The silencing of “I”, of “Lula” and of “president Lula”

Abstract

This text results from the research in which I deal with the political representation of the uttering subject in Lula’s discourse (LD), in the space-time 2003-2006. I analyze the process of political representation when the uttering subject in LD silences “I”, “Lula” and consequently “President Lula”, assuming a political “we” and using the third person singular, updated as “the Government”, “the President of the Republic”, “the Federal Government”, etc., which can be replaced by “we”. I understand that, in the uttering function of President of the Republic, the manner in which the subject represents himself distances him from his subjectivity, sheltering him in the shadow of the social place to which he belongs. However, the simultaneous interweaving of those two forms of representations ("we" and the third person singular) does not allow us to speak of total erasing, of total neutralization, nor of a complete empting of his subjectivity.