Marilena Chaui, professor: authority against authoritarianism

Abstract This article examines Marilena Chaui’s teaching experience, linking her teaching activities with a focus on plurality. To this end, it searches for elements that can reveal what constitutes a communicative authority in the sharing of a presence that invites the singular and plural expression in the reports of former students, testimonies of participants in meetings, study groups and in the published material about the classes. Based on the bibliographic analysis, it discusses to what extent the intention of sharing knowledge confers a force of action that both disarticulates processes of submission and authoritarianism and discards elements of oppression and intellectual coercion in academic activities. It highlights in this story the inseparability between teaching and research activity, in the commitment to reconcile the established and the instituting in the confrontation of barbarity. In order to highlight the trajectory of Professor Marilena Chaui as an affirmation of public debate in contrast to the multiple forms of authoritarianism, the article highlights the mark of a teaching style capable of revealing presence and authority through communicative sharing. Thus, considering educational work in the form of care made present in the classroom, the article investigates the composition of pedagogical processes between elements such as inviting, stimulating, challenging, persuading, in the intersection between rigor and sensitivity, spontaneity and criteria. The article concludes by defending the resumption of teaching authority with a view to plurality as the indispensable aspect to be taken care of in the academic experience.