Meritocracy discourse: an analysis of enunciative regularity in institutional statements and in 3% series

Abstract

3% (Netflix Brasil, 2016) is a TV series that presents a universe divided into two sides: the inland, which is miserable and impoverished, and the offshore, known as Maralto, described as ideal and abundant. In the plot, the twenty-year-old inland inhabitants are summoned by the Process, which is in charge of applying tests to select 3% of them to Maralto. The process, which has the slogan ‘You are the creator of your own merit’, represents the only legal way to enter the other side. Leaving the scope of the series, the National High School Examination (ENEM), prepared by the Ministry of Education, acts as a gateway to universities, disclosed as a way to ‘achieve dreams’ and, above all, as a matter of merit, according to what MEC itself states: ‘one who prepares itself (for ENEM) will get along’. That said, this research aims, based on Foucauldian Discourse Analysis studies, to analyze the constitution of the enunciative regularity between the meritocracy discourse in MEC institutional statements and in 3%, through the Process and ENEM statements, which are taken as discursive events and will be described and interpreted on the basis of Foucauldian archegenealogy concepts of discourse, event, governmentality and biopower. Methodology is based on the bibliographical research followed by statements clipping for the enunciative series elaboration, which is useful to understand the object and the discourse of meritocracy. The analysis leads to the conclusion that there are similarities between the Process and ENEM, producing the dialogue among both. In other words, the speech of meritocracy in 3% can be found in the statements of MEC.