With Spinoza, thinking of an ethical-political science and an ethical framework for education^*

ABSTRACT

The article reflects on the role of academic-scientific institutions in the relationships they establish with one another and with collective and/or social movements. It defines the National Association of Graduate Studies and Research in Education as an academic-scientific institution present in the Brazilian scenario, whose field of action happens in double dimension: one that proposes an open and democratic organization dedicated to the development of an ethical-political science and an ethical framework for research in education; and another that opposes political and organizational structures of a vertically-oriented order. In addition, it debates some assumptions derived from the philosophy of Spinoza, aiming to stimulate the field of propositional possibilities, so the association mentioned above increasingly becomes a democratic institution, established in the plane of immanence of a concrete, ethical, and politically oriented social practice.

KEYWORDS:
science; ethics; politics; research

RESUMO

O artigo busca refletir sobre o papel das entidades acadêmico-científicas nas relações que estabelecem entre si e com movimentos coletivos e/ou movimentos sociais. Situa a Associação Nacional de Pós-Graduação e Pesquisa em Educação como entidade acadêmico-científica presente no cenário brasileiro, cujo campo de lutas ocorre em dupla dimensão: a de propor uma organização aberta e democrática voltada para o desenvolvimento de uma ciência ético-política e um referencial ético para a pesquisa em educação e a de opor-se às estruturas político-organizacionais da ordem verticalmente orientada. Também debate alguns pressupostos derivados da filosofia de Spinoza, visando estimular o campo de possibilidades propositivas para que a referida associação se constitua, cada vez mais, como entidade democrática, instaurada no plano de imanência de uma prática social concreta, ética e politicamente orientada.

PALAVRAS-CHAVE:
ciência; ética; política; pesquisa

RESUMEN

El artículo reflexiona sobre el papel de las entidades académicas y científicas en el establecimiento de relaciones de uno con el otro y con movimientos colectivos y/o movimientos sociales. La Associação Nacional de Pós-Graduação e Pesquisa em Educação como entidad académica-científica presente en el escenario brasileño, cuyo campo de combates se produce en doble dimensión: proponer una organización abierta y democrática, dedicada al desarrollo de una ciencia ética política y una ética para la investigación en la educación; para oponerse a las estructuras políticas y organizativas de orden orientadas verticalmente. Debate algunos supuestos derivados de la filosofía de Spinoza, con el objetivo de estimular el campo de posibilidades propositivas de la dicha asociación si constituye una entidad cada vez más democrática, establecida en el plano de inmanencia de una concreta práctica social, ética y políticamente orientada.

PALABRAS CLAVE:
ciencia; ética; política; investigación

INTRODUCTION

Social and collective movements have degrees of difference based not only on elements from a subjective experience (participation or not) but, fundamentally, on their objective results, whichever they are: the formation or not of new identities and representational institutions.

The existence of a social movement requires a well-developed organization, which demands the mobilization of resources and very committed people. Social movements are not limited to sporadic public demonstrations, as they are organizations that systematically act to achieve their political goals, which means a constant and long-term struggle, depending on the nature of the cause. In other words, social movements have an organized and permanent action in defense of a given belief. On the other hand, collective movements are characterized by their procedural and emergency nature (Pasquino, 1986). In this context, academic-scientific institutions are recognized by a strong connection to a representational identity in the field of action of a knowledge sector, not only in its relationships with the progress of science in a given knowledge area, but also in the political dimension between power, knowledge, ethics, and social practices (Carvalho, 2015b).

Thus, there is a network relationship between social movements and academic-scientific institutions beyond the debates held at events in the field and in social researches also involving socioeconomic and political issues in the country, since, in their protagonism, social movements interfere in the agenda and articulation of action of academic-scientific institutions, and these institutions, in their relationship with social movements and their sphere of activity, foster collective movements that fight for education, science, and the guarantee of rights of populations (Gohn, 2011).

Therefore, we assumed that the composition among social movements, academic-scientific institutions, and collective movements was necessary, advocating their inter-relationship, demonstrating a direct and needed connection between social movements and institutions as collective movements, since, according to Spinoza (1988), we find the multitude on the basis of the democratic shaping of a social body (Carvalho, 2015a).

Spinoza’s (1988) concept of multitude, discussed by Hardt and Negri in the work Multitude (2005),¹ helps us to think about the educational potential of these social ties, this strength-invention to build and exercise citizenship in the body of academic-scientific institutions and, therefore, promote an ethical-political science.

In this scenario, the article reflects on the role of academic-scientific institutions in the relationships they establish with one another and with collective and/or social movements. With this perspective, the National Association of Graduate Studies and Research in Education (Associação Nacional de Pós-Graduação e Pesquisa em Educação - ANPEd) is here defined as an academic-scientific institution present in the Brazilian scenario, whose field of action happens in double dimension: one that proposes an open and democratic organization dedicated to the development of an ethical-political science and an ethical framework for research in education; and another that opposes political and organizational structures of a vertically-oriented order.

Thus, we will debate some assumptions derived from the philosophy of Spinoza, aiming to stimulate the field of propositional possibilities so that ANPEd increasingly becomes a democratic institution, established in the plane of immanence of a concrete, ethical, and politically oriented social practice.

In this scope, the text discusses: How can this multitude body intercross social movements and movements from scientific institutions? What are the powers of this movement? In which space-times a common and also singular field can be created? What is the need for an ethical framework for humanities and social sciences and, specifically, why develop a framework for research in education?

The objective is to investigate to what extent it is possible for ANPEd to keep moving and still establish places, noting that, precisely during the movement, new space-times could be created. Instead of staying in a closed territory, we believe that these new space-times could be expanded beyond scientific institutions, generating a higher power of collective intelligence within the maximum impotence caused by a hierarchy of power and knowledge to formulate other ethical ways for science to participate in life.

WHY AN ETHICAL FRAMEWORK FOR HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES?

In Brazil, the concern with an ethical framework for research emerges initially in life sciences but ends up extending to the whole humanities and social sciences field.

In 1996, the National Health Council (NHC), a body dedicated to medical activities, introduced the resolution no. 196 (Brazil, 1996), which set guidelines for scientific procedures related to research with human subjects. This resolution established standards and requirements for research involving human beings, determining that scientific institutions create and maintain a Research Ethics Committee (REC) and that all research projects of this nature must be examined and approved by this ethical perspective before being executed (Severino, 2014).

In December 2012, NHC approved a new version of resolution no. 196 - resolution no. 466 (Brazil, 2013) -, claiming to meet new needs in the technological-scientific and ethics fields. However, the complex of devices listed in this resolution, aimed at the health sector, raised many doubts and concerns, particularly among researchers from humanities, considering the distinction between areas/fields of research and the need to differentiate research with living beings in ­general - conducted in biomedical sciences - with research with human beings - carried out in humanities (CNPq, 2011).

After these resolutions, the ethical review of researches involving human beings started being performed in the REC/National Research Ethics Committee (Comissão Nacional de Ética em Pesquisa - CONEP) system.²

According to Severino (2014), since 2001, the Brazilian Anthropology Association (Associação Brasileira de Antropologia - ABA) has been criticizing and protesting the uniform system of ethical review, based on principles of the health sector, without considering specificities of humanities and social sciences. Over the years, other humanities and social sciences associations started to discuss ethical issues in research in a more systematic way, opposing the REC/CONEP system. Prior to 2013, some associations had already manifested about this system. Thus, in 2013, the Forum of Humanities, Social, and Applied Social Sciences was created, uniting various associations of these fields. This forum incorporated the demand to develop a system specific for humanities and social sciences (Duarte, 2017).

In 2013, ABA and the National Association of Graduate Studies and Research in Social Sciences (Associação Nacional de Pós-Graduação e Pesquisa em Ciências Sociais - ANPOCS) presented, for the first time, to the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation (Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovação - MCTI) a proposal to create another evaluation system for ethics in humanities and social sciences, overseen by this ministry, due to the relevance of conducting ethical reviews in humanities and social sciences research out of the health sector. Despite being well received at the time, the resistance from the Ministry of Health precluded the proposal (Duarte, 2017).

In 2016, even though NHC remained linked to humanities and social sciences research - but with its own resolution for the field -, its plenary approved the resolution no. 510/2016 (Brazil, 2016), which recognizes and highlights the specificity of humanities and social sciences. Among the preliminary considerations that introduce the resolution no. 510/2016, we underline as examples of this recognition:³

The Plenary of the National Health Council in its Fifty-ninth Extraordinary Meeting, held on April 6 and 7, 2016, in the exercise of its regulatory competencies and powers granted by Law no. 8,080 of September 19, 1990, Law no. 8,142 of December 28, 1990, Decree no. 5,839 of July 11, 2006, and [...] Considering that Humanities and Social Sciences have specificities in their conceptions and practices of research, as these fields favor a pluralistic meaning of science, which results in the adoption of multiple theoretical and methodological perspectives, as well as deal with attributions of meanings, practices, and representations, without direct intervention in the human body, with specific nature and degree of risk; [...] Considering the existence of the Research Ethics Committees and National Research Ethics Committee system; Considering that the article XIII.3 of Resolution 466/12 recognizes the ethical specificities of Humanities and Social Sciences research and others that use methodologies pertaining to these areas, given their particularities; [...]; and Considering the importance of developing a normative framework regarded as clear, precise, and fully understandable to all involved in Humanities and Social Sciences research activities, resolves: [...]

However, it is noteworthy that as much as resolution no. 510/2016 sought to meet the demands of humanities and social sciences, it is complementary to resolution no. 466/2012 and, therefore, not independent. That is, the political fight of humanities and social sciences to leave the tutelage of biomedical sciences did not achieve the desired success.

Recently, in 2017, the Forum of Humanities, Social, and Applied Social Sciences proposed the creation of the National Humanities, Social, and Applied Social Sciences Research Ethics Council, under the current Ministry of Science, Technology, Innovation, and Communications (Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia, Inovações e Comunicações - MCTIC). This council would be a general supporting organ, assigned to elaborate national guidelines and control the registry of local committees in universities and research centers, without the apparatus of centralized control built in the REC/CONEP system (ANPEd, 2017). From 2015 to 2017, ANPEd circulated - asking for contributions from members and aiming to incorporate critical mass to discussions - the proposal to develop an ethical framework for research in education, based on the assumption that a specific standardization for the education field was necessary.

OF THE SPECIFICITY OF THE EDUCATION FIELD IN HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES

The political education movement led by ANPEd to create a framework for the field, thus, progresses. After elaborating and concluding the first draft of the text Ethics in educational research, members of the Research Ethics Committee of ANPEd⁴ met in June 2017, at Universidade Federal do Paraná (UFPR), to structure the first version of the document that would serve as reference to the original text that would be discussed later by various collectives that integrate ANPEd. This text was based on discussions held at the seminar “Ethics and Educational Research: between standard and commitment,” in September 2016 at Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO).

Based on suggestions made in debates of the Working Groups (WGs) of ANPEd, both at the National Forum of Coordinators of Graduate Programs in Education of ANPEd (Fórum Nacional de Coordenadores de Programas de Pós-Graduação em Educação - FORPRED) and the Forum of Education Journal Editors (Fórum de Editores de Periódicos da Área de Educação - FEPAE), the committee announced the version Ethics in educational research: preliminary document, presented and discussed at the 38th National ANPEd Meeting in São Luís, Maranhão, in October 2017. This movement aims at a displacement of technical issues and approaches the ethical-political dimension as a proposal to develop a framework in which ethics is not functionalized, becoming a mere application of procedures and instruments, but implemented in connection with multitude and life, seeking the emergence of another conception of collective and scientific production.

In this regard, ANPEd (2017), resuming the actions performed by the institution from 2007 to 2016, debates a problematization and proposition concerning ethics in educational research and the challenge that producing a framework specifically for the field represents.

Arguing that, in some countries, such as the United States, Australia, Germany, England, and Scotland, ethical guidelines and/or “code of ethics” in research are defined by scientific associations in the education field, with the ethical review of projects being made by the ethics committees of each institution, the ANPEd (2017) document indicates that such codes and/or ethical guidelines, developed by associations, have general directives on several aspects related to ethics in research practice. These guidelines facilitate the training of future researchers, as well as streamline the process of ethical review.

The fact that, in those countries, the ethics committees of the institutions conduct the ethical review, based on the document from the association, emphasizes the researchers’ reflection on ethical issues involved in their researches and the commitment to ethical principles and procedures. (ANPEd, 2017, p. 8-9)

Considering the difficulty of the task of drafting a document with ethical directives for the education field, given the great diversity of epistemological and methodological perspectives that cross its discursive formation, the document, in the end, presents positions and proposals on ethical research procedures:

• ethics in research is a crucial issue and needs to be addressed in different instances of the association, in scientific meetings of ANPEd, and the process of researcher training. As a scientific association, ANPEd offers to develop actions that promote the ongoing debate of issues on ethics in research at national and regional scientific meetings and other spaces;

• it is important to elaborate a framework in the education field, given the diversity of epistemological perspectives and methodologies adopted, and to strengthen its autonomy in science policy;

• ANPEd supports the Forum of Humanities, Social, and Applied Social Sciences in the creation of a National Humanities, Social, and Applied Social Sciences Research Ethics Council, under MCTIC, which would be an general supporting organ, assigned to elaborate national guidelines and control the registry of local committees in universities and research centers, without the apparatus of centralized control built in the REC/CONEP system;

• ANPEd recommends to researchers in the field that they participate in the existing Research Ethics Committees, so they can increase the qualified representation of humanities, social, and applied social sciences in these committees;

• ANPEd believes that journals and development agencies should avoid requiring protocols from the REC/CONEP system, while the NHC resolution no. 510/2016 is not in full effect, with the completion of humanities and social sciences own form and the definition of risk characterization and processing protocols, according to risk level, or even with the creation of an ethical review system specific for humanities, social, and applied social sciences, out of health sector (ANPEd, 2017).

OF SCIENCE AS A NEUTRAL AND OBJECTIVE KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION FOR AN ETHICAL-POLITICAL SCIENCE

The mentioned ANPEd (2017) document assumes that the constitution of shared networks from academic-scientific institutions could start new rationality, as well as the desire that this constitution advances as trials and exercises to share an increasingly large knowledge and experience are introduced by integration and plural composition.

As an institutional body, ANPEd consists of several other bodies, each one composed and complex, but capable of creating good encounters and plural compositions, just as the human body. Therefore, thinking of ANPEd as an institution based on horizontal and plural relationships means thinking a science framework for education distinct from modern science, as, according to the paradigm of modern science, knowing is apprehending the elemental composition that explains the observable behavior of phenomena. In this perspective, knowledge is neutral and objective, belonging to a formal and instrumental rationality model that aims at calculating the quantitative composition of phenomena in order to intervene in their behavior. Thus, knowledge is power.

In a global society, knowledge originated from scientific intelligence comprises the main exchange value, which transforms the scientist in producer/agent of information and the educational system in a gigantic database at the service of market demands.

Therefore, the scientific, technological, and industrial system amount to a self-reported whole of meaning that gives the impression of omnipotence. In its epistemological totalitarianism, technical science closes in on itself and turns everything into an object of representation and control, ignoring any context beyond its system. Thenceforth, only what can be known/produced by technical science and, by extension, valued by the market makes sense (Santos, 2017).

The history of science, in modern and contemporary times, represents a drop in the power of being due to the path taken and traveled. And against the fullness of being, thinking assumes levels that serve private interests and formal, abstract perspectives, away from the real ethical-political life, reversing the Spinozan postulate that says “[...] in proportion as a thinking being is conceived as thinking more thoughts, so is it conceived as containing more reality or perfection” (Spinoza, 2007, p. 83). Therefore, by removing the ethical basis through the assumption of logical thinking founded in itself, an ever-deeper uprooting is produced, since this science seeks the universal taken in a movement in which being and real are distant, condemning the logical foundation of being to levels ever more formal.

Thus, a separation between thinking, doing, and acting occurs, degrading ethics to the mere execution of pre-established rules in institutional codes. Ethics is functionalized and becomes an implementation of procedures unconnected to life.

Science, then, collaborates with the logic control of the world, and logic becomes an act of domination by which the world, the being, and life can be destroyed.

Epistemologically, this means the necessary relationship between science and everyday life, between ethics and logic, and, consequently, between ethics and training the scientist as such. Under the sounds of the destruction that it helps to wreak, technical science is, then, overthrown from the absolute center in which it was placed, and starts to relate to reality considering the dignity, vulnerability, and commitments it imposes. Ultimately, science is compelled to find and dialog with reality (Santos, 2017).

Therefore, we agree with Spinoza (apudNegri, 2016) when the philosopher argues that, if the being can be destroyed, it can also be constructed in its entirety. Spinoza teaches us that the world is ethical only to the extent of how and why we live it. At this development level of human reality, the ethical alternative reaches its highest significance: between life and death, between constructing and destroying. Thus, the articulation of ethical power with the contingency of being is not an undetermined movement, as a founding criterion exists: the reasons of life against the reasons of death. “A free man thinks of death least of all things; and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life” (Spinoza, 2007, p. 343). The ethical act is, then, restoring the being in the tension between singular and collective.

Therefore, ethics becomes politics by the intensity of life and collective choices, towards the productive imagination of a world that opposes that of death, “For a free multitude is guided more by hope than fear; a conquered one, more by fear than hope: inasmuch as the former aims at making use of life, the latter but at escaping death” (Spinoza, 1994, p. 59).

Spinoza describes productive imagination as an ethical power, a faculty commanding the construction and development of freedom, the construction of collective reason, and its internal articulation. For the philosopher, it is not words, but ontological realities that develop the productive imagination. Thus, science, work, and the world of language and information are led back to ethics and studied/researched at the moment they are formed, in their genealogy.

Words and things are established in an operating horizon of a constitutive dynamic. Ethics discovers and recognizes the quality of existence, the tendency of existing towards life or death, as a fundamental determination not of a time-measure, but a time-life. In this regard, “[...] the mind endeavors to conceive only such things as assert its power of activity” (Spinoza, 2007, p. 179). Therefore, the power of being is confirmed as an ethical-political instance, as well as the existence as an operative reality that is routinely built by the collective being. The collective being is in the permanent construction of a collectivity since its expression is a great sensitive act that comprises the body and the multiplicity of bodies. The participant being of multiplicity is in a continuous proliferation of relationships and conflicts that do not know a limit other than destruction.

Whatsoever disposes the human body, so as to render it capable of being affected in an increased number of ways, or of affecting external bodies in an increased number of ways, is useful to man; and is so, in proportion as the body is thereby rendered more capable of being affected or affecting other bodies in an increased number of ways. (Spinoza, 2007, p. 311)

For Spinoza, collectively, and at every moment, this miracle of the new being is offered to us in a thousand and one singular actions of each being, as our existence is always collective in itself. Thus, the independence of reason is not constituted by scientific and moral precepts, but by ethics, which abhors the control for domination and exploitation, by the collective being that proclaims the affirmation of life and, therefore, an ethical-political science rooted in its plane of immanence and, thus, consonant with its guidelines for the plateau of social reality in which it operates - in this case, the education field.

ETHICS, POLITICAL LIFE, AND ETHICAL FRAMEWORK FOR RESEARCH IN EDUCATION

The human body, according to Spinoza (2007), is extremely complex, comprising several bodies, each one of them also very elaborated. Thanks to this complexity, it can affect and be affected in many ways by external bodies, being able to retain emotions, that is, modifications these interactions cause.

Spinoza (1994) addresses the issue of emotions in human ethics and their consequences on the development of an ethical-political action by observing how sad emotions become a mechanism to control masses manipulated by oppressor governments, in this case, the ethical framework systems for research in education, built in a hierarchical and/or dogmatic way.

Thinking in accordance with Spinoza’s philosophy concepts, it is possible to consider that we develop a range of interactions with other bodies over our everyday life. Such events can increase or decrease our capability for action upon the circumstances by which they affect us, since an interaction, when it extensively impresses our own body, results in a given emotion. Under these conditions, if perhaps this interaction is appropriate, that is, based on the development of emotions that expand our capability for action, we gain a healthy growth in our intrinsic strength, as occurs in the case of joy, defined by Spinoza (2007, p. 332) as “[...] the transition of a man from a less to a greater perfection”.

In a diametrically opposite situation, when the intensity of our inherent power decreases (more precisely in experiences that motivate the development of sad emotions, such as hate, jealousy, resentment, among others), our capability for action weakens, as such emotions arise from an inadequate idea we have of reality.

In this scenario, conatus - effort to persevere in existence - defines our power of action and the obstacles faced that can reduce this power to passivity. All that increases the power of action of conatus will be good, and all that decreases it will be bad. Thus, good and bad represent only the current quality of the internal movement of a singular essence in its pursuit for completion. They are relationships.

It is imperative, then, to develop a network of interactions with other individuals, aiming at a mutual use of what is excellent in creative potential from both interacting parties. We can consider that such circumstances would result in the Spinozan thesis of the usefulness of a harmonious relationship between individuals in favor of achieving a common goal that promotes improvement and social benefit for the collectivity.

For Spinoza (1994, Part II, § 13):

If two come together and unite their strength, they have jointly more power, and consequently more right over nature than both of them separately, and the more there are that have so joined in alliance, the more right they all collectively will possess.

Therefore, the common is implemented in the plane of immanence of a current ontology by the notion of the development of networks of interactions that potentially establish “good encounters.”

Thus, based on the Spinozan perspective and the Deleuzian reading of Spinoza’s work (Deleuze, 2002), we underline the proximity between ethics, research, and education, considering this correlation as a privileged plan of micropolitical struggles.

For Spinoza, the common notions are not so named for being common to all spirits, but for representing something common to bodies: either all bodies (extension, motion, and rest) or some bodies (at least two, mine and another) - a common established through good encounters (Deleuze, 2002).⁵

Of particular interest for this discussion are the ideas related to the power of action, to conatus, which means the effort to persevere and produce an active life, in this case, the development of research in education not alienated from common collective life.

“Everything, in so far as it is in itself, endeavors to persist in its own being” (Spinoza, 2007, p. 173). This proposition (proposition 6, part III) devises the heart of the conatus theory, meaning that all things are gifted with a power of action.

According to the wording of proposition 6, this constitutive effort of each thing is to persevere in its own being and not to remain statically in the same state. Human conatus, therefore, is not just a principle of self-preservation, but also of self-expansion and fulfillment of everything that is within its singular essence.

The very essence of an individual is determined to carry out acts of self-preservation. However, self-preservation and self-expansion, as fundamental motives of human conduct, are not free, as they involve a whole design and/or fundamental dynamic principle that governs emotional and political life.

Every ethical problem, then, consists of determining the conditions under which active emotions can become stronger than passions, reversing the relationships of strength that favor the latter at the expense of the former. It is not, as we have seen, about suppressing passions but changing the dosage between passivity and activity.

Good encounters increase our power of action. From this point of view, the formal ownership of this power of action and equally of knowing emerges as the main purpose, and reason, instead of floating at random encounters, should seek to unite things and beings whose relationship combines directly with ours. “Thus reason seeks the sovereign good or ‘our own advantage,’ proprium utile, which is common to all men (V, 24-28)” (Spinoza apudDeleuze, 2002, p. 61).

We should not compare individualized organs or bodies but put components or materials in a relationship which separates organ, body, and its specificity to transform it into another. Freedom is not the willpower to extirpate emotions or to choose between opposite alternatives, but the ability of body and mind for the simultaneous plural (Spinoza, 1994). Thus, with Spinoza, we dare say that the infinite intellectual acts, the civitas, and the intelligence as a manner of collective expression are equivalent.

The living social flesh that is not a unitary body can easily seem monstrous (Hardt and Negri, 2005). Once more, Spinoza (1988) clearly foresees this monstrous nature of multitude, conceiving life as a tapestry in which singular passions weave an unusual capacity for transformation. Spinoza shows the metamorphoses of the flesh not as a threat, but as a possibility to create an alternative society (Hardt and Negri, 2005).

In other words: How to establish and build a horizon of radical democracy? How to constitute academic-scientific institutions, beyond the towers of cathedrals of knowledge-power, so they involve populations and potentially interested groups in their thinking-practices, assembling collective movements?

In this perspective, the subject is defined by its relationship with the whole, which means that it has just a relation of subsistence and that political qualifications can only reach it from the interaction game. In this regard, the common becomes the recognition that, behind identities and differences, there could be “something common,” that is, “a common” whenever it is understood as a proliferation of creative activities, relationships, or different associative forms (Carvalho, 2015a).

To accomplish that, the scientific community, represented here by ANPEd, needs to establish, in horizontally democratic relationships, connections and/or modes of association that allow the sharing of ideas and experiences, assembling the maximum power of performance (considering the necessary overcoming of factors that lead to passivity and/or minimum power). In addition, it needs to stimulate an ethical-political scientific production that focuses in the common not as a consensus, that is, accession and alienation and/or identification with a representative “spokesperson” of a common or universal metaphysical position, but as the pursuit, in and through relationships and/or encounters, of the collective willpower to create scientific knowledge rooted in the plan of contingency and immanence of life, and not in a universal abstract metaphysics (Carvalho, 2015a).

Thus, betting in the multiplicity of the organization against the multiplicity of the order, in power assemblage against power devices, encouraging and developing a dynamic concept of an open, collective, and democratic research becomes urgent for an academic-scientific institution, such as ANPEd, which differs, as an open organization of society, from vertical structures of order.

Considering that any organization should be a continuous process of composition and decomposition through social encounters on an immanent field of forces, the horizon of a democratic society should clearly be horizontal and plural.

Devices, or deployments, structure a social order FROM ABOVE. ­Assemblage constitutes the mechanisms of organization FROM BELOW, based on an inherent social plan, and “A practical politics of social bodies sets loose the immanent forces from the strictures of predetermined forms to discover their own ends, invent their own constitution” (Hardt, 1996, p. 184). Therefore, an academic-scientific institution, in this case, ANPEd, should be constituted as a horizontal and plural society, as an open space that feeds creation and practical composition (as much as destruction and decomposition), acting as a collective movement (Carvalho, 2015b), and these assumptions must be explicitly included in the proposition of an ethical-political framework.

This occurs because the boundaries of social bodies are continuously subject to change since the practice of assemblage decomposes certain relationships and composes others. Thus, the thinking-practices of institutions must be a policy directed at the creation of social bodies or plans of composition that are always powerful, while remaining, at the same time, open to internal antagonisms, and real forces of destruction and decomposition, especially forces FROM ABOVE (Carvalho, 2015b).

Certainly, the political arrangement is an art, as it needs to be constantly reinvented, and the art of reinvention needs to be visualized in the midst of the ethical framework for research in education, shaping its constitutive mechanisms as concrete social practices, and not only representational ones. ANPEd, conceived as the flesh of multitude, allows itself to dance in its figures, seeking ways to speak, listen, write, and enroll in collective movements of forces FROM BELOW with forces FROM ABOVE.

It is singularity that explains the common. Seeking the common, however, does not mean seeking presupposed realities. When we consider the world as composed of singularities that consist of relationships and, therefore, exist as they are in relationships, we increase our capability for action in networks that become real and productive, in which the connection between singularity and cooperation comes to be essential.

Thus, by focusing on educative and political practices, we understand that they are included in a collective effort, involving the participation of multiple social agents that, directly or indirectly, contribute to improving the living conditions of individuals and populations. In this case, the development of science, politics, and social practices concerning the field of scientific research in Brazil.

CONCLUSION

We understand and posit that ethical-political dimensions are implemented in networks of informative, linguistic, and emotional work that must occur between ANPEd and all those potentially interested in matters of scientific research, in their various interfaces, dimensions, and populations, seeking the emergence of another conception of collective and scientific production.

Put in common what is common, circulate what already is patrimony of all, proliferate what is in everyone and everywhere, be it science, culture, education, life. However, the dynamic thus described only partially corresponds to what actually happens, since it is accompanied by the appropriation, expropriation, and privatization of common, adopted by various scientific instances, with goals that capitalism cannot disguise, even in their more rhizomatic versions.

The living social flesh is not a unitary body, and, as a multiple body, it can compose with other bodies other modes of scientific production that contribute to improving the life possibilities of individuals and populations.

The fight of ANPEd, in conjunction with other scientific institutions, seems to be the proposition of an ethical framework for humanities and social sciences, specifically in the education field, given that the common is always built by the recognition of another, the relationship with another that develops in this reality.

Spinoza (1994) called this reality multitude because when we speak of multitude, in fact, we are speaking of a whole series of elements of (re)existence that are objectively there and constitute the common. But the issue is not simply being common or being multitude; the issue is to make multitude, build multitude, build common, commonly build, in common, the ethical framework for the science of the country, considering that common does not exclude singularity, specificity, but mainly the diversity of dimensions and theoretical-methodological approaches that research in the field of educational studies presents.

REFERÊNCIAS

• ANPEd - Associação Nacional de Pós-Graduação e Pesquisa em Educação. Comissão de Ética na Pesquisa. Ética na pesquisa em educação: documento preliminar. Curitiba: ANPEd; UFPR, 2017.
• Brasil. Ministério da Saúde. Conselho Nacional de Saúde. Resolução n. 196, de 10 de outubro de 1996. Aprova as diretrizes e normas regulamentadoras de pesquisas envolvendo seres humanos. Diário Oficial da União, Brasília, DF, 10 out. 1996. Disponível em: <Disponível em: http://bvsms.saude.gov.br/saudelegis/cns/1996/res0196_10_10_1996.html >. Acesso em: 8 jun. 2017.
  » http://bvsms.saude.gov.br/saudelegis/cns/1996/res0196_10_10_1996.html
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• 1
  For Hardt and Negri (2005, p. 12-13), “[...] we should distinguish the multitude at a conceptual level from other notions of social subjects, such as the people, the masses, and the working class. The people has traditionally been a unitary conception. [...] ‘the people’ is one. The multitude, in contrast, is many. [...] composed of innumerable internal differences that can never be reduced to a unity or a single identity [...]. The masses are also contrasted with the people because they too cannot be reduced to a unity or an identity”. However, “[...] the essence of the masses is indifference”, in which all differences are submerged and the colors of the population fade to gray. Multitude also differs from the working class, as it refers to the production not only of material goods, but also of relationships, communication, and forms of life. Consequently, according to the authors, the concept of multitude opposes the concepts of the people, the passive and amorphous masses, and the working class, since it relates to the people who resist and (re)exist inventing new ways of living life.
• 2
  CONEP, connected to NHC, is responsible for the approval of laws related to ethics in research and the process of ethical review.
• 3
  In virtue of the amplitude of this debate, we will present only two considerations related to the specificity of humanities and social sciences and one regarding the intent of the resolution in representing a standardization of research activities in this field developed in national territory.
• 4
  The committee was created in 2015 and includes the researchers: Antonio Carlos Amorim, Carlos Eduardo Ferraço, Isabel Cristina de Moura Carvalho, Jefferson Mainardes e João Batista de Carvalho Nunes.
• 5
  Spinoza declares in his work Ethics (2007) “That which is common to all, and which is equally in a part and in the whole, does not constitute the essence of any particular thing” (proposition 37). And continues: “Those things, which are common to all, and which are equally in a part and in the whole, cannot be conceived except adequately” (proposition 38). Thus, for Spinoza (proposition 39, corollary), “[...] the mind is fitted to perceive adequately more things, in proportion as its body has more in common with other bodies”.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  03 Dec 2018
• Date of issue
  2018

History

• Received
  09 Jan 2018
• Accepted
  16 May 2018