BETWEEN EMANCIPATION AND CULTURAL INDUSTRY: A CRITICAL-EMANCIPATORY READING OF ELENOR KUNZ'S CRITICAL-EMANCIPATORY APPROACH

Abstract

This article critically analyzes Elenor Kunz’s critical‑emancipatory pedagogical approach in school Physical Education, focusing on how it articulates the concepts of critique, emancipation and cultural industry. Based on a theoretical and conceptual essay‑type analysis, it draws on Critical Theory, historical‑cultural psychology, sports sociology and media‑education studies, confronting Kunz’s assumptions with the concrete conditions of Brazilian basic schooling. The argument is that the critical‑emancipatory conception contributes by making explicit the links between high‑performance sport, media and processes of commodification of movement culture, as well as by claiming a pedagogical treatment of sport that goes beyond uncritical reproduction of techniques and rules. However, examining its theoretical foundations reveals limits in transposing the Frankfurt School’s critique of the cultural industry to the field of Physical Education, tending to produce a homogeneous and mainly negative view of sports media, which largely overlooks the phenomenon’s ambivalences and students’ agency. Furthermore, the feasibility of demanding a systematically critical‑emancipatory stance in basic education is questioned, given restrictions related to literacy, teacher education and the asymmetry of power between schools and the media market. It is concluded that Kunz’s proposal is more fruitful when understood as a critical horizon to be recontextualized and negotiated within concrete pedagogical practices, rather than as a methodological model fully applicable to everyday lessons.