A busca do pluriverso: cotas universitárias e Encontro de Saberes

Abstract

This dissertation is inserted in the field of investigation of Higher Education (HE) with a focus on university quotas and the project Encontro de Saberes. The university quotas are problematized here beyond the necessary bias of social inclusion, as a possibility of insertion of knowledge until then excluded from the university and, consequently, as a means of decoloniality of this space. The Encontro de Saberes project began in July 2010, as an initiative of the Instituto Nacional de Ciência e Tecnologia de Inclusão no Ensino Superior e na Pesquisa (INCTI), based at the University of Brasilia (UnB) and currently in twenty universities. The project Encontro de Saberes is a response to the mono-epistemic university structure, which intends to decolonize and change the structures of knowledge by including hitherto invisible subjects in the university context transmittingtheir knowledge as masters in the academy. At this juncture, the epistemological basis of the dissertation was the decoloniality perspective, with looks from the South, based on authors such as Aníbal Quijano, Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Ramón Grosfoguel, among others. Thus, the general objective of the dissertation is to analyze (experiences of) knowledge dialogue that aim at pluriversity as a way to overcome social inequalities at the university. For the construction of the research, the investigation was carried out through observation; semi-structured interviews and document analysis, so that during the investigative process analytical markers were elaborated that permeate the entire dissertation. The main results show that the entrance of quota-eligible students can alter the epistemological structures of the academy by allowing the insertion into the disciplinary grids and curricula of knowledge that modernity refutes and does not consider valid. To this end, the epistemic quotas of the Encontro de Saberes project are one of the possible ways to value other knowledges and make the university a pluriversal space. This unprecedented project constitutes an important local initiative, from the South, which values the knowledges of the South. Despite the fact that the Encontro de Saberes imposes tensions, whether due to bureaucratic obstacles or even epistemological crises, it is possible to affirm that the university needs to rethink its structures, in order to stop being an environment of exclusion. Therefore, with the inclusion of experiences and knowledge, the university can be decolonized, thus breaking the modern mono-epistemic logic of the academy.