The Diffuse Vigilance of History Teaching in Contemporary Brazil

This chapter examines the growing climate of surveillance and intimidation surrounding history teaching in contemporary Brazil, conceptualized here as diffuse vigilance. It argues that history educators are increasingly subjected to decentralized forms of scrutiny that operate through legal-bureaucratic mechanisms, digital platforms, and organizational controls within schools. Drawing on historical analysis of Brazilian history education, concrete cases of teacher harassment, and the author’s own professional experience, the chapter traces the genealogy of these pressures and their entanglement with far-right revisionist movements, particularly the Escola sem Partido (School Without a Party) movement. The analysis highlights how such dynamics foster fear, self-censorship, and curricular erosion, while also mobilizing historians and teachers to articulate new forms of pedagogical resistance grounded in critical historiography and democratic education.