The bourgeoisie framed: Mafalda and its group criticize elements of the bourgeois society (the naturalization of the differences, the inhumanuzation and the competition) in the History class

Abstract

The purpose of this work, from a marxist point of view, is to think about the possibility in criticizing the bourgeosie society in History classes, to set up colectively, at last, anti-hegemonic reality readings. Based upon Gramsci concept of hegemony and on anti-hegemony notion, we have analyzed the comics not with the intention of making this language more and more present in the classes but with the attempt of understanding them as a tool that may contribute a lot for a real criticism and for the explicitness of the historic moment in which they were created, for a teaching, at the same time, more playful and critic. In methodological terms, we have selected three Mafalda’s strips (named “The naturalization of the differences”, “The inhumanization” and “The competition”), shown on Toda Mafalda (2002) aiming to replace the insights herein sketched. This work is a part of the master’s degree lecture, read at the Postgraduation Program in Education of UERJ (ProPed) in March 2011, under the title of Mafalda in The History class: a criticism of the bourgeoise society charactheristic elements and the collective making-up of hegemonic meanings.