em caxias a filosofia en-caixa?

práticas concretas de um projeto de educação filosófica, contracolonialista e antirracista

Abstract

This writing seeks to investigate, based on the practices of the project "In Caxias, philosophy in a box?", a partnership between the Center for Studies in Philosophy and Childhood (NEFI) of the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ) and the Joaquim da Silva Peçanha Municipal School, Duque de Caxias, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the implications and intersections of a philosophical education that affirms itself as counter-colonial and anti-racist in a country marked by structural racism and colonialism. The project has been developing philosophy practices with children for almost twenty years in the public school system of the city of Duque de Caxias, a peripheral region of the State of Rio de Janeiro, resisting the silencing of ancestral knowledge and memories that marginalize Black bodies and especially those of children.

We bring together concepts: from Antônio Bispo dos Santos (Nego Bispo), counter-coloniality and the logic of "beginning-middle-beginning" in opposition to school training and the logic of "beginning-middle-end". Their Quilombola way of thinking and way of life inspire us to view public schools as a confluent territory that does not separate knowledge, but rather strengthens it by converging; from Gloria Anzaldúa, the notions of "mestiza consciousness" and "border territories" bring us closer to other colonial realities and possible resistance movements by subverting the logic of creating epistemic borders for the purpose of separation, assuming the power of border territories; and from Lélia Gonzalez, who, with "Pretuguês" (Black Portuguese), shows us that these territories invent their places to affirm life despite the racism that is also strongly structured in the subjectivation of the Brazilian population.

The project is based on a wandering and "philosophically questioning girl" pedagogy, which prioritizes curiosity, questions, and perplexity over ready-made answers and productivity, presenting two practical experiences carried out in 2025 at the Joaquim da Silva Peçanha Municipal School. These are evidence of an experience with philosophical education of different textures and vibrations within the context of racialized bodies in everyday political and social life, and which challenge dehumanization and epistemicide.