A (Des)construção das plantas medicinais como um objeto de valor: um estudo semiótico na região de Dourados-MS

Abstract

This study aimed to infer meaning generative process of “medicinal plant” object value, describing its construction or its reconstruction, from discourse that were produced about them. The description of identitary process that results from ethnic-racial meeting between academic community and researches communities was also done. Theoretical perspective was founded in Greimasian Semiotic – resorting to contributions of French Analysis of Discourse – about scientific discourse, common sense/traditional knowledge, subjectivity, identity and the relationship among subjects and object value. A comparative and descriptive analysis of discourse that constituted the corpus of this research was done: monographs that were wrote in 2011 by academic community of undergraduate studentes in Indian Licenciature Curse at Indian Intercultural Faculty. Results showed that identity construction presented in scientific discourse on medicinal plants showed itself as consolidated and generalized on the competent specialist stereotype that sometimes it becomes evident, when the scientific knowledge is a hard evidence and proper; sometimes it is neutral, when it becomes an official register, or a rescuer, when it becomes that registers, catalogues and preserves the traditional knowledge. This way, the identitary process that was constructed in scientific discourse on medicinal plants revealed a conflict of knowledges between Indian and academic communities, as well, a pursuit of culture aggregation which promotes empowerment of Indian community; however, the assimilation promoted by scientific knowledge prevails, causing social inequality. Therefore, we concluded that there was a change of meanings of object (medicinal plants) that was determined by academic community subjects in relation to meanings that Indian community had about it. That changing produced an oscillation in the intensity of culture pratices about medicinal plants and contributed to a (dis)construction of Indian community identity. That is, by discoursive pratices of non-indian community, the use of medicinal plants needs a scientific contribution that gives it adequate attributes that promotes credibility (correct and safety use), as well, that it be rescued and registered as a manner of valuing Indian culture.