Negacionismo instrumental: as oscilações do governo Bolsonaro entre ciência e anticiência.

Abstract

The present work analyzes the legal norms of response of the Jair Bolsonaro’s administration to the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil from the perspective of science and anti-science during the year of 2020. A theoretical approach abstracted from Jürgen Habermas' critical theory guides this investigation. The research aims to answer the following problem: "to what extent Bolsonaro’s administration adopts an anti-scientific posture in its response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil, breaking with the trend of state administration characterized by a scientific foundation to its actions and that was consolidated in the country over the last governments since the country's redemocratization?”. The investigation was based on secondary data provided by the newsletter “Direitos na pandemia”, which maps and analyzes the legal norms issued by the Union during the pandemic. As a result, we identified an oscillation of the Bolsonaro government between science and anti-science, confirming our hypothesis and suggesting a new form of instrumental rationality that appears in contemporaneity, which we call instrumental negationism.