LAW 10,639/03 AS AN INSTITUTIONALIZED EPISTEMIC INSURGENCE: BLACK MOVEMENT, STATE AND DISPUTE FOR THE LEGITIMACY OF KNOWLEDGE

Abstract

This article examines Law 10.639/03 beyond its usual framing as a curricular inclusion policy, proposing instead its interpretation as a form of institutionalized epistemic insurgency. It argues that the mandatory teaching of Afro-Brazilian and African History and Culture represents the normative inscription of a long-standing struggle led by the Black movement in Brazil against the historical disqualification of Black knowledge and the racial organization of school memory. Drawing on Brazilian racial critique and decolonial thought, the paper contends that the law does not initiate this debate but relocates it within the State, granting it legal density and institutional force. At the same time, it shows that institutionalization does not dissolve the tensions inherent to this process, as state recognition entails forms of translation and containment. By analyzing the law alongside the National Curriculum Guidelines for Ethnic-Racial Education and the National Common Curricular Base, the article demonstrates that the historical strength of Law 10.639/03 lies in its ambivalent condition it represents neither full resolution nor total neutralization, but a decisive shift in the struggle over the legitimacy of knowledge in Brazilian schooling.