Propositions on the notion of subject in pedagogical work ^{1 2 3}

Abstract

In this work, we systematize the study of the notion of the subject, its relations, and implications in teachers' pedagogical work. We produced and analyzed data using the Analysis of the Movements of Senses. This theoretical and methodological foundation aims to study the senses in the discourses, works, and productions that constitute the corpus of the bibliographic study. Pedagogical work is seen as a process in which teachers recognize themselves as working-class members. They produce in this context, despite social contradictions, aiming to overcome and be aware of their historicity.

Keywords
Pedagogical work; Subject; Analysis of Senses Movements

Resumo

Sistematiza-se estudo sobre a noção de sujeito, suas relações e implicações no trabalho pedagógico dos professores. A produção e a análise dos dados aconteceram por meio da Análise dos Movimentos de Sentidos, fundamento teórico e metodológico que visa ao estudo dos sentidos nos discursos, nas obras e nas produções que integraram o corpus do estudo bibliográfico. O trabalho pedagógico é tratado como um processo em que os professores se reconhecem como integrantes de uma classe trabalhadora e, em tal contexto, produzem, a despeito das contradições sociais, com vistas à superação, conscientes de sua historicidade.

Palavras-chave
trabalho pedagógico; sujeito; Análise dos movimentos dos sentidos

Resumen

Se sistematiza un estudio sobre la noción de sujeto, sus relaciones e implicaciones en el trabajo pedagógico de los docentes. La producción y análisis de los datos se realizó a través del Análisis de los Movimientos de los Sentidos, fundamento teórico y metodológico que tiene como objetivo el estudio de los sentidos en los discursos, es decir, en los trabajos y producciones que integraron el corpus de la bibliografía. El trabajo pedagógico es tratado como un proceso en el que los docentes se reconocen como miembros de una clase trabajadora y, en este contexto, producen, a pesar de las contradicciones sociales, con miras a la superación, conscientes de su historicidad.

Palabras clave
trabajo pedagógico; tema; Análisis de los movimientos de los sentidos

Introduction

Considering that the school is part of the capitalist society and, within it, the relations between the subjects occur amid the capitalist mode of production, this text aims to present propositions about the notion of the subject, its implications, and relations with the pedagogical work of teachers. This work is mainly located in the school (and other socially expanded places), space and time where the subjects represent themselves following their knowledge positions: managers, students, families, external subjects to the school, rulers, and many others directly or indirectly involved in the institution. These subjects interact and educate themselves, through their coexistence, within this confluence to enact the pedagogical work⁴. Thus, we think about the condition of subjects, considering the subjective meanings⁵ reformulated and reviewed throughout life. The fact is that everything affects what a person is. An effect as a tool for new elaborations, new symbolic, imaginary, and real institutions. Human beings produce meanings from the social and historical basis on which they are and experience. So, we can say that to live is to propose a new elaboration of the world, i.e., a singular creation of the social, even if from the historical determinations of one's reality. Each subject has their way of being, and lives within their culture and society, which interferes with their space and time, making them seek ways of being, living, and coexisting.

Therefore, we are based on the idea that the subject constitution occurs dialectically. Objectivity and subjectivity are contradictory poles of the same reality. We do not deny one dimension or the other. On the contrary, we seek to overcome the dichotomous and naturalizing view of the human being. As Gonçalves (2015) points out when writing about overcoming this dichotomy: "Although they affirm their importance and specificity, as contrary elements, objectivity and subjectivity are established, at the same time, as a unit of opposites, in constant movement of transformation" (2015, p. 56, our translation).

In this perspective, this text reflects on the meanings of the subject when approaching pedagogical work, understanding that teachers' work is pedagogical par excellence (Ferreira, 2017; 2018). To this end, we dialogued with Pedagogy and Psychology authors, aiming to systematize the conception of subject, their relationship, and pedagogical work, as teachers' specific work, understood as subjects.

To raise our arguments, we carried out a study⁶ grounded theoretically and methodologically on the Analysis of Movements of The Senses - AMS, applying data production techniques through bibliographic research. We highlight that a systematization article results from the elaboration of arguments by resuming notes, re-analyzing, and comparing them. Thus, we apply AMS as an organized way of dealing with the material to be systematized, observing, interpreting, and establishing relationships between the senses in their recurrences and, from them, categorizing. The work with categories allows the elaboration of meanings in blocks. Based on them, the authors produce paragraphs, cohesively interconnect sections, and establish a text, creating a systematization. Finally, AMS is a work foundation focused on the study of discourses. Discourses are understood as materialities whose movements, meanings, in their contradictions, contexts, historicities are transformed into categories. In this perspective, the discourses are configured in recurrences and material evidence elaborated by the subjects. As such, they allow the analysis of phenomena when considered as data. Finally, we understand that if one subject, and not another, produced this discourse, it is because it concerns his/her material representation in the world (Ferreira, 2020).

From a methodological point of view, we 1 - carried out a study using bibliographic research as a data production technique; 2 -analyzed the studied material, observing the meanings related to the main categories: pedagogical and subject work; 3 - organized the data produced in tables, aiming to compare and analyze their movements of senses, alternation, and dissonances; 4 - reincorporated to the texts, we also analyzed these meanings in their continuities, variations, and depth; 5 - based on the movements of observed senses, we began the systematization.

As a result, we present the arguments outlined below, organized in sections. They aim to describe the meanings of ‘subject’, weaving the relationships between the subjects and work and between the teachers, understood as subjects, and their pedagogical work. Next, we discuss these arguments around the focus given to the meanings produced by the study.

Subject senses

What does one understand by "subject"? There are recurrent allusions to teachers as individuals or actors. We understand that such designations are not naïve but tied to theoretical perspectives differentiated from each other. In this perspective, what does it mean when affirming that teachers are or should be "subjects of their work"? What is a subject, and what differentiates him/her from an "individual" or an "actor"? First, we understand that the primary difference is not in the being itself, but in its relationship with the concrete reality that constitutes it. We start by affirming that one is, or not, a subject depending on the culture.

[...] we understand by culture the set of material and spiritual goods created by men, through work, during a process in with they explore nature and establish relationships with each other, aiming to fulfil their vital needs.

(Vieira Pinto, 1994, p. 40, our translation).

It is also implicit in this statement the idea of cultural belonging, as culture is produced in the social sphere through work. Thus, every subject constitutes himself culturally and socially based on the productive structure that sustains and configures social totality. This fact historically determines this subject's existence and the cultural goods available. Dialectically, based on them, the subject will be formed and (or) will change throughout his life.

Based on Vygotskian conceptions about this dialectical and constitutive relationship of the subject, González-Rey & Martinez (2017) state that subjectivity is a symbolic and emotional system which guides and is guided by culture. It is socially institutionalized and historically situated. This exchange between the social and the individual, which establishes the subject, is mediated mainly by language. That is, throughout development, the subjects will have access to the symbolic world by language, culturally shared, and, from this relationship, the psychological world will be made up.

However, culture and society change in time and space. They are products of material goods historically produced by humans. Our present time is called postmodern, neo-modern, ultra-modern, etc. However, such concepts are largely euphemisms to deal with the changes undergone by capitalist society since its origin.

We understand that even the concept of "modernity" needs to be revised, considering that its original historical period coincides with the genesis of today's society, the result of bourgeois revolutions – especially the English Revolution, held between 1640/1688, and the French Revolution of 1789. Thus, what has been called "modernity" is capitalism in its origin, an expression of the concrete societal changes and not the result of "modernity ideas". Not to be idealistic, but based on an analysis of concrete reality, we prefer to call the current society "contemporary" because the production relationships that sustain it are the same from the origin of what was used to be called "modernity". The division of labor into social classes, central to the State and universal values such as democracy, freedom, and law, follows a bourgeois character because this class holds the means of production.

Thus, dealing with the subject means speaking about a contemporary subject, an expression of capitalist determinations. Overcoming "modernity", a "postmodernity", implies that the capitalist mode of production has been overcome, which has not yet occurred. In these terms, the contemporary subject constituted by its subjectivity is still an expression of the historical conditions of "modernity", not yet overcome in some possible "post". The conception of postmodernity presupposes this "new" stage of society, in which progress would be in resolving specific, particular, and local problems and no longer on overcoming social classes. Under these conditions, the subject would also disappear because the ability and possibility of using signs, instruments, language, etc., would take a life on their own.

The conceptions of postmodernity presented so far lay on the relationship of objectivity-subjectivity. But not for their separation, but their denial (not dialectical). Objectivity is denied since reality is the creation of the sign. And subjectivity is denied, at least the one with the power to create and change reality. The subject becomes fluid and can also change by the sign

(Gonçalves, 2015, p. 75, our translation).

However, as already mentioned, these social contradictions have not yet been overcome. Therefore, we seek to recover the study of the subject, without denying the objectivity of reality. The path is by historical and dialectical conception, in a contradictory movement between the subjective and objective instances of the subjects' lives. The social phenomenon takes central stage, together with the subjective phenomenon, ceasing to be an appendix in the establishment of subjectivity and the subject, to be a producer of the subjects. This does not mean that the subject is passive. On the contrary, it is from this insertion in the cultural world, mediated by signs and instruments (Vygotsky, 2008), that the subject collectively produces the history of humanity and its history, singularizing him/herself.

Historically, the notion of subject has capitalism as a reference since the nineteenth century. However, this conception goes into crisis because while affirming the subject as the ruler of life, it also denies this possibility. In this context, Psychology is created, appropriating most discussions about subjectivity and the subject. A problem is established when psychology explains subjectivity from a private, individual, and often a-historical reference, reinforcing the division between body and mind, objective and subjective, etc. (Gonçalves, 2015).

In this process, as Vygotsky (1999) wrote at the beginning of the 20th century, in the text "The Historical Meaning of the Crisis in Psychology: A Methodological Investigation", psychology goes into crisis because it appropriates a methodology that fragments the conception of subject. Faced with this methodological to build psychological science, Vygotsky proposes that the psychological phenomenon should be studied through dialectical and historical references.

Although Vygotsky did not deal directly with the category "subject", Molon (2015), in "Subjectivity and constitution of the subject in Vygotsky", points out that the research on the meanings of the subject is emerging for that author. Molon (2015) identifies three conceptions developed from Vygotskian work: 1) emphasis on intra-psychological aspects, 2) emphasis on inter-psychological aspects and, finally, 3) emphasis on the dialectical conception of intra- and inter-psychological dimensions. This dialectical conception best represents the overcoming of the subjectivity and objectivity dichotomy.

[...] the constitution of the subject is not exhausted in the privilege of intra-psychological or inter-psychological aspects, but the dialectical process of both, and what is more striking, the constitution of the subject happens through the other and through the word in a semiotic dimension. As the word and the sign are polysemic, the nature and genesis of the subject's constitution necessarily imply difference and similarity (Molon, 2015, p. 57, our translation).

The subject emerges from this synthesis of the material conditions of reality and symbolic representations, internalized and resignified throughout life in the different relationships with other subjects. It is a subject constituted by subjectivity and social and historical conditions. Thus, the subject is guided by his subjectivity, while relating to the external world and is also determined by it.

However, we highlight that the subject is not a "place", a passive being who acts without the possibility of change, accepting how and when the historical-social conditions are represented, and, consequently, determining his desires and actions. The subject and his contingencies are in continuous motion, interacting with other subjects. Based on the aforementioned statement about culture (Vieira Pinto, 1994), to overcome a purely deterministic conception, we also need to characterize its product as praxis, in a certain time and space. Marx and Engels (2007), in "The German Ideology", describe the meaning through which the subject constitutes a singular unity but a part of humanity:

Individuals have always proceeded from themselves, but of course from themselves within their given historical conditions and relations, not from the "pure" individual in the sense of the ideologists. But in the course of historical development, and precisely through the fact that within the division of labour social relations inevitably take on an independent existence, there appears a cleavage in the life of each individual, insofar as it is personal and insofar as it is determined by some branch of labour and the conditions pertaining to it

(Marx & Engels, 2007, p. 64).

This life subsumed in the division of labor mainly affects the subject's ability to produce his/her intentional praxis (explained in the sequence) and consciously interfere in his work. They now follow those authors to make a counterpoint between the division of labor and a classless society, in which intentional awareness of work would be characteristic:

With the community of revolutionary proletarians, on the other hand, who take their conditions of existence and those of all members of society under their control, it is just the reverse; it is as individuals that the individuals participate in it. For it is the association of individuals (assuming the advanced stage of modern productive forces, of course) which puts the conditions of the free development and movement of individuals under their control

(Marx & Engels, 2007, p. 66).

By criticizing the character "pure (...) in the sense of the ideologists", as a distinction, and from which one can connect certain characteristics to the subject, as in a fixed base, Marx and Engels qualify the subject as a product and producer of its reality. This conception recognizes desire as a historical construction that, determined by social subjects, implies the dialectic in producing and being produced, in determining the world and by it also being determined.

From an idealistic point of view, based on Kant's philosophy, we could affirm that there is a "subject of reason". With Freud's Psychoanalysis, there is a "subject of desire". Therefore, Dufour calls "the critical subject (Kantian) and the neurotic subject (Freudian)" (2005, p. 10, our translation).

As for the first, Dufour states: "[...] this Kantian subject, as an ideal shape, susceptible to preside over the formation of every modern individual, is now strongly refused" (2005, p. 20, our translation). The author explains that this subject does not harmoniously agree with the action of buying and selling goods typical of capitalism. The second, seen from Psychoanalysis, is a subject permeated by desire, constituted in and by language, in and by the Other⁷. Dufour states: "In this sense, the subject is both subjection and the one that resists subjection. In other words, the subject is the subject of the Other and also who resists the Other" (2005, p. 33, translation our). A desire that designates, among other aspects, the ways one seeks satisfaction as the result of production in the historicity of the self in action. It is the representation of this self and, in ideal terms, the continuous experience with and for pleasure: "what men themselves show by their behaviour to be the purpose and intention of their lives. What do they demand of life and wish to achieve in it? The answer to this can hardly be in doubt. They strive after happiness; they want to become happy and to remain so." (Freud, 2011, p. 19). This subject of desire is directly related to the process that mediates work as a human condition for the production of existence.

This is life or the ideal of a possibility. These are determinations that are not founded on the subject's consciousness, i.e., no one chooses to desire or not. Everyone wishes for something. They somehow have impulses they did not even know. This is the being itself - mediated by the social. In solitude, he would remain innocuous and meaningless, though culture does not allow its abandonment. You are always someone. However, you do not yet have the guarantee to represent yourself in the world. Contraposing idealism, this is the fundamental value of the subjects' work. This is their way of ensuring survival, producing history and being in society.

Aguiar and Bock (2016) also discuss the material basis of the subject's constitution and its subjectivity . The authors reinforce the dialectical understanding of this constitution, arguing that the contradictory relationships of the capitalist mode of production, which deny and affirm the condition as subjects, contribute to the understanding of:

[...] worker's subjective expression from this condition occurs with the de-effectiveness of what he produces (objectification) and is enacted as strangeness and alienation of production. [...] the worker will conceive himself as a subject oblivious to what he produces and will only have as a criterion of being in the world what will be possible to consume from his salary. These material conditions determine the form of its insertion in the world and its production of life

(Aguiar & Bock, 2016, p. 31, our translation).

From these assumptions, we undestand the subject as who is aware of his needs, the result of human nature, and the awareness of the needs historically produced by society. A collectively constituted subject, inserted in a cultural world, which offers him a symbolic field to constitute his subjectivity. This cultural world is determined and decisive, enabling the subject's relationship with the world. Work, as a process of conscious change of nature, also forms the human being. In the case of teachers, the work is pedagogical, with language as its raw material (Ferreira, 2017; 2018).

We stress this difference between the basics of subject, individual and actor:

1. Subjects are human beings constituted subjectively and objectively, which belong to a social place in which they consciously represent, participate and interfere, based on the social structure that sustains their class position;

2. Individual is the human being itself, seen distinctly from the social group and not aware of his class;

3. Actor is associated with the social role referring to a given context, which can change without recognizing belonging to the class.

Thus, to be a subject is to know its historicity and implications, producing needs and desires from the production of existence through work. However, the specific characteristic of work in the capitalist mode of production must be considered. In this case, not work, but the workforce, the human capacity to produce work. In this mode of production, the labor force is a good. To the capitalist, it represents only its use value as the only commodity able to create more value. Work is a means to receive a salary, which allows the worker to buy the goods to maintain his existence. In these terms, the subject needs to be understood without ignoring the definition previously presented, the concrete reality of the capitalist mode of production makes the worker's workforce into his condition of existence and power of life, but also his limit.

Considering that the labor force is a major commodity in the capitalist mode of production, the legal/ideological apparatus sustains production relations and contributes to amalgamating the opposition between capitalists and workers in a reproductive process of capital. This is an example of how even labor rights strengthen the exploitation and extraction of more value from the workforce. The becoming of the capitalist mode of production is praxis by definition. It is not immovable, it makes the subjects of this society work, both as a means for their life and to subjugate them in the service of capital.

In these terms, Sánchez Vàzquez (1977) characterizes human action, in the sense of constituting its existence, as an act that "is a constant violation of nature" (p. 374, translation our). Attentive to Marx's arguments (2010) and allied to Sánchez Vázquez 's(1977) arguments, we understand that the reality in which human beings live is created from human actions in the world. An act that while transforming nature, also transforms the human being. For Marx, in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (2010):

And as everything natural has to come into being, man too has his act of origin – history – which, however, is for him a known history, and hence as an act of origin it is a conscious self-transcending act of origin. History is the true natural history of man

(Marx, 2010, p. 128).

Praxis, in its full sense, is this conscious action in the form of work, an intentional praxis. The "term praxis to designate conscious and objective activity is used, without, however, being conceived with a strictly utilitarian character" (Sánchez Vázquez, 1977, p. 30, our translation). For these reasons, we can understand the reality of the human being as a generic being who acts on the world, effectively constituting oneself, which Marx fundamentally describes as praxis, in the Manuscripts of 1844 (2010). In this early text, we find the base to reflect on the relationship between subject and work.

From the conception of praxis as a condition of the human being producing their reality, we have our current context that, largely, subtracts the condition of praxis intentionality – its purpose is no longer to produce use value, but an exchange value towards a salary. We understand the relationship between subject and work in these terms: starting from the concrete reality of the capitalist mode of production (the hegemonic form of societal reproduction), the sociability that composes the contemporary subject is represented by the alienation of the human being in the division of labor and not by the intentional praxis. Hence:

As work is the essence of man, this essence is enacted only as alienated or denied in the actual concrete relationships that men maintain with their products, their activity, and other men (non-workers) in production

(Sánchez Vázquez, 1977, p. 406, our translation).

In each historical period, values and trends engender the prevailing social discourse, which offers bases of support, and imperative norms to the subjective constitution. However, the human being is not susceptible and determinable as a machine. There is something subjective in his actions, something capable of producing the necessary contradictions to change reality. However, what is currently a symptom, or what does the subject "take" in contemporaneity? The historical facts and consequences may outline forms and characteristics of an era, a time, or even a moment, since changes occur through increasingly lighted production relationships, given the technical development based on information technologies, cybernetics and increasingly marked algorimitzation.

Thus, each natural person is trapped; imprisoned for living in permanent functional dependence on others. A link in the chains that bind other people, as well as all others, directly or indirectly, links in the chains that bind them. These chains are not visible and tangible as iron shackles. They are more elastic and changeable, but no less real and, surely, no less strong. Moreover, it is this network of functions that people perform concerning each other; it is this and nothing else that we call society

(Elias, 1994, p. 23, our translation).

Understood in this way, it is also in work, immersed in a capitalist society, that the human being produces himself because he creates, due to his subjectivity and, at the same time, lessens the anguish of remaining excluded from citizenship. So, one can think of work as the manifestation of a desire and a need, even when captured by the role of producing exchange value, because it represents the condition of each subject, now inserted in the production process, which becomes socialized.

In the meantime, subject and work are inseparable categories because the workforce as a commodity characterizes the subject's way of being. It also limits his condition as a workforce salesman, a historical condition that determines desires and goods. Desire, in these terms, is a central part of reproducing the capitalist mode of production. Thus, the mediating condition of human work is subverted to the guarantee of individual existence, implying the way the subject understands how to be historical. The pedagogical work happens under these conditions.

In this society, an individual becomes a subject to the extent that he accepts and occupies his social place. That is, in the relationship between the self and the "order", the morals, the laws. To represent oneself is to be able to be what is established in the course of relations, in the appropriation of naturally peculiar reality at a particular time or period. This peculiarity is only possible in culture. From this appropriation, in the relationship with the other, the subject is faced with suffering and malaise, but this path of subjectivation may allow the subject's emergence. As González-Rey & Martinez (2017) point out: "the individual is not a 'victim' of his subjectivity. He can become its subject, which defines an active process of making paths and decisions that are sources that generate subjective meanings" (p. 53).

So far, we have discussed the subject, its relationship with the social world, work, and the concept of praxis. Next, we focus on teachers, understood as subjects and their pedagogical work.

Teachers as subjects and their work as pedagogical

Work is a way for the subject to produce and reproduce culture, socialize, and self-produce. Through work, the human being produces himself and aspires to freedom:

The development of freedom is therefore linked to the development of man as a practical, transforming or creative being. It is connected to the process of producing a human or humanized world, which transcends the given, natural world, and the process of self-production of the human being that constitutes precisely his history

(Sánchez Vázquez, 1977, pp. 129-130, our translation).

Paradoxically, the way work is presented in contemporaneity is an insult to the subject's condition. For example, the imperative of quality, this ideal concept in the current neoliberal phase of capitalism, dictates the nature of the work to be developed and, consequently, of the worker, who must always be "competent" in this context. Because of "quality", "productivity", and "flexibility", we see the exclusion of basic characteristics of any subject. Among the most relevant and human ones, the condition of desire, dream, or even the aesthetic characteristics aimed at beauty, which give way to the "useful" and "what is important only as merchandise". In this case, the owners of the means of production and the workforce, or simply the "class that does not live from work" (Antunes, 2005), are in advantage because they enjoy greater autonomy in their activities. When operating a machine, the goals and quality prevail, therefore, this is an 'exterior' imposition, which does not obey the subject's principles, only market ones. In this perspective, a worker is a machine whose engine is the workforce sold to the market, and the company's management policies are the regulators.

These relationships do not distance from teachers' work, considering this is key for forming the workforce, whether of the new generations or the specialization in some production area. In these material conditions, the subject dialectically produces the senses and constitutes his subjectivity. The freedom offered is usually accompanied by exterior (market) or managerial limits. In the "labor market", workers have to either sell their workforce or fall into unemployment because selling their workforce guarantees the salary to survive. Unlike workers, those who hold the means of production find ways of satisfying their needs and desires because they have greater access to the cultural goods produced by humanity.

Thus, work is a necessary category to justify teachers' subjectivity and subject condition. The subject's work echoes subjectivity to announce it in the social sphere, seeking recognition. Even with the contradictions concerning workers and the sale of their workforce, in short, it is through work that the social sphere is taken, offering some meaning to it, socially defining the position that the subject occupies in society, each in its way, time, and contingencies. Thus, when one arrives at a workplace, a relationship will be established with the environment and with the other subjects, which may or may not be viable. Hence, raising conflicts, malaises, and not achievements. These are the impacts of and on the subjects in the world. All this allows us to affirm that, in contemporary times, goods organize work and production relations.

Pedagogical work is included In the capitalist context so far described. This work is carried out to produce and (re)produce knowledge, amalgamating work and education, resulting in a production that can be described in these terms:

[...] the act of producing, directly and intentionally, in each singular individual, the humanity that all men historically and collectively produce. Thus, the object of education concerns, on the one hand, the identification of cultural elements that need to be assimilated by the individuals of the human species so that they become human and, on the other hand, the discovery of the most appropriate ways to achieve this goal

(Saviani, 2003, p. 13, our translation).

Given that human beings produce their history but not of their free will (Marx, 2008), we can understand that "the cultural elements that need to be assimilated by individuals" are the product of all the ideological burden that sustains the reproduction of the society of which it is a part. In this sense, pedagogical work is teachers' work "[...] when selecting, organizing, planning, performing, continuously evaluating, monitoring, producing knowledge, and establishing interactions" (Ferreira, 2020, p. 605, our translation). As such, it is inscribed and "[...] immersed in a capitalist context, in which employment relations organize the teachers' workforce and in which subjects act under social, political conditions" (Ferreira, 2020, p. 605, translation our). Nevertheless, though inserted in capitalist relations, due to its characteristics pedagogical work "[...] presents possibilities for the worker to go further, to project himself in his work in order to confuse and move humanly with him, since language is its raw material " (Ferreira, 2020, p. 605, our translation).

Thus, as it could not be otherwise, pedagogical work is part of the reproduction process of capitalist society, understood as the work of teachers in school. Therefore, pedagogical praxis is the teachers' professional work and, in this perspective, becomes scientific, methodical, and systematic, elaborate and theoretically sustained (Ferreira, 2017). Then, pedagogical praxis is a social praxis because it is "[...] socially elaborated and organized according to intentions, and knowledge" (Ferreira, 2008, p. 184, our translation). There is an objective to achieve in all pedagogical work: to produce education, which implies producing and reproducing knowledge. Education is constitutive of humans, an ontological perspective of the human, and, consequently, inseparable from work in its alienated dimension (as mentioned in the previous section on "subject and work"). Education and work, therefore, make the human being and allow us to achieve the condition of the subject:

Education is defined by a particular form of work, non-material work, but this does not mean that its teaching methods must necessarily have the same nature. On the contrary, material, concrete and socially useful work should be the starting point of educational processes as non-material work. In this idea, besides the non-materiality of the work product (knowledge), the product of the activity is not separated from its production, in which the human being attributes a particular use value that is immediately consumed together with its production

(Frizzo; Ribas; Ferreira, 2013, p. 557, our translation).

In performing their work, teachers, as subjects within the capitalist society, are (self)producing themselves as beings, historically and socially shaped, acting as workers. In this sense, we can perceive the limits of teachers' concrete work as subjects aware of the contradictions historically produced by the class society. As mentioned, their work is the production of the class and, within it, the production and (re)production of knowledge, together with other subjects. Their work includes participating in all interactions that integrate the times and spaces of education, politically and professionally - allowing them to elaborate a workers' time and a place from where satisfaction may arise:

We assume that the search for satisfaction permanently occurs in the individual's life, from childhood to old age; thus, also in work relationships, where the subject seeks to insert himself into the cultural world and to live with other people, it becomes a place of encounter between desire and anguish. That is, the search for the experience of satisfaction and suffering. The subject in question is the subject of desire and suffering

(Bertão & Hashimoto, 2006, p. 149, our translation).

The pedagogical work moves aspects of Pedagogy related to Didactics and Methodology. These aspects should be widely known by teachers concerning the science they practice in class and establishing their work (Ferreira, 2017). The effectiveness of pedagogical work is directly related to the subjects-teachers' choices, depending on the relationship with students, in the space and time of class. Therefore, it is not a simple work, because it amalgamates knowledge, subjectivities, and techniques to reach the objective of school education: the production of knowledge (Ferreira, 2017). It is essential to explain that, by the production of knowledge, we do not understand the invention or discovery of knowledge but simply learn what was not previously known. At the end of the lesson, this is the goal to be achieved.

This process represents the fundamental movement of pedagogical work, which is necessary for the reproduction of class society as it has been incorporated as a major concrete work for workforce formation in the capitalist mode of production. Thus, the historical awareness of the contradictory limits that subjugate the teacher and his pedagogical work is produced precisely when his action is linked to the working class, producing the active criticism of the sociability imposed by the capitalist mode of production, through class consciousness.

Teachers can self-produce subjects of their pedagogical work to the extent that: a) they continuously elaborate meanings of the work they perform; b) understand authorship and understand themselves as authors of their production; c) locate and denote belonging to the working class, respecting the spécificity of the limits and contingencies of the pedagogical work; d) their work aim the transformation of the social sphere and other subjects, mediated by language. These subjects work in the form of pedagogical work. Therefore, they are not 'pedagogical subjects' but subjects who perform pedagogical work.

Final Remarks

To align the studies carried out so far, this article first described the meanings of ‘subject’. After contextualizing these notions, in the following section, we presented teachers as subjects and their work as pedagogical work. The study allowed us to glimpse the need and the possibility of teachers, understanding these subjects to forward their pedagogical work, which is critical par excellence.

In this sense, the relationship between teachers' work as a process for conscious implementation of their pedagogical work is the result of certain historical-social conditions produced by people in certain classes. This fact, in turn, directly implies the formation of these subjects in the context of work in schools.

After the exposed argumentation, the first element to be evidenced in the attempt to understand the subject concerning teachers is the need to understand the 'subject teachers' within the totality of the society they participate. In these terms, teachers as subjects are workers who, when selling their workforce, are determined by their concrete reality. Therefore, their work, more than pedagogical par excellence and centered on education, is captured by the need to reproduce the workforce from objective knowledge (technical knowledge) to ideological reproduction.

As the second central element, the dialectical and non-deterministic character in understanding teachers as subjects of pedagogical work stands out. That is, pedagogical work, when the result of a process in which teachers recognize themselves as part of the working class. Starting from this recognition, they work to present, through a critical perspective, the contradictions of the capitalist mode of production, evidencing their limits to overcome the sociability of capital. Thus, presenting themselves as subjects aware of their historicity. In short, without a critical basis, derived from class consciousness, to provoke teachers' action in their pedagogical work, the knowledge production gives way to the mere didactic transposition of the contents, emphasizing the reproductive nature of pedagogical work.

Finally, defining in more accurate terms what is meant by 'subject', especially in the context of teachers' pedagogical work, allows a better understanding of the actual conditions that determine education in the country. This is undoubtedly the starting point for understanding the meanings that enable pedagogical work based on the transformative criticism of society by teachers in schools and education spaces.

• 2
  References correction and bibliographic normalization services: Vera Lúcia Fator Gouvêa Bonilha - [e-mail]
• 3
  English version: Viviane Ramos – [e-mail]
• 4
  We will explain the meanings of pedagogical work, one of the main categories of this text, during our arguments.
• 5
  Subjective senses are characterized as individual productions in the permanent relationship with social subjectivity. They establish the relationship between the symbolic and the emotional (González-Rey & Martinez, 2017).
• 6
  Research and study are different. The former refers only to the scope of data production and analysis. The study covers the research and analyzes, in addition to the data produced, the conditions of production, the interlocutors, and other authors' productions.
• 7
  According to Dufour, aiming to explain the concept of Other, the "Other is the third place of speech. A third place as much as it is the place of a third [party]" (2005, p. 31, our translation).

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Responsible editor: Carmen Lúcia Soares. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4347-1924

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  09 Dec 2022
• Date of issue
  2022

History

• Received
  17 May 2021
• Reviewed
  04 Sept 2021
• Accepted
  22 Nov 2021