Construção da identidade política: discursos de Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva

Abstract

This study is developed in the field of discourse analysis and examines the processes of building the identity of political man in two speeches made by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva: one as president of the recently founded Workers Party in 1981, and the other as president of Brazil in 2003. The methodological procedures informing the analysis are mainly derived from the discursive semiotics of Algirdas Julien Greimas (1979) and his disciples, in particular Bernard Lamizet (1992) and Eric Landowski (1989 and 1997), who poses the subject's identity as formed through intermediation of the Other. From this perspective, the analysis focuses on the processes of building, assimilating and transforming the identity of Lula as politician, with the point of reference being the notion of labor - since the latter is the main theme throughout his political career. Analysis of the two speeches points to the constant promise of renewal in accordance with the notion of bricolage (in the Claude Lévi- Straussian sense) and it is recognized that the parties opposing the PT in ideological terms mediated his transformation in terms of identity. In his trade-unionist speech, labor is seen as an instrument of controlling power, as fundamental for the struggle against the ruling class and creating the dysphoric opposition between employee (exploited) and employer (exploiter). In his speech as president, dysphoria is disassembled; labor loses the sense of control to be given that of driver for progress, causing the subject-president to become "dissimilar" to the working class and similar to the ruling class, thus characterizing the process of the former's assimilation