Police officers of Bahia and the first movement of the 21st century cycle of demands: circulation of meanings

Abstract

In this paper, we analyze the process of meaning production in some Bahia’s sayings on the 2001 strike movements of police officers of Bahia (“Polícia Militar da Bahia-PM”), which happened in the second half of that year. During the cycle of demands of Bahia’s military police, the relationship between the police strikers and the government's authorities was characterized by great tension. This tension could also be observed in society as a whole and in the media. In general, the discussion reached its boiling point when it regarded whether police officers should or should not be allowed to go on strike and whether a police strike was or was not legal, legitimate.  Pecheutian discourse analysis, as a praxis of historical comprehension of semantic processes, allow us to understand how such tensions take place at a language level. As a matter of fact, in such ideological disputes, the resistance act, at the discursive-ideological dimension, must take into consideration the historical subjects’ capacity to stand up against domination, setting up a social confront, which effects discursive practices.