BETWEEN THEORIES, LAWS AND EXPERIMENTS: FOUCAULT`S KNOWLEDGE-POWER RELATIONSHIP AND THE PRODUCTION OF MASCULINE SUBJECTIVITIES IN NATURAL SCIENCE TEXTBOOKS

Abstract

Analyzing the production of masculinities in science textbooks directly confronts Michel Foucault's concept of the knowledge-power relationship, since power produces knowledge, and knowledge cannot exist outside of power relations. For this analysis, a complete reading of the six books in the collection was first conducted, searching for images of scientists. Subsequently, the summaries were mapped to identify titles mentioning men's names. The results showed 6 images of male scientists and 11 of female scientists; however, the summaries identified 23 titles, all mentioning male scientists. These results lead us to question the role of science education in perpetuating a masculine science, because even though images of female scientists are more numerous, the presence of power that produces masculine, sovereign, hegemonic knowledge, legitimized and inscribed through laws, theories, and experiments, is palpable.