The Enlightenment upside down: the context of graduate studies in Brazil

Abstract

The article is divided into three parts. In the first one, it describes some aspects of the way in which the general political direction of the FHC administration affected higher education in Brazil, a direction that seems to have been adopted by the current Lula da Silva administration as well. On the one hand, the official discourse reaffirms the need for graduate studies of high quality, but, on the other, the government develops policies that in fact take away the indispensable resources from the educational system, particularly from the university and graduate studies programs. In the second part, the article describes the generally accepted paradigm that we live in a society of knowledge and analyzes the concept of knowledge that it presupposes. In this context, it points out that the concept of knowledge went through a series of redefinitions and reconfigurations and was reduced to the vocabulary of “practice rather than theory.” As a consequence, it is no longer seen as necessary to inquire about truth or about the very possibility of objective knowledge. Finally, the author briefly expresses some of her concerns in relation to the trends in Brazilian postgraduate studies programs at present.

Key words: Higher Education, Knowledge, Research.