THE PRODUCTION OF A LULA-DILMA CO-PRESENCE EFFECT IN THE POLITICAL MEDIA DISCOURSE IN BRAZILIAN WEEKLY MAGAZINES FROM 2010

ABSTRACT: Foregrounded by the theoretical and methodological framework of the French Discourse Analysis, the current study embodies the Foucauldian idea of History as a discontinuous set of temporalities and recovers the discourse of the most important event in Brazil during 2010, when Dilma Rousseff was indicated as the presidential candidate of the Workers' Party (PT), as the successor of Luis Inácio Lula da Silva. Facts and events that constituted the conditions of possibility for the presidential race during the period are discussed, while the power relations that delineate the political and media discourse are problematized, as our paper analyzes the regularities/dispersions that guide Dilma's and Lula's discourses within a 208-issues archive of the weekly magazines CartaCapital, Época, IstoÉ and Veja published during the election year. Results show the production of a discursive effect of a Lula-Dilma co-presence, which, in three of the magazines, show a lack of qualification of the candidate's image, as a product manufactured for electoral purposes. On the other hand, in CartaCapital, as dispersion, the discursive effect highlights the partnership of the two subjects as essential for the continuity of the Worker's Party policy.