Between power, affects and knowledge

Abstract

This essay explores the power relations permeating the institutional, academic, and personal structures of a graduate program and research center, consolidated through processes of learning, evaluation, and affective relationships. These reflections respond to the lived experiences related to the thirty-year history of the Graduate Program in Communication at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. It specifically considers the complexity of the continuous processes of choice and evaluation involving faculty and future master’s and doctoral students regarding research themes, supervision, readings, and scientific production. These processes also form the foundational structure of the program, which is incessantly evaluated by funding agencies and public policies. For this essay, the concepts housed within the term “evaluation” centralize the approach to the power relations between forms of knowledge, emotions and tensions.