Human Rights and Human Rights Education from a Post-Structural Perspective: Meanings and Contexts in Dispute

Abstract

This article aims to reflect on human rights, curriculum, and human rights education policies from a post-structural perspective. Based on qualitative research with a theoretical and bibliographical approach, the study analyzes the processes of signification of these concepts as open discursive fields, marked by continuous disputes and reconfigurations. Drawing on the contributions of authors such as Laclau, Mouffe, Lopes, Macedo, Santos, and Piovesan, it argues that both human rights and curriculum should be understood as historical, contingent constructions permeated by power relations. The analysis also draws on Ball and Bowe's Policy Cycle theory, highlighting that educational policy is not a linear process, but a space of reinterpretation, resignification, and resistance. Schools and the individuals who work within them not only implement but also recreate educational policies, highlighting the multiplicity of possible meanings and the impossibility of totalization. The study proposes that a post-structural reading allows us to challenge normative discourses and pave the way for more pluralistic, critical, and difference-sensitive policies.