Discurso, trabalho e religião no episódio do “exorcismo” nas eleições paulistanas de 2024

Abstract

This study investigates the metaphorical discursive functioning of the utterance "I am going to exorcise the demon with a work card", produced by Pablo Marçal during the mayoral debate for the city of São Paulo on August 14, 2024, in his confrontation with Guilherme Boulos. The research aims to understand how this utterance, articulated with the gesture of holding up a Brazilian work card and the subsequent reaction of his opponent, produces meaning effects that temporarily reorganize discursive memories related to work, religion, and politics. Grounded in the French tradition of Discourse Analysis, the study draws primarily on the contributions of Michel Pêcheux, Dominique Maingueneau, Eni Orlandi, Jean-Jacques Courtine, Marie-Anne Paveau, Sírio Possenti, and Roberto Leiser Baronas. The corpus consists of three audiovisual records of the episode, understood as different materializations of the same discursive event. The analysis demonstrates that the episode cannot be reduced to the verbal utterance alone; rather, it is constituted through the articulation of speech, gesture, and reaction, allowing the emergence of an exorcism scenography within a political debate. In this discursive functioning, the work card temporarily assumes a symbolic position similar to that of the crucifix, reorganizing historically shared memories and discursive positions. The findings indicate that the discursive event under investigation results from the articulation of different materialities, memories, and symbolic universes, highlighting the role of metaphorical discursive functioning in the production of the observed meaning effects. Furthermore, the study shows that humor contributes to the intelligibility and circulation of this discursive event without exhausting its possibilities of interpretation.