Organizational communication, microcephaly and aesthetics of difference: analysis of 2 (two) years of the Federal Government’s discourses in face of the Zika virus’ epidemic

Abstract

This article aims to analyze ways of difference’s affecting present in the Federal Government’s organizational communication in the context of the increase in the number of births of children with microcephaly in Brazil, during the Zika virus epidemic, between November 2015 and November 2017. Its conceptual bases discuss communication and the aesthetic regime of / in organizations, in the face of the public appearance of microcephaly, which affects official discourses based on aesthetics of difference, revealing vulnerability scenarios. The methodology was based on an interpretative analysis of the organizational discourse, having as empirical support publications on microcephaly in the Health Blog, from the Ministry of Health. As a result, the discursive treatments progressively signal positions of: impassibility (in relation to women/children); vector eradication (priority of public action); confession (circumscribed admission of a public health challenge); expanded admission; appearance attribution (naturalness); and atrophy (microcephaly associated only with vector eradication). It is concluded that, with the exception of the treatments of expanded admission and appearance attribution, all the others reveal approaches that can collaborate with the erasure of the existence of human beings, with visible social marks of vulnerability, by discursive bets that, ironically, reinforce a personification of the Zika transmitting vector.