Technopolitics of Distance Education:

educational platforms between Foucault, Han, and Freire

Abstract

This article examines the expansion of Distance Education (DE) in Brazil, driven by public policies and the platformization of education. The object of study is the technopolitical, legal, and psychosocial implications of this phenomenon, analyzing how DE reconfigures educational practices within a neoliberal logic of surveillance, performativity, and commodification. The general objective is to understand how digital platforms, through their algorithmic systems, reshape pedagogical experiences and the subjectivities of both students and teachers. The methodology is qualitative, with an exploratory and critical approach, grounded in a literature review and documentary analysis of laws, official data, and academic research. The findings suggest that platformization, under the guise of democratization, intensifies the precarization of teaching labor, enforces control through algorithmic surveillance, and negatively affects students' mental health—manifesting in anxiety and burnout—by imposing a logic of self-management and continuous performance. Nonetheless, fields such as Law and Psychology demonstrate resistance, upholding in-person instruction as essential for ethical and critical education.It is concluded that DE, in its current configuration, functions as a mechanism of control that undermines the human and critical dimensions of education. Overcoming this model demands a shift toward a democratic and dialogical paradigm, one that employs technology to foster care, autonomy, and the formation of critical consciousness—rather than merely reproducing market-driven logics.