Capitalism and law contemporary roles on Brazilian health concept:contributions from a French discourse analysis standpoint

Abstract

This article seeks to investigate the discursive processes through which the concept of health was overdetermined in the Brazilian social formation by the capitalist mode of production in the 1980s, as well as its functioning in subject interpellation. Aiming to bring visibility to the socio-historical processes in the production of meanings, excerpts of the Brazilian Federal Constitution of 1988 related to health and Law 8080/90 were analyzed. This analysis is affiliated with the epistemological framework of French Discourse Analysis - Michel Pêcheux’s approach to the Althusserian historical materialism, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and Saussurean linguistics - being built mainly upon its theoretical-methodological apparatus predating 1975. Thus, it scrutinizes how the concept of health operates as a mechanism of subjectivation; the Brazilian State Apparatus role in (re)producing the mode of production and its dominant ideology; as well as the convenience of the public-private dichotomy within the Unified Health System (SUS).