Production of an end-of-life curriculum vitae through the pedagogical apparatus of the media

Abstract

This paper analyzed how the discourse on death circulates within the Brazilian media, thereby producing an endof- life curriculum vitae. It stemmed from document research in which the theoretical-methodological reference framework was the thinking of Michel Foucault. The empirical material was composed of ten reports that circulated in the magazines Época and Veja between 2002 and 2012. To delimit the corpus for the analysis, discursive mapping was elaborated using the ATLAS.ti 7 software. The findings were subjected to discourse analysis inspired by Foucault’s thinking. The acceptance of death and its domestication appeared as strategies produced by the State and legitimized through the media. These informative Brazilian magazines produced end-oflife curricula vitae, thereby teaching and publicizing acceptance of death and calling on subjects to govern their own end. Those who escape from this discursive order are considered to be “abnormal” in the end-of-life context.