Decree 6.949/2009: advance or return to the same point in Deaf Education?

Abstract

This paper is about the laws and decrees edited by the Brazilian government and in the São Paulo State in the last nine years, focused on the standardization of educational language policies for deaf students. These laws and decrees resulted from international conventions promulgated by the UN and/or from recommendations provided by the International Disability Alliance (IDA). In this direction, the article analyzes the practices of the National Federation of Deaf People and the IDA to ensure both the compliance of the Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the interpretation of these terms, which does not legitimize the practices of linguistic assimilation of deaf people. In order to discuss the normalizing character that the laws and decrees bring along, the concept of biopower, as postulated by Michel Foucault, is revisited. In this article, the authors discuss the effects of ambiguities present in these laws for the training of teachers. The authors suggest that these laws and decrees, in particular the Convention of the Right of Persons with Disabilities are, in their terms, neither an advance, nor a return to the same point. The speeches focused on the human rights constitute an active field of struggles between a specific form of state regulation by the action of the biopower and an active practice of those who want to create fissures within this logic. 

Key words: Convention of the Right of Persons with Disabilities, deaf education, biopowder, human rights.