Do giro epistemológico ao giro ontológico: o movimento subjetivista na Educação Física brasileira

Abstract

This research investigated the expression of the postmodern agenda within Brazilian Physical Education (BPE). The main objective was to understand how the theoretical ramifications of the postmodern agenda are expressed in BPE literature and, in light of the historical-dialectical materialist approach, to identify whether the relationship between language and objective reality, as presented by the theoretical currents of the postmodern agenda, acts as a catalyst for an idealist ontological understanding and a shift in the ontology of labor as foundational to social being. The method of historical-dialectical materialism was employed, structuring the investigation into bibliometric and theoretical dimensions. Data collection was conducted through the analysis of the 13 volumes of the 40th Anniversary Collection of the Brazilian College of Sport Sciences (CBCE) and searches across 18 national journals linked to the sociocultural and pedagogical fields of BPE. From these searches, the following categories emerged: Postmodern, Post-structural, Post-critical, and Post-human, leading us to name this phenomenon the "Subjectivist Movement" due to the theoretical similarities among the categories, with a predominance of the postmodern category in the area's literature, particularly in publications from the Southeast region. The history of ontological theories in Western philosophy was analyzed using György Lukács's ontological theory, as expounded in Towards the Ontology of Social Being, as the foundation for this analysis. Finally, reference was made to the work of Jean-François Lyotard, one of the main pillars of postmodern critique. It was concluded that the linguistic turn acts as a catalyst for a shift toward an idealist ontology which, by fragmenting the understanding of reality and promoting individualism, serves and legitimizes—even if inadvertently—the maintenance and reproduction needs of the neoliberal capitalist system, thereby confirming the initial hypothesis of an ontological turn within postmodern epistemology.