, articulated with the analysis of national and international normative documents. The study draws on authors such as Bloch, Mannheim, Sargent, Levitas, Moylan, Claeys, Charlton, Shakespeare, Garland-Thomson, Degener, McRuer, Kafer. It argues that the distance between declared rights and lived rights reveals structural, cultural, institutional, pedagogical, and communicational barriers that restrict the participation of certain social groups. In the field of disability and deafness, this distance can be observed when formal equality does not translate into accessibility, autonomy, participation, and recognition of difference. Public policies therefore emerge as a fundamental mediation between the normative horizon of human rights and the concrete experience of subjects. The article concludes that overcoming dystopian experiences requires humanized public policies, social participation, accessibility, recognition of singularities, and protagonism of subjects historically subjected to exclusion processes. In this movement, social transformation can be understood as democratic praxis oriented toward the continuous approximation between recognized rights and rights effectively lived.