Abstract
This paper presents an analysis and theoretical interpretation of claims related to rights reported by students in the public-school occupations in the state of São Paulo, in 2015. First, I perform a reconstruction of the case drawing on a selection of interviews with students, in which they mention their experiences of disrespect in face of the government’s proposal of “school reorganization”. After that, I mobilize elements of Axel Honneth and Robin Celikates' conceptions of critical theory that can be productive for the interpretation of concrete social experiences and practices in contexts of social struggles. Finally, considering the observations on the “sphere of rights” in the book Struggle for Recognition, I propose a theoretical interpretation of the arguments and claims related to rights as consisting a practical resource and shared medium that allowed the protests to reverberate throughout the state and in other social sectors distant from students.
Keywords:
Occupy; Students’ movement; Recognition; Prefigurative politics; Critical theory