complete volume four

BRAZILIAN POSTCOLONIALITIES

Adriana Varejão. Mapa de Lopo Homem II, 2004

Guest Editors: Emanuelle Santos Patricia Schor

2 P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 4 Fall 2012 ISSN: 1874-6969

EDITORIAL NOTE

This thematic issue of P: Portuguese Cultural Studies focuses on the

interact ions between crit iques of co lonia lism and colonia lity, and Brazi lian

studies. We have a imed at producing analyzes of Brazil ian culture and society

that address power inbalances and ideo logies related to colonial expansion at

current t imes of neo-libera l g lobal izat ion. Our init ial ca ll for papers sought to

ell icit theoret ical perspect ives across disc ip lines we l l suited for an evaluat ion of

Brazi l ian contemporaneity dedicated to i ts (re)thinking and (re) interpret ing

through fruitful (d is)encounters between Postcolonial theory and other cr it ica l

tradit ions, namely from the South.

By proposing an issue on Brazilian Postcolonial ities it has also been

our aim to address a long last ing d ispute in the Humanit ies around the value of

the postcolonial in/to Brazil. To which extent do the bodies of theories and

modes of reading offered by what has come to be known as Postcolonia l Studies

can and cannot be useful to understand the historica l and cultura l processes that

frame contemporary Brazil? That is certa inly one of the quest ions we bel ieve the

art icles presented here will help to discuss.

The Introduction by Patr icia Schor opens this issue of the journal . She

draws from the issue' s front cover art to reflect on the cartography o f human

suf fe r ing printed on the canvas of Brazil ian history. This point of departure

offers possible travel routes to exploring tentat ively defined Brazi lian

postcolonialit ies as ways into the wound inf l icted on the body of the subaltern.

A crit ica l reflect ion around the term “Postcolonial”, its emergence and

condensat ion on the Postcolonial Studies f ield as we l l as its modes of

employment across de Atlantic is offered by Ella Shohat and Robert Stam in

the interview “Brazil is Not Travel ing Enough: On Postcolonial Theory

and its Analogous Counter-Currents”. Shohat and Stam reflect further on the

loci of production and consumption of knowledge within the fie ld, as they


problematize the circulat ion of theories throughout the North-South axis that

continue to polarize contemporary cartographies.

The quest ion of the localit ies of theory production is assert ive ly

elaborated in “Feminismo e Tradução Cultural: Sobre a Colonialidade do

Gênero e a Descolonização do Saber” . In her art icle, C laudia de L ima Costa

quest ions the locus of enunciat ion of theory through the art iculat ion of

Postcolonial cr it ic ism and Latin American Feminist theories as she showcases

the citat ion pract ices in Brazil ian Femin ist scholarship. She proposes the trope

of translat ion, foregrounding subaltern female voices that deco lonize

Eurocentric knowledge, and gears attention to epistemologies emerging from

the South: Brazi lian/Latin American’s own Postcolonial Feminism.

Alterity is addressed by Kamila Krakowska on “O Turista Aprendiz e o

Outro: a(s) Identidade(s) Brasileira(s) em Trânsito” where postcolonia l

lenses are appl ied to analyze the late 1920’s trave l chronicles of the Modernist

Mário de Andrade. Krakowska explores Andrade’s sat ir ica l dislocat ion from the

Brazi l ian center to its margins in the Amazonian and Northeastern regions. Such

t rans it is argued as a way out of an impoverished version of the nat ion. Hereby

Andrade foregrounds Brazi l ian Modernism’s force to recover Other agents to

complete the mosaic of an heterogeneous Brazi l ian identity.

Further exploring indigenous emergenc ies, Let ícia Mar ia Costa da

Nóbrega argues for a historical ly situated postcolonial ism to take account of the

part icular it ies of the Latin Amer ican and Brazi l ian experiences, foregrounding

the requirement of ethnographic embeddedness for shaping such interpretat ive

grid. In “Brazilian Postcoloniality and Emerging South-South Relations: a

View from Anthropology” she addresses authoritat ive nat ion build ing

literature on Brazil, problematiz ing the high currency of the mult iple

modernit ies paradigm against postcolonial ism. The author focuses on the place

of Africa in Brazil ian nat ional imaginat ion, which feeds the advert isement of the

Brazi l ian suitabi l ity to play the role of development provider to the African

continent. This analysis prompts reflect ion on the pitfalls and potentials o f

South-South cooperat ion .


Agency and subalternity in Brazi lian prose fict ion is the theme of

Carolina Correia dos Santos’ analyzes in "Sobre o Olhar do Narrador e seus

Efeitos em Os Se rtõe s e Ci d a d e d e Deu s ” . She compares fundamental l iterary

texts of the beginning and the end of the XX century that think and enact

marginal izat ion in Brazi l. Using the instrumental made avai lable by Subaltern

Studies, she scrut inizes the actual rea l izat ion of the possibi lity the subaltern

subject may have to speak back to the nat ion at t imes o f war .

Finally, Diego Santos Vieira de Jesus set s forth reflect ion on Brazil’s

posit ion in the new cartography in “Not the Boy Next Door: An Essay on

Exclusion and Brazilian Foreign Pol icy” . The author traverses cr it ical

moments and texts of Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s and Lula’s Ministry of

Foreign Re lat ions towards North and South, pointing out to the ambiguous

aspects of Brazil ian internat ional protagonism. The depreciat ion and

domesticat ion of d ifference as wel l as colonial and imperia l mechanisms of

assert ing hegemony are shown in their continuous renewal through the

performat ive prac t ic e o f po l it ic s .

The collect ion of essays in this volume is symptomatic of the disciplinary

diversity of the Postcolonia l f ield covering Cultura l Anthropology, Literature,

Social Sc iences and Internat ional Re lat ions. Their cr it ica l postcolonia l stance

forwards contributions not only to Brazil ian Studies, but also to Portuguese

Studies in its wide Lusophone span, and to Postcolonial Studies.

We thank Paulo de Medeiros for the invit at ion to edit this issue and for

the inspirat ion to make it into a thought-provoking endeavor. To the

contributors, thank you for accepting the challenge. To the readers: boa v iagem .

Emanuel le Santos and Patr ic ia Schor.


INTRODUCTION1

Mapping

Mapa de Lopo Homem II , k indly made available by the art ist Adr iana

Varejão, inc ites an excavat ion of Brazi l ian contemporaneity, in search for the

roots and present mechanisms causing profound inequal it ies and injust ices

scarr ing its t issue, and for new disruptive and l ibertar ian emergencies. The

nautical chart -here evoking the work of the XVI century cartographer of the

Portuguese Court - supported the imperial enterprise of terr itorial conquer and

exploitat ion of peoples and natural resources in the Mundus Novus , neat ly

categorized according to a system of representat ion that codified world regions

outside the European center in terms of natural ized subject ion to it . Varejão

appropriates this imaginary and disrupts its ascet ic t idiness, g iving it a

scatologica l body. We have before us a desecrated map, which recovers the

obscured vio lence that accompanied colonial expansion and outlasted it . 2

The cartography of human suffering is a recurrent figure in some

crit icism to colonialism, which deserves center stage in postcolonial scholarship.

In the writ ing of the Afro-Brazi l ian Beatr iz do Nascimento, Alex Ratts

assoc iates the corpo (body) with a map of a distant country (Ratts 61) .

Nascimento works with the memory of such remote locat ion and its res i lient

sores, to find a house in the sendas (al leys) (qtd. in Ratts 71) . These tropes point

out to the materiality and currency of the colonial past and its recovery, in an

attempt to make fe e l and reveal the usurped bodies of its subalterns. They

aff il iate with Franz Fanon’s exposure of “the gangrene ever present at the heart

of the colonial domination” (103); with Eduardo Galeano’s denouncement of

Latin America’s venas abiert as (open veins) – a region pray to colonial and 1 I am grateful to Emanuelle Santos’ and Flavia Dzodan’s careful reading and am indebted to their comments. 2 For further analysis of Mapa de Lopo Homem elucidating the relationship between the artist’s Barroc aesthetic and criticism to colonial historiography and iconography, see the essays by Silviano Santiago, Lilia Moritz Schwarcz and Karl Erik Schøllhammer, in Isabel Diegues’ collection.


imperia l exploitat ion - which resonates into Gloria Anzaldúa’s herida ab ierta

(open wound) that is “the US-Mexican border … where the Third World grates

against the f irst and b leeds” (25) but is also “[t ]he [w]ounding of the ind ia-

Mestiza” (44) ; and with the recalc itrant figure of the “colonia l fracture” in the

memorializat ion disputes in contemporary France, cr it ica l ly studied by Mirei lle

Rosel lo (7) . They enact the biopolit ics of colonial l ife under Portuguese rule,

unrave led by Roberto Vecchi, in its int imate assoc iat ion to the exceptionality of

Portuguese colonia lism packed in a Luso-tropical rhetoric of imperial

benevolence. Vecchi enters this f is sura (fissure) in order to reveal the workings

of the colonial system on the flesh. This is to say that the subaltern was denied

belonging to the body polit ica l – cit izenship - and concurrently her corpo vital

(vita l body) became the object of colonial pol it ics (Vecchi 188). Altogether

these tropes act the eruption of a painful lesion on the gendered and racial ized

bodies of the subaltern.

Further the map supports gazing at Brazi l in search for its new posit ion

in the reconfigurat ion of global power taking place today. Yet, simultaneously to

observing this departure from peripheral ity , we want to explore dynamics in the

entrails of the periphery. This gaze is here informed by the space opened

through the injury, that is Anzaldúa’s borderland and Nascimento’s s enda .

Postcolonial ity attends to the conservat ive and boldly emancipatory acts taking

place at such locat ions vio lently subjected to hegemony, where struggles for

self-representat ion and fa ir engagement with the body of humanity erupt in the

face of the nat ion.

Here the image and it s assoc iated metaphors aff irm their pert inence to

(re)think Brazil ian culture and society in light of its colonia l past represented as

a suture, for the actual v iolence was argued to occur in locat ions other than

“the world the Portuguese created”. On the flesh of those other (Anglophone)

colonial subjects, injuries were apparently not cared for. On the Brazil ian

subaltern, despite sutured, they remain sore, half-open. This lesion offers itse lf

to us as a window.

We invited elaborat ions on the postcolonial other than the straight import

of “foreign” intel lectual thought to pack aspects of Brazil ian contemporaneity

taken as research object , a trend recurrently cr it icized in Brazi l. Lara Al len and


Achil le Mbembe have already argued for a “polit ics and ethics of mutual ity”

inscribed in the postcolonia l terra in as cr it ique to Eurocentrism (3) . This

involves l istening to the voices of the South as a producer of theory, revealing

the Southern genealogies of theory with high currency in the North and, above

al l, depart ing from the entanglement between theories and social condit ions,

enveloping North and South, however with radica lly d ifferent effects at each

end. It draws other routes than the overly pursued ones in the map of

t rave l ing/ t raf f ick ing theorie s , and it uncovers a ve iled d irect ion of processes of

transformation, from the peripheries ( including the South within North and

South) to the center.

Concurrently the intent of such an endeavor is twofold , on the one hand

it seeks to make use of cr it ica l theory that dis lodges hegemony (colonia lism and

imperia lism) - which is local and s imultaneously inscribed in larger g lobal

processes - to reveal traumatica lly si lenced, obscured or erased aspects of

Brazi l ian (cultura l) history haunting the present, for its transformation. On the

other hand it aims to expose processes in the periphery, however in transit ion

from such a locat ion and imaginat ion, which can be seen as forebodes of

intellectual, aesthet ical and polit ica l processes in the North. This associates with

Jean Comaroff’s focus on “ex-centric visions” of, about and from those who are

in the vanguard of the future.

Naming

We borrowed the term postcoloniality f rom Achille Mbembe for his

foregrounding of the aspects of displacement and e ntanglement . This term is

manifest ly dissociated from the temporal mark of the post- . The postcolony

cal ls for a perspect ive unarguab ly anti-essential ist for its enmeshed gaze to local

sensibi l it ies – for they have been historica lly shaped - taking into account global

dynamics of (colonia l) enlacement. It follows that its geography is expanded, for

the condit ion of postcolonial ity is not exclus ively experienced in former

colonies, but also continues to affect (former) metropolitan countries (Allen and

Mbembe 2) . Displacement is a paramount dynamics of postcolonia l cr it iques

that depart from forced exile as an epistemologica l and bodily d istancing from

one’s home. This movement implies what Boaventura Santos cal led de-

familiar izat ion with the canonical tradit ions of the imperial North, in order to


bui ld new epistemic grounds, away from the center (Santos 367). This process

must be aware of the very hegemonic structure of knowledge production and

circulat ion. At the production end, postcolonial cr it icism has re-centered the

colonial metropolis and elected master narrat ives of comparison (Stam and

Shohat 29) for a pretense understanding of the periphery. At the reception end,

the peripheries continue to figure as consumers of theory produced elsewhere,

reproducing the very order o f things denounced by Galeano. With a measure of

real ism concerning our minute dimension, we must remain aware of our very

posit ion in this cartography.

We a lso fo llowed Luís Madureira borrowing from Gayatr i Spivak a sense

of postcoloniality as polit ica l agency (Madureira , "Nation, Identity and Loss of

Footing" 206), evident in his foregrounding of Southern resistance and

crit icism. This move enta ils decanonizing the master narrat ive of progress and

dethroning its agents, and therefore provincial izing the West . A crit ique of the

Brazi l ian nat ional imaginary shaped by the hegemonic nat ional narrat ive t argets

both Eurocentrism and “internal colonial ism” (Stavenhagen), with which it is

enlaced, through the scrut iny of a powerful apparatus of marginal izat ion.

Subaltern voices and epistemologies must be invited to shape the terms of their

engagement in an inclusive conversat ion born out of a “productive complicity”

regarding an envis ioned future (Spivak xi ii) .

The line of continuity between colonia l ism and current structures of

domination and exp loitat ion is the core aspect of Lat in Amer ican counter-

discourse on the “colonial ity of power” (Qui jano), which we a imed at

incorporat ing in this issue. From Dependencia Theory to the Colonia lity o f

Knowledge, Lat in America has been offering crit ica l thought associated with

indigenous movements that depart from its “colonia l dif ference” (Mignolo) to

put forward a decolonia l project . This project however has its own absences and

occlus ions, which must be unrave led.

The concatenation of African and Latin American crit ic ism to

Eurocentrism and imperia l ism to shape what we are here tentat ive ly ca l ling

Brazi l ian Postcolonial it ies, is informed by the common denominator between

colonial ism in Africa (and Asia) and neo-colonial ism in Latin America, at the

end of the XIX century, that is modern imperial ism and its motor, namely


capita list expansion (Pratt 464). This framing of postcolonial ity acknowledges

the historical difference between such experiences, despite of strong

imbricat ions between Brazi l and the African continent in terms of shaping

history and imaginat ion (Almeida; Thomaz). However it seeks expl ic it ly to

benefit from ( less explored) convergences, which might contribute to a

momentous crit ica l endeavor protagonized by regions and agents historica lly

excluded from the production of knowledge. Postcolonial it ies in the plural s ign

to the myriad of contemporary experiences and expressions of the ways found

to deal with and surpass colonia l ity in Brazil.

Inviting

Our intention is to contribute to a historicized, contextual and highly

polit ic ized postcolonial . In this sense we are concurring with Ella Shohat’s cal l

for a postcolonial art iculated in conjunction with quest ions of hegemony and

neo-colonial power relat ions for not running the r isk of sanctify ing the fait

ac compli of colonial v iolence (Shohat 109). It is in fact a cr it ica l perspect ive that

attends to the continuing machinery of hegemony put at work with imperial

conquest . The l inkages between postcolonial cr it ic ism produced at the European

center and its engagement with subaltern enunciat ions from Southeast Asia ,

with the polit ica l rad ical ism of the colonia lity of power - with high currency in

North and Latin America - are to be explored, as much as the art iculat ions with

feminist , subaltern and anti-colonial struggles and crit ic ism, the latter noticeably

absent in the Portuguese postcolonia l f ie ld (Madure ira, "Nation, Identity and

Loss of Footing") . Brazil has a marked protagonism with avant la le t t re

postcolonial cr it ique emergent with Modernism (Shohat; Gomes; Madureira,

Cannibal Modernit ie s ) , and with socia l movements countering cultura l exclus ion

and resist ing socio-economic exploitat ive pract ice. This history of counter-

hegemonic projects invites exploring the approximations between these and

postcolonial cr it ic ism and agency. Concurring with Gustavo Ribeiro,

“colonia lism cannot become an interpretat ive panacea” (290) g iven to the

crit ica l d ifferences between colonial experiences and state deve lopment; we

must then foreground difference and ins ist on art iculat ion with other

interpretat ive roads and “progress ive cosmopolit ics” (287). We are hereby

advancing an invitat ion for a “polylogue” between such modes of cr it ique which


is found fruitful to the mammoth task of decoloniz ing culture, polit ics and

scholarship (Stam and Shohat 19) .

The post- is here a utopia for surpassing colonial ity through the expl icit

evocat ion and scrut iny of colonial ism with the knowledge that imperia lism and

racism are very we ll al ive in forceful and pervas ive ways. At a t ime when Brazi l

becomes a bola da vez ( the next big thing) gaining global protagonism and, at

instances painstakingly, at others cosmetical ly, attempting to recover “Fourth

World peoples” (Shohat 105) into the body of the nat ion, scholarship has the

task to gather the varied s ibl ing cr it ica l pract ices to r ip the wound open, enter

the alley and st ick its nails into the fissure.

Patr ic ia Schor.


Works Cited

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Johannesburg Salon 1 (2009): 1-3. Pr int .

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Ident idade . Oeiras: Celta Editora, 2000. Prin t .

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Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 2007. Print .

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Places." The Johannesburg Salon 3 (2010): 32-35. Pr int .

Diegues, Isabe l, ed. Adriana Vare jão : Entre Carnes e Mares = Between Flesh and

Oceans . Rio de Janeiro, RJ: Cobogó: BTG Pactual, 2009. Pr int .

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Universidad Nac ional de la Repúbl ica, 1971. Print .

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Colonial na Univers idade Bras ile ira." Acta Sc i. Human Soc . Sc i. 29.2 (2007):

99-105. Print .

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University of Virginia Press, 2005. Print .

--- . "Nation, Identity and Loss of Footing: Mia Couto's O Outro Pé Da Sereia

and the Quest ion of Lusophone Postcolonial ism." Novel : A Forum on Fic t ion

41.2/3 Spring/Summer (2008): 200-28. Pr int .

Mbembe, Achille. On the Post co lony . Studies on the History of Society and

Culture. Eds. Victoria E. Bonnell and Lynn Hunt. Berkeley and Los Angeles:

University of Cal ifornia Press, 2001. Pr int .

Mignolo, Walter . "Diferencia Colonia l y Razón Postoccidental." La

Rees t ruc turac ión de las Cienc ias Soc iale s en América Lat ina . Ed. Santiago Castro-

Gómez. Bogotá: Universidad Javel iana, 2000. 3-28. Print .

Pratt , Mary Louise. "In the Neocolony: Dest iny, Dest inat ion, and the Traffic of

Meaning." Colonial it y at Large : Lat in America and the Pos t co lonial Debate . Eds.

Mabel Moraña, Enrique D. Dussel and Car los A. Jáuregui. Lat in America

Otherwise. Durham: Duke University Press , 2008. 459-75. Print .


Quijano, Aníbal. "Co lonia lidad y Modernidad/Racionalidad." Perú Indígena 13.29

(1992): 11-20. Print .

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Paulo: Imprensa Oficia l do Estado de São Paulo: Inst ituto Kuanza, 2007.

Print .

Ribeiro, Gustavo Lins. "Why (Post)Colonialism and (De)Coloniality are not

Enough: A Post-Imperialist Perspect ive." Post co lonial Stud ies 14.3 (2011):

285-97. Print .

Rosel lo, Mirei lle . The Reparat ive in Narrat ive s . Works o f Mourning in Progress .

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Santos, Boaventura de Sousa. A Crít ica da Razão Indolent e : Contra o Desperdíc io da

Exper iênc ia. Para um Novo Senso Comum: A Ciênc ia, o Dire ito e a Pol ít ica na

Trans ição Parad igmát ica . Vol . 1. São Paulo: Cortez Editora, 2000. Pr int .

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and Post-Colonial Issues (1992): 99-113. Print .

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the Vanishing Present . Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard Univers ity Press, 1999.

Print .

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Thomaz, Omar Ribeiro. "Tigres de Papel : Gilberto Freyre, Portugal e os Países

Africanos de Língua Portuguesa." Trânsitos Coloniais : Diálogos Cr ít icos Luso-

Bras ile iros . 2002 Lisbon: Imprensa do ICS. Eds. Crist iana Bastos, Miguel

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Vecchi, Roberto. "Império Português e Biopolít ica: Uma Modernidade Precoce?"

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Universite it Utrecht, 2007. 177-91. Pr int .


“BRAZIL IS NOT TRAVELING ENOUGH”: ON POSTCOLONIAL THEORY AND ANALOGOUS

COUNTER-CURRENTS

an interview with Ella Shohat and Robert Stam by Emanuelle Santos and Patricia Schor

It was our pleasure to interview Professors Ella Shohat and Robert Stam

from New York Univers ity dur ing their visit to the Netherlands to join two

events hosted by the Postcolonial Init iat ive and the Centre for the Humanit ies

of Utrecht Univers ity. In this interview they touch on points of cr it ica l

importance to reflect on the themes developed throughout the current issue of

P: Portuguese Cultural Studies .

ES/PS: One of the points of departure in the Postcolonial field in

Portuguese has been either “we want to get out of” or “we want to offer

something dif ferent from” the Anglo- Postcolonial theory. What do you say

about that?

Shohat : We wil l be happy to d iscuss this terminology, because I think we f ind it

problematic. First of a ll, we think Lusophone and Brazi lian Studies should offer

something different from Anglophone Postcolonial theory! Our crit ique of

certain aspects of Postcolonial Studies is part of our new book

1, and I think it is important because we believe that some of the occasional

reject ion of Postcolonia l Studies in France and Brazi l has to do with the

project ion of Postcolonial Studies as “Anglo-Saxon” as opposed to “Latin.” So

var ious intel lectual projects which are actual ly quite transnational, such as

Postcolonial theory, Crit ica l Race Studies, Mult icultura l Studies, and even

Feminist Studies get caught up in that old regional dichotomy – ult imate ly a

kind of construct , even a phantasm – that sees ideas as ethnical ly marked as

“Latin” or “Anglo-Saxon.” We argue in the book that both terms are

1 Stam, Robert, and Ella Shohat. Race in Translation: Culture Wars around the Postcolonial Atlantic. New York: New York University Press, 2012. Print.


misnomers, that “Lat in” America is also indigenous and African and Asian, just

as supposedly “Anglo-Saxon” Amer ica is also indigenous, Afr ican, and Asian.

The project of our book is to go beyond ethnically def ined nat ion-states to a

relat ional, transnational view of nat ions as palimpsest ic and mult iple.

Stam : For us, a l l the Americas, despite imperial hegemonies, also have much in

common, in both negat ive ways (conquest , indigenous d ispossess ion,

transAtlantic s lavery) and posit ive ways ( art ist ic syncret ism, socia l plura lism)

and so forth. In his memoir, Verdade Tropical 2, Caetano Veloso says that l ike

Brazi l, the US is f atalmente mes t iço – inevitably mest izo – but chooses, out of

racism, not to admit it . The r ight-wing’s virulent hatred of Obama, in this sense ,

betrays a fear of this mest izo character of the American nat ion.

Shohat : It is no coincidence that the relat ionship between African American

and other Afro-diasporas around the Americas has been quite strong. Such

collaborat ions make no sense within an “Anglo-Saxon” versus “Lat in”

dichotomy. We propose in the book that the word “Anglo-Saxon” – which

designates two extinct German tr ibes that moved to England more than a

mil lennium ago – be ret ired in favor of the word “Anglo-Saxonist” as a synonym

for racism. Almost al l the writers who pratt led about “Anglo-Saxon” values –

Mitt Romney is the latest to trumpet this heritage – were white supremacists and

exterminationist rac ists . We see the Latin versus Anglo dichotomy as a symptom

of what we call “ intercolonia l narcissism.” Thus we need another vocabulary

and grammar.

Stam : It is about two versions of Eurocentrism, the Northern European version

and the South European version of European superiority, Anglo-Saxonism and a

Latin it é that orig inated, as [Walter] Mignolo and others have pointed out, in

French interventions in Mexico. Although the Southern European version was

subsequently subalternized, in the beginning the Brit ish and North Americans

actual ly envied Portugal and Spain for their empires, because they were r ich

thanks to South American mineral wealth, which North America did not have. It

is interest ing about Hipól ito da Costa, who was a Portuguese/Brazi l ian d iplomat

who went to Washington around the t ime of the American Revolution and

2 Veloso, Caetano. Verdade Tropical. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1997. Print.


reported that : “the people are so poor, and they marry indians,” a l l tra its that

are usually assoc iated more with Brazi l.

Of course, much of the resistance to these academic currents comes from

legit imate resentment about the inordinate power of the Anglophone academe.

This power, and the privileging of the English language , is h istorica lly rooted in

the power of the Brit ish Empire (Pax Brit an ica) , and of the US as the heir of

that Empire (Pax Americana) . As Mário de Andrade pointed out long ago, the

cultura l power of a nat ion is in some ways correlated with the power of its

armies and its currency.

One of the points of our new book is to quest ion the internat ional

divis ion of intel lectual labor, the system which exalts the thinkers of the Global

North over the thinkers of the Global South, that sees Henry James as

“natura l ly” more important than Machado de Assis, Fredr ic Jameson as more

important than Roberto Schwarz, Jacques Ranc ière as more important than

Marilena Chaui or Ismai l Xavier , and Sinatra as more important than Jobim.

Another instance of this hierarchy is that concepts like “hybrid ity” are

attr ibuted to Harvard professor Homi Bhabha, when Latin American

intellectuals were ta lking about hybrid ity – what was “Anthropophagy” a l l

about? – at least a half century earlier . In any case, we are less interested in

gurus and maîtres à penser than in the transnational c ircuitr ies of d iscourse . That

is why we suggest that postcolonial theorists look beyond the Brit ish and

French empires look at Lat in America, look at Afro-America, look at the

Francophone thinkers, look at indigenous peoples in Europe, African Amer icans

in France, al l the criss-crossing diasporic in tellectuals.

Shohat : Lat in American intellectuals have been in the forefront of doing

mest içage , mét is sage , Anthropophagy. While we certainly consider ourse lves as part

of Postcolonia l theory, we have a lso crit iqued certain of it s aspects, for example

the ahistorica l, uncrit ical ce lebrat ion of hybridity discourse. We were asking:

“What are the genealogies of such d iscourses?” We prefer to emphasize the

quest ion of “linked analogies” between and across nat ional borders. So for us,

cross-border analys is becomes rea lly cruc ial. It is not reduc ible to nat ion-state

formations.


Stam : On the contrary, we argue in the new book that the nat ion-state can be

seen as highly problematic i f we adapt an indigenous perspect ive, since nat ive

nat ions were not states, were vict imized by Europeanized nat ion-states, and

were sometimes phi losophical ly opposed, as Pierre Clastres points out, to the

very concept of nat ion-states and societ ies based on coercion. That was what

the Brazi lian modernists pra ised about them, that they had no police, armies, or

puritanism.

Shohat: We also have a cr it ique of Postcolonial theory, going back to my old

essay 3 that entails posing the quest ion “When does the postcolonial begin?”

from an indigenous perspect ive. Indigenous thinkers often see their situat ion as

colonial rather than postcolonial, or as both at the same t ime. While a certain

Postcolonial theory celebrates cosmopoli tanism, indigenous d iscourse often

valorizes a root ed existence rather than a cosmopolitan one. While Postcolonia l

and Cultura l Studies reve ls in the “blurr ing of borders,” indigenous

communit ies often seek to af f irm borders by demarcat ing land, as we see in the

Amazon, against encroaching squatters, miners, nat ion-states, and transnat ional

corporat ions.

Stam : While the poststructural ism that helped shape postcolonia l ism

emphasizes the inventedness of nat ions and “denatural izes the natural,”

indigenous thinkers have insisted on love of a land regarded as “sacred,”

another word hardly valued in the post- discourses. While Postcolonial theory,

in a Derridean vein, milit ants against “orig inary” thinking …, threatened nat ive

groups want to recover an orig inal culture part ia lly destroyed by conquest and

colonial ism. What Eduardo Viveiros de Castro ca lls indigenous

“mult inatural ism” chal lenges not only the rhetorical antinatural ism of the

“posts” but also what might be cal led the primordial Oriental ism, that which

separated nature from culture, an imals from human beings.

Shohat : While the beginnings of Postcolon ia l Studies are usually traced back to

Edward Said ’s Oriental ism 4 and tend to emphasize the great European empires of

the XIX century, and to a lesser extent the American neo-empire of the XX

3 Shohat, Ella. "Notes on the "Post-Colonial"." Social Text. 31/32: Third World and Post-Colonial Issues (1992): 99-113. Print. 4 Edward W. Said, Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978. Print.


century, we prefer to forward the American imperial ism, but a lso go back to

1492, which is why our early book Unth inking Eurocentrism 5 in 1992, had a whole

chapter on 1492. Already in Unth inking we were arguing for looking into the

links between the various 1492s, that of the Inquisit ion, the expulsion of the

Moors, the “discovery” i.e . the conquest of the Americas, and the beginnings of

TransAtlantic slavery, f irst of indians and then of Africans. The discourses

about Jews and Musl ims, such as the l impieza de sangre , wh ich was a part of the

Reconquis ta discourse, actual ly trave led to the Americas and then were deployed

already with Columbus about the indigenous people, where the anti-Semit ic

“blood l ibel” d iscourse was transformed into an anti-cannibalist d iscourse . Just

as Jews and Muslims were d iabol ized in Europe, in the Americas the African

Exu was diabolized, as was the indigenous Tupi figure Tupã.

Shohat : The point is that we can no longer segregate al l the issues of anti-

Semit ism, Is lamophobia, anti-black rac ism, the massacres of indigenous people.

Conventionally, the Inquis it ion against Jews is seen as lead ing to the Holocaust .

But the Inquisit ion and the expulsion of the Moors, the conquest , a lso lead to

the repression of African and indigenous re ligions.

Stam : A wonderful sequence in Glauber Rocha’s Terra em Transe 6 dramatizes

what El la just sa id. The scene sat ir ical ly restages Cabral’ s Primeira Missa with the

Porfir io Diaz character as a r ight-wing go lpis ta . Cabral/Diaz ra ises the chalice ,

we hear the music of candomblé . This is very profound and suggest ive . In a return

of the repressed, Rocha superimposes an image of the Catholic Mass over

African rel ig ious music. We are a ll aware of the Spanish Inquisit ion, but we

often forget that European conquest and colonial ism also carr ied out a kind of

Inquisit ion against African and indigenous relig ions. It is also interest ing that

the famous skeleton of “Luzia” discovered in Brazil was descr ibed as having

“Negroid features.” Glauber Rocha felt a ll this intuit ive ly. By putt ing candomblé

music as Cabral/Diaz is raising the cál ic e – we are reminded of Chico

[Buarque] ’s afas t e de mim es t e cál ic e 7- Rocha evokes a ll these historical/cultural

contradict ions. We cal l this “trance-Brechtianism.” He uses candomblé trance

5 Shohat, Ella, and Robert Stam. Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media. London; New York: Routledge, 1994. Print. 6 Terra Em Transe. Dir. Rocha, Glauber. 1967. Film. 7 Buarque, Chico, and Gilberto Gil. "Cálice." Feijoada Completa. Philips, 1978. LP.


music possession to go beyond Bertold Brecht. It is not just c lass against class,

but culture against culture. It is Afr ica, Europe, indigenous, a ll at the same

t ime.

One of the things we stress in the book is the immense aesthet ic

contribution of Latin American art ists, with their endless invention:

Anthopophagy, Magic Real ism, aesthet ics of hunger, Tropicál ia , the Afro-

Brazi l ian manifesto Dogma Fei joada . Many of the alternat ive aesthet ics from

Latin America are based on anti-colonia l inversions. Tropic ál ia turns upside

down the host il ity to the Tropics as “primit ive.” Antropofagia va lorized the

rebellious cannibal. Magic Realism exalted magic over western sc ience. We think

Postcolonial theory could learn from this kind of audacity and profound

rethinking of cultura l values.

Shohat : Because I think that what we would be worried about is precisely any

kind of meta-diffusionist narrat ive that sees Postcolonia l Study as exclus ive ly

Anglo-Saxon, or even an Anglophone thing that travels to, let us say, Brazil .

Just to take another perspect ive, it is not that there is nothing that the

postcolonial can teach us as a method of reading, a method of analyzing, but we

should see it as a potentially polycentric and open-ended discourse to be

defined from mult iple sites and perspect ives. Our key argument about the mult i-

direct ional it ies of ideas is that the Postcolonial project and s imilar projects

emerge out of many, many contexts. There are so many antecedents a longside

the usual postcolonia l tr iad of Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, and Gayatr i Spivak.

Important as they are, we have to remember figures like Frantz Fanon, Aimé

Césaire.

In our book, we speak about the “seismic shift” that attempted to

decolonize inst itut ional and academic culture. Wor ld War II , Nazism, fasc ism,

the Holocaust , decolonizat ion, minority movements, al l that tr iggered a cr is is in

the western fa ith in the promises of modernity and progress. Al l that converged

to make the West doubt itse lf. The self- image of the West and the white world

was being quest ioned. As a result you find radical chal lenges within the

academic d isc ipl ines: Dependency Theory in economics, where Latin American

thinkers played a key role; Third World ist and later Postcolonia l theory in


Literature; Shared and Dialogica l Anthropology; Crit ical Race theory in Law and

the Social Sciences and so forth. We tend to forget precursors such as the

Cubano Roberto Fernández Retamar writ ing in the early 1970s.

It is not to diminish Said’s immense contribution to point out that even

before Said’s Oriental ism, Anouar Abdel-Malek, an Egyptian Marx ist , in the ear ly

1960s, wrote a cr it ique of Orienta l ism, very much Fanonian in its voice, which

was publ ished in French 8. And you have Abdul Lat if T ibawi, another writer who

spoke of Orientalism in a cr it ical way. Before Postcolonial Studies emerged in

the mid, late 1980s, as a term, as a rubric, that kind of thinking was ca lled Anti-

Colonial Studies or Third World Studies.

Stam : What postcolonialism brought was the influence of poststructura lism,

whence the influence of Foucault (a longside Vico and Fanon) on Said, Derrida

on Spivak, Lacan on Bhabha. The journal of which I was a part , Jump Cut , was

part of that transit ion from Third-worldist Marxism toward the postcolonial

trend, while st i ll remaining more or less post-Marxist , interested in minority

liberat ion movements, and thoroughly anti- imperial ist in relat ion to the war in

Vietnam, and American interventions in Latin America. So it is not as i f we

move direct ly from Fanon’s Black Skin, Whit e Masks 9 in 1952 to Oriental ism in

1978. Also, postcolonia lism emerged in the context of English Studies and

Comparat ive Literature, so 1978 marks the moment that these issues took on

major importance in those fields, whereas before such work was done in

History, Anthropology, Ethnic Studies, Native Amer ican Studies, B lack Studies,

Lat ino Studies and so forth.

ES/PS: This question dialogues with the issues you just raised and your

influential “Notes on the ‘Post-Colonial ’ . ” The Postcolonial label remains

contested, and your text is a continuous reference for this contestation and

criticism. Despite the fact that postcolonial canonic authors (e.g. Bhabha

and Spivak) are frequently quoted, the term “postcolonial” is often

rejected. For this end your text is invoked, as well as Anne McClintock’s

8 Abdel-Malek, Anouar. “L’Orientalisme en Crise.” Diogène. 44 (1963): 109-142. Print. 9 Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. New York: Grove Press, 1967. Print. [Originally published by Editions de Seuil, France, 1952 as Peau Noire, Masques Blanc].


“The Angel of Progress: Pitfalls of the Term ‘Post-Colonialism’" 10 as they

are articulated by Stuart Hal l’s “When is the ‘Post-Colonial’? Thinking at

the Limit.” 11 Our question to both of you is then how do you re-evaluate

the field, in light of the comments of Shohat’s text, twenty years later?

After a ll you said on “Notes on the ‘Post-Colonial’ ” how do you see the

field?

Shohat : Postcolonial ism was paral le led by a post-nat ionalism that probed some

of the aporias of Third-world ist , nat ionalis t discourse. Postcolonia l, in the wake

of Fanon’s “The Pitfal ls of National Consciousness” chapter in The Wret ched o f

the Earth 12, examined the blind spots of nat ional ism in terms of gender and

ethnicity, quest ioning the notion that the nat ion is a s ingle monolithic thing. So

you have the Algerian Revolution but then the Berbers were not included, and

women are not included so, that is the very posit ive aspect of Postcolonial

Studies.

My old essay “Notes on the ‘Post-colonial’” was rea lly about unpacking

the term. Are we really “after” the colonial, when we think of Palest ine or of

indigenous peoples? I was making the point that the postcolonial move is a

discurs ive rather than a historical shift , it is what comes after anti-colonia l

discourse, after nat ional ist and Third-wor ldist and tr icontinental d iscourse. Nor

is it only after , it is a lso actual ly cr it iquing those discourses. At its best , the

crit ique exposed bl ind spots, at its worst it caricatured Third-world ist as

dichotomous, Manichean and so forth, when we would argue that a lthough

Fanon was b lind to gender, ethnic ity, and sexual ity, he was not Manichean. The

colonial s ituat ion was Man ichean but he himself was not. He also spoke of

psychic “ambivalence.”

Stam : And on Blackness, Fanon was never essential ist . Au contraire . Rather, he

stressed the relat ional , conjunctura l, discursive and constantly shift ing character

of race. He would say “In France, the better your French, the whiter you are,”

that one – and this wi l l make a lot of sense to Brazil ians in the land of “money

10 McClintock, Anne. “The Angel of Progress: Pitfall of the Term ‘Post-Colonialism’”. Social Text 0.31/32 (1992): 84-98. Print. 11 Hall, Stuart. “When was the ‘Post-Colonial’? Thinking at the Limit”. The Post-Colonial Question: Common Skies, Divided Horizons. Chambers, Iain and Lidia Curti, eds. London: Routledge, 1996. Print. 12 Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. Trans. Constance Farrington. New York: Grove Press, 1965. Print.


whitens” and “brancos de Bah ia” – could be black in one place and not black in

another. He constantly stressed that blackness and whiteness ex isted in

“relat ion.”

Shohat : In fact he called for “situat ional diagnosis.” In our dif ferent

publicat ions, we c ite Fanon speaking ( in a footnote for Black Skin, Whit e Masks)

about the reception of Tarzan f ilms in Mart inique, where the Mart inicans

identif ied with the whites against the Afr icans, yet d iscovered that in France the

host ile or patronizing looks of the French white spectators made them aware of

their own “to-be-looked-at-ness” in the movie theatre, real iz ing that they were

seen as a ll ied with the very Africans that they had seen as enemies wh ile see ing

the film in Mart inique.

There was a phase at the very beginning in which anything that was seen

as anti-colonia l, a l l was b inaries, essentia l ism. It is more complicated. Yes, some

were, some were not. The other element, that we were address ing today 13 by

talking about the Red Atlantic, is this notion that anything that you go back to

search in the past is kind of a fet ish ist ic nostalg ia, or going back to the origins

and thus naive ly essential ist . So we were quest ioning the unproblematized

celebrat ion of hybridity and the dismissa l o f any search into the precolonial past

as a naïve search for a prelapsarian orig in.

Stam : We also cited the example of Video nas Alde ias and the Kayapo in Brazi l

us ing cameras to record and reconstitute their so-cal led van ishing culture. Are

these efforts essential ist? Are we supposed to reject them in the name of our

postmodern sophist icat ion? That would be obscene, even racist on the part of

those who do not have to worry about the preservat ion or resuscitat ion of the ir

culture.

Shohat : I think the crit ique made in my essay as we ll as in our Unth inking

Eurocentr ism st i l l applies. But that does not mean that we should not use the

term. That was my conclus ion to the essay that I thought Stuart Hal l

misunderstood, in my opinion, when he tr ied to say that I was actually making a

Third-wordlist argument. I was not exact ly making a Third-wordl ist argument; it

13 Ella Shohat and Robert Stam. "Race in Translation. Cultural War Around the Postcolonial Atlantic." Utrecht University Postcolonial Studies Initiative - Doing Gender Lectures. Utrecht. 8 June, 2012. Lecture.


was more about the idea that we have to be precise about how to use this

terminology. We cannot simply ecl ipse the term Third Worldism even now, if we

speak about a part icular era when that term was used. It is st i l l relevant to use it

to reflect a certa in terminology of the t ime. If we speak about the postcolonia l

as a term, yes it too is st il l highly problematic because it a ll depends what we

mean by it . Do we mean postcolonial as in post- independence? And of course

then post- independence for Latin America is not exact ly as for India or Iraq or

Lebanon. Is colonialism over? Not real ly, as we know, look at what is happening

over the last ten years in relat ion to the Middle East , etc.

Stam : I think an important concept is “pal impsest ic temporalit ies” which means

that the same nat ional/transnat ional place/site can be simultaneously colonial ,

postcolonial and paracolonia l. The relat ion to indigenous people in most of the

Americas and in colonial sett ler states l ike Austral ia is st i ll large ly colonial , an

ongoing story of dispossession. Look at the impact on indigenous people of the

Belo Monte dam in the Amazon, or of s imilar dams in Canada and even India,

where nat ional deve lopmentalism goes against the interests of indigenous

peoples. Then you have the neocolonial dimension with the economic hegemony

of the US and of the Global North, which is slowly ending with the “r ise of the

Rest .” Now Brazi l gives money to the IMF and Angola helps Portugal! As Lula

said, “c ’ e s t t re s chic !” That kind of economic shift remolds hegemony. And then

we find the “paraco lonia l” in phenomena that exist apart from and a longside the

colonial.

The postcolonial theme of “hybridity” is often thought to have emerged

historica lly in the post-war per iod of colonial karma and the migrat ion of the

formerly colonized to the metropole. But hybridity has always existed, and was

only intensif ied by the Columbian Exchange init iated by the “voyages of

discovery.” Already in 1504, the Car ijó indian Essmoricq le ft Vera Cruz (Brazil)

for France to study munit ions technology in Normandy; he thus represented,

avant la le t t re , Oswald de Andrade’s índ io t e cnizado or high-tech indian. So, when

you real ly think in a longer durat ion and think mult i- locat ional ly, you see these

issues in a new way.


So it is a ll about the “excess see ing” (Bakhtin) , the complementarity of

perspect ives whereby we mutually correct and supplement each other’s

provincia lisms. And here the intellectuals of the Global South are in some ways

less provinc ia l than those from the Global North, because they are obliged, to

invoke [W.E.B.] DuBois, to have a double or even tr iple consciousness, obl iged

to be aware of North and South, center and periphery. They are also more like ly

to be mult il ingual.

Shohat : In terms of the terminology, I s t il l bel ieve we should use the term

postcolonial in a f lex ible and contingent manner. It might be better to downplay

the term “Postcolonial theory” which implies a kind of prerequisite culture

capita l in the form of knowledge of poststructura lism to join the postcolonial

club, and speak, rather more democrat ical ly, of Postcolonia l Studies . At this

point of history, we feel comfortable using the term as a convenient designation

for a part icular f ie ld and especia lly with Post-structura l ist- inf lected

methodologies of reading.

Stam : In fact , we just published an essay 14, a response to essays by Robert

Young and Dipesh Chakrabarty 15 in New Literary His tory about the state of

Postcolonial Studies. In that essay, we praised the capac ity of Postcolonia l

Studies for self-cr it icism and its chameleonic gift for absorbing crit iques that

become part of the field itse lf. So some crit ics point out the crit ique “you do

not talk about polit ical economy” but then people start to do it , in that sense it

becomes part of the field. But we argue with any maître à penser model that

produces a kind of star-system that obscures the work of hundreds of scholars

around the world.

Shohat : And that affects how we think about the posit ion of Brazi lian

intellectuals. Because even if some of this work has not been produced under

the rubric of Postcolonial Studies, it is st il l , of course, very relevant to the field.

It could be talked about and recuperated within that framework cal led

14 Stam, Robert and Ella Shohat. “Whence and Whither Postcolonial Theory?.” New Literary History 43.2 (2012): 371-390. Print. 15 Chakrabarty, Dipesh. “Postcolonial Studies and the Challenge of Climate Change.” New Literary History 43.1 (2012): 1-18. Print. Young, Robert. “Postcolonial Remains.” New Literary History 43.1 (2012): 19-42. Print.


Postcolonial Studies. So it is not about inventing the wheel, it is not about

going back to zero, as if there were no Brazi l ian antecedents for such work –

think of Mário de Andrade, or Oswald de Andrade, or Abdias do Nascimento

and Roberto Schwarz and countless others . If we think from the Global South,

we think in a polyperspect iva l way, where the center is disp laced to form

mult ip le centers – whence “polycentrism” – and with a stress on mult ip le

diasporas and transcultura l connectivit ies. So we real ly believe in intellectual

pluri logue and decentered interlocution across borders.

Stam : And that also means that Postcolonial Studies must be mult i lingual . So

one of the points in our book is “let ’ s talk about the work in Portuguese and

French” and not just Engl ish as is too often the case in Postcolonial Studies and

Cultura l Studies. We have long sect ions on the debates about race and

colonial ity in Brazil, the debate on aff irmative act ion, and a long sect ion on

Tropicál ia .

Whatever the posit ions of Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil on local

polit ics, their work in songs l ike “A Mão de Limpeza”, “Manhatã”, and “Hait i” 16

is absolutely cosmopolitan and bril liant . And you can dance to it ! It would be

hard to say what I va lue more – one of the books by a maître à penser or those

songs, which forge ideas, but do it musica l ly, lyr ical ly, performatica lly. As

Caetano says in “Língua,” 17 in an allusion to Heidegger, “some say that one can

only philosophize in German, but if you have a bril liant idea, put it in a song”!

“Hait i” says so much about the Black Atlantic, class and race and what Stuart

Hal l sa id about race as the modal ity within which class is lived. “Manhatã,”

similar ly, addresses what we ca ll the Red Atlantic by p lac ing cunhã – Tup i for

“young woman” – in a canoe in the Hudson. It connects indigenous Brazi l to

indigenous North America, in a bril liant transoceanic gesture. When I play the

song for my students (as we did here in Utrecht) I superimpose digital images of

Manahat ta – the indigenous name, as Caetano notes in Verdade Trop ical , for

Manhattan.

16 Gil, Gilberto. “Mão de Limpeza.” Raça Humana. WEA, 1984. LP. Veloso, Caetano. “Manhatã.” Livro. Universal, 1997. CD. Gil, Gilberto and Caetano Veloso. “Haiti.” Tropicálica 2. Universal, 1993. CD. 17 Veloso, Caetano. "Língua." Noites do Norte. Universal, 2001. CD.


ES/PS: You have been discussing the traveling of theories. Given to the

new position of hegemony that Brazil is gaining internationally, do you

expect or hope for changes in the dynamics of the system of production

and reception of theory?

Stam : I think it is part ly happening just through economics. The so-called “r ise

of the Rest” means that Brazi l… Már io de Andrade talked about that . He sa id

“Our l iterature is great but no one knows i t because to have a great literature is

easier if you a lso have a great currency, i f you have a great army.” So, part ly

economics affects that , while the US is clearly in decl ine, as is Europe in the age

of the crisis of the Euro. This is c lear ly, f inally, to touch on a note of subaltern

nat ional ism, Brazil ’s moment.

Shohat : Of course Engl ish st i l l remains the dominant lingua franca in academic

exchanges around the world. That is a residue of colonial ism and something not

so easy to change.

Stam : At the same t ime, even that slowly changes, for instance, LASA, i .e . Lat in

American Studies Associat ion, and BRASA (Brazil ian Studies Associat ion) are

by now almost completely bi l ingual. Part icipants go easi ly back and forth

between Spanish and Engl ish or Portuguese and Engl ish, which used not to be

the case.

ES/PS: How do you see Brazil’s current position vis-à-vis South America

and Africa within what you termed “cultural wars”?

Shohat : Maybe I can start to answer the quest ion by speaking of Afr ican

Americans and the Afro-diaspora. Our project began with the response of Pierre

Bourdieu and Loic Wacquant to a book (Orpheus and Power 18) by Michael

Hanchard, an African American polit ica l scientist who studied the Black Power

movement in Brazi l. In two reviews, 19 Bourdieu and Wacquant attacked the book

18 Hanchard, Michael George. Orpheus and Power: The “Movimento Negro” of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, Brazil, 1945-1988. Princenton: Princenton University Press, 1994. Print. 19 Bourdieu, Pierre and Loïc Wacquant, “On the Cunning of Imperial Reason,” Theory, Culture, and Society 16, no. I (1999) 51. Print. And Bourdieu, Pierre and Loïc Wacquant, “La Nouvelle Vulgate Planétaire,” Le Monde Diplomatique. May 2000. 6-7. Print.


as a case of North American exportat ion of “ethnocentric poison” into a

Brazi l ian society completely free of racism.

Stam : Needless to say , this was a very one-sided, provinc ia l and un informed

interpretat ion that returned to the idealizing nostrums of Gilberto Freyre in the

1930s. In Brazil, a special issue of Rev is ta Afro-As iát ica 20 was dedicated to the

Bourdieu/Wacquant cr it ique of Hanchard’s book, which we summarize in our

book. They generally lamented the lack of cultural knowledge of Brazi l behind

the attacks and noted that although Bourdieu/Wacquant denounce North

American scholarsh ip as ethnocentric, they cite, in their refutat ion of

Hanchard’s book, only North American scholars, hard ly acknowledging the long

tradit ion of Brazi lian scholarsh ip on these issues.

Shohat : Bourdieu/Wacquant impl ied that the crit ique of racism in Brazi l could

only come from outside Brazi l, when our bookshelves contained countless

Brazi l ian books on racism and discrimination by authors l ike Abdias do

Nascimento (Genoc íd io do Negro Bras ile i ro 21) , Lélia Gonzales, Clóvis Moura, Sérgio

Costa, Antonio Guimarães, Nei Lopes, and countless others.

Stam : So, it becomes an issue of cover t ly nat ionalist wh ite narciss ism that

projects racism onto a single s ite, forgett ing s lavery and conquest existed a l l

around the Black Atlantic and that as a consequence rac ism and discrimination

too can be found all around the Black Atlantic.

Shohat : We speak in our new book of “ intercolonial narc iss ism,” the idea that

al l the colonial powers, and too often their intel lectuals, want to see their

colonial ism, or their slavery, or their discr imination, as better than that of the

others.

Stam : So the American form of narciss ism is to say: “we are not colonia l ists”

like the others. Apart from the obvious colonial ism of conquering the

indigenous west of the country, apart from the “imperial binge” of the 1890s,

the US pract ices and imperial ism of milit ary bases, it can invade country after

country and always say: “We do not want one inch of Korean land, Vietnamese 20 Special issue on “On the Cunning of Imperial Reason” essay, Estudos Afro-Asiáticos January-April 2002. Print. 21 Nascimento, Abdias do. O genocídio do negro Brasileiro: Processo de um Racismo Mascarado. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1978. Print.


land, Laotian land, Cambodian land, Grenadian land, Iraqi land, Afghan land,

etc. .” But it keeps invading and main taining bases. So that is the US

exceptionalist narciss ism. And then you have the French “miss ion c iv il isat r ic e”

narciss ism – “we only care about culture and educat ion” – the Brit ish “its just

about free trade” narciss ism, and then the Luso-Tropical ist Portuguese “we are

al l mixed and love mulatas” narciss ism, so every country has its exceptionalism.

We make the point that the intellectuals of empowered countries love

“other people’s vict ims,” thus the Germans historical ly adored indians (Native

Americans) but were not so fond of the Jews. So they would supposedly never

have d ispossessed the Native Americans, but they ki lled the Herero in Afr ica,

exterminating them in 1904. The French loved American blacks but not Alger ian

Arabs. Everybody feels good by thinking so. This is very much a white debate:

“we are less rac ist than those other racists.”

Shohat : It is in this sense that we quest ion Ali Kamel’s pop book Não Somos

Rac is tas . 22 He is a “Global,” i .e . l iteral ly one of the important figures at

Globoand a Syrian immigrant. It ’s a superfic ia l, journal ist ic book but its thes is

is ult imately the same as that of Bourdieu/Wacquant. And then, of course, the

resistance to mult icultura l ism and postcolonial ism was connected to the idea

that it only appl ies to places where you have race issues, and therefore it appl ies

to the US, but it cannot be applicable to France or to Brazil.

ES/PS: On the topic of oth e r p e op le ’ s oth e rs and blindness to racism, do

you find the association between the representation of the Jew and the

representation of the black a fruitful way to decolonize Eurocentric bodies

of theory?

Shohat : Definitely, it is key and it is one of the discuss ions in our new book.

We a lready brought up that issue in Unthinking Eurocentr ism and bring it up again

in Race in Trans lat ion . In both books, we lament the segregat ion of the Jewish

quest ion from the colonial race quest ion. For us it always has been important to

connect the Jew, the Musl im, the diasporic black/African, to these debates. All

of the issues can be traced back to the var ious 1492s the Inquis it ion, the

22 Ali Kamel, Não Somos Racistas: Uma Reação aos que quere nos Transformar numa Nação Bicolor. Rio de Janeiro: Nova fronteira, 2006. Print.


expuls ion of the Moors, the “discovery” i. e . the conquest of the Americas, and

the beginnings of TransAtlantic slavery, f i rst of indians and then of Africans.

All those issues were related then, and they are st il l related now. In terms of

Jews and blacks – and of course it is not a s imple opposit ion s ince many Jews

are black – Yeminis, Ethiopians, converts etc. – and many blacks are Jews. It is

not an accident that the act ivist movement about Arab Jews in Israel cal led

themselves the Black Panthers. But this d iscuss ion goes way back. Just in the

post-war period, Fanon in Black Skin , Whit e Mask begins to think about the

racia l izat ion of the black vis-à-vis that of the Jew. In Race in Trans lat ion , we have

a discussion of his comparat ive study of the Jew and the black, and in Taboo

Memories 23 an essay focuses on that issue in detai l. But in our most recent book,

we link the Jewish quest ion to the Muslim/Arab quest ion, because Fanon also

speaks about the Arab, and he did not idealize any group. He says: “The Arab is

racist toward the black, the Jew is rac ist toward the black.” He noted that in

France it was eas ier to be black than Arab, and c ites instances where pol ice

would harass h im and then apologize when they discovered that he was not an

Arab but a West Indian. What complicates the relat ion, as we saw yesterday in

Forge t Baghdad , 24 is the whole quest ion of Israe l, Z ionism as a project in

whitening an Europeanizing the Jew. We see it in the history of Zionist cinema

and later in Israel i cinema, where the cast ing often favors blond and blue-eyed

actors, the muscular Jew, culminat ing in Exodus 25, where you have Paul Newman

being cast as the new kind of Jew, the polar opposite of the d iaspora, sht e t l ,

ghetto, vict imized Jew. In a sense, Jews internalized anti-Semit ic discourses.

ES/PS: Is this the problem of the nation getting into what could be a

potentially liberating field of the postcolonial?

Shohat : Although one could argue that most nat ion-states are anomalous, Israe l

is perhaps more anomalous than others. It is a mixed formation, on the one

hand it represents a nat ional ist project – and thus analogous to Third World and

minority struggles – but from the Palest inian point of view, it is also a colonia l

23 Shohat, Ella. Taboo Memories, Diasporic Voices. Next Wave. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006. Print 24 Shohat, Ella. "Postcolonial Cinema Studies Conference Session: Forget Baghdad: Jews and Arabs - the Iraqi Connection (Dir. Samir, 2003)." Organised by Sandra Ponzanesi Utrecht University, in collaboration with Postcolonial Studies Initiative, Centre for the Humanities, Culture & Identities and the Gender Studies Programme. Utrecht. 7 June, 2012. Film screening. 25 Exodus. Dir. Preminger, Otto. United Artists; MGM, 1960, Film.


sett ler project , which is why Palest inians see themselves as indigenous,

comparable to nat ive Americans, a point made in Godard’s fi lm Notre Musique 26,

which makes this analogy direct ly. Indeed, the film links the various issues –

anti-Semit ism, nat ive Americans , Jews, Palest inians etc. by having nat ive

American characters art iculate the analogy. It is also set in Sarajevo, a

mult icultura l part ial ly Musl im and d istantly Jewish soc iety under siege by

nat ional ist orthodox Serbs. (There is even a story about Muslims in Bosn ia

protect ing the Torah even after the Jews had left .) Palest inians in the film c ite

the poem The Red Indian 27 by Mahmoud Darwish.

Stam : At the same t ime, Native Americans identify with Jews as being the

vict ims of the Holocaust . Some native Americans such as Ward Church il l, who

wrote a blurb for our book, c la imed provocative ly that “Columbus was our

Hit ler ,” at wh ich point Churchill was attacked by Jewish organizat ions in the

US: “How could he compare Hit ler to Columbus,… there was no genocide… it

was unintentional, they just caught diseases” etc. . But in fact there was a mega-

genocide, some caused by d isease but also by the massacres a lready reported by

[Bartolomé] de las Casas in the XVI century and continuing up through the XX

century (e.g. in Guatemala and Salvador) .

Shohat : Churchill was a lso accused, as were many writers l ike Edward Said, of

“narrat ive envy” toward the Jewish vict imizat ion narrat ive.

Stam : And in France this debate has been very l ively, involving many wr iters of

diverse backgrounds, and taking a wide range of posit ions. You have Jewish

thinkers like Alain Finkie lkraut associated vague ly with the sixt ies Left who

subsequently became anti-black, anti-Third World, anti-Palest in ian. On the

other hand, you have very progressive Jewish thinkers such as Edgar Morin and

Esther Benbassa who say: “No, we have been symbiotical ly connected to

Musl ims historical ly.” We note what we call the “rightward turn” of many

Zionist Jews in the US and France and in many other countries. It is noteworthy

26 Notre Musique. Dir. Godard, Jean-Luc. Wild Bunch, 2004. Film. 27 Darwish, Mahmoud. "The Speech of the Red Indian." Trans. Sargon Boulos. The Adam of Two Edens: Poems. Eds. Munir Akash and Daniel Moore. Syracuse NY: Syracuse UP, 2000. 129-45. Print.


that Claude Lanzsmann, the author of Shoah 28 but also of mil itantly pro-Israel i

documentaries, was not always so ardently Zionist or anti-Palest inian.

On October 17, 1961, when the French police – fol lowing the orders of

Police Chief Maurice Papon – and here again we see the link between anti-

Musl im and anti-Semit ic att itudes – the same man who sent Jews to the death

camps, when the police murdered two hundred or more Algerians in the streets

of Par is, Claude Lanzmann wrote a publ ic statement saying: “We as members of

the Jewish community understand what you are going through. We know what it

means to be harassed and murdered on the basis of your identity. We know what

it means.” So at that t ime, you had so lidari ty. It is only after 1967 that you find

radical, general ized Jewish-Arab polarizat ion (and of course some Jews are

Arabs) .

Fanon, similar ly, had warned his fel low blacks “when people are speaking

of Jews, they are talking about you.” You know, “You are next” or, “It is the

same process”. In the realm of scholarsh ip, meanwhile, the first work on racism

in Europe and in the US, for example, was about anti-Semit ism. “The Holocaust

took place, what led to it?” Thus you get analyses of the “authoritar ian

personality” and so forth. It is only later that the discussion moves to race.

Shohat: The black-Jewish al l iance became largely undone in the wake of the

Israel i victory and in the US in the wake of struggles over the autonomy of

schools, Palest ine and other issues. With Jean Paul Sartre writ ing in France

about the anti-Semite and the Jew 29 but later also publ ishes in L’Express “Une

Vic to ire” 30, which is about Henri Al leg, a Jewish communist who joined the

Alger ian anti-colonia l struggle against the French and became a prisoner, and

was tortured, lead ing to his censored book about torture cal led La Quest ion . 31

Sartre, who had a lso written the introduction to Fanon’s The Wret ched o f the

Earth saw the issue of torture as part of the same continuum of struggle. But

this changed after 1967, as Josi, Fanon’s wife who st i ll l ived in Alger ia ,

28 Shoah. Dir. Lanzmann, Claude. New Yorker Films, 1985. Film. 9 ½ hours documentary on the Holocaust. 29 Sartre, Jean-Paul. Anti-Semite and Jew. Trans. George Joseph Becker. [New York]: Schocken Books, 1948. Print. 30 Sartre, Jean-Paul. "Une Victoire." Situations V: Colonialisme Et Néo-Colonialisme. 1958 [L'Express]. Paris: Gallimard, 1978. Print. 31 The Question was first published in the UK. Soon after Sartre’s “Une Victoire” a new edition was published in French by Les Éditions de Minuit.


explained, she d id not want Jean Paul Sartre’s introduction to be included in the

new edit ion of The Wret ched o f the Earth because he took a pro-Israel posit ion

and thus showed that he supported colonia lism. Jean Genet, in contrast ,

supported not only the Black Panthers in the US but also the Palest in ians.

1967 marks a d ivis ion, where some Jews made what we cal l a “rightward

turn,” split t ing off from the Third-worldist ( later mult icultura l) coal it ion,

struggle, even though many Jews continued to be allied with Third-worldist and

minoritar ian struggles. But in the early 1980s, in the wake of the “Zionism is

Racism” proclamation in the UN 32 many Left Jews began to move to the Right

because they associated Third World ism and later mult icultural ism with “anti-

Israel” and even anti-Semit ic posit ions.

ES/PS: Further within geopolitics, and back to Brazil, how do you see the

country’s position towards other (formally) subaltern regions, as i t

emerges as a potentially hegemonic power? For example, Brazil has been

investing in African countries and gearing its attention to the African

countries that have Portuguese as their official language through the

CPLP 33.

Shohat : Well, certainly Brazi l, as a huge country and the world’s sixth economy,

has a legit imate des ire to be recognized as a g lobal power. That was a lready

clear with Brazil ’s des ire to be a member of the Security Counci l in the UN. The

very fact that Sérgio de Mello 34 was se lected as the Brazil ian representat ive to

Iraq – with tragic consequences – he a lso represented something very posit ive

for Iraq. But Brazi l has at t imes played an ambiguous convoluted role in the

Middle East , as when it sold, not unlike the US, airplanes to Iraq during the

Saddam Hussein era. Husse in was a fasc is t dictator, not so different from the

Brazi l of the junta . Be ing completely opposed to the American invasion does not

prevent me, as an Iraqi-Arab Jew from denouncing Hussein as a d ictator. But

overal l, we think that Brazi l, unlike the perpetual ly warring arms-se ll ing US, has

been a pacifying force in the world.

32 On November 10, 1975 the United Nations General Assembly adopted its Resolution 3379, which states as its conclusion: “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination”. After years of US and Israeli pressure, on December 16, 1991 the UN General Assembly revoked Resolution 3379. 33 Comunidade dos Países Africanos de Língua Portuguesa. 34 Brazilian employee of the United Nations killed during an attack to Canal Hotel in Bagdad in 2003.


Stam : We also have the quest ion, of course, of Blackness and black identity vis-

à-vis Africa and the Afro-diaspora. On the one hand, you have the Brazil ian

economic outreach to Africa. You a lso f ind more and more African students

coming from Angola and Mozambique to Brazi l ian univers it ies, a phenomenon

we also find in the US with what are ca lled the neo-Africans from Senegal,

Nigeria, Kenya and so forth. In both Brazil and the US, you have the problem

of Eurocentric educat ional systems that tend to treat Africa, when they don’t

ignore it completely, as a vict im continent, a slaves’ continent, without any

autonomous history. These ideas have been challenged by many scholars in both

countries, for example people like [Luiz Felipe de] Alencastro who studies the

South Atlantic in such a way as to emphasize African agency.

ES: Recently, aff irmative-act ion policies have been gain ing ground in Brazi l, in

a way, to come to terms with the subaltern state of African descendants; but

there is no real public recollect ion towards the violence deployed against black

individuals dur ing and after colonizat ion.

Shohat : The quest ion is: within which kind of metanarrat ive? Is it about the

narrat ive of bringing modernity to Africa? Is it the same kind of rescue trope

narrat ive? Is Brazi l now to be seen as a lmost the Western country vis-à-vis

“backward” Afr ica? Lula’ s surprised react ion to African modernity – “nem parec e

África!” 35 is in this sense symptomatic. Apart from candomblé and capoeira and

the Afro-blocos – which are a lso very important – how does Africa f igure in

contemporary Brazil ian polit ica l discourse? These would be cruc ia l quest ions for

our kind of thinking.

Stam : One of the points of our new book is transnational interconnectedness

in terms of the exchange of ideas. For example, Brazil and the US have been

connected from the beginning. The word “negro” in Engl ish comes from

Portuguese. Some of the first blacks in Manhattan were “Afro-Brazil ians” of

Bantu background, whose names – Simon Congo, Paulo d’Angola – betray their

origins. The Dutch, in their fight against the Native Americans and the Brit ish,

decided to have some blacks with them from the Portuguese areas and give them

freedom and land in exchange for them fighting against the Brit ish. For example 35 Lula notoriously declared, upon his arrival in Windhook in 2003, that the capital was so clean, beautiful and its people so extraordinary, it did not even feel he was in an African country.


the land on which exists SOBs (Sounds of Brazi l) , the nightclub where Brazil ian

music ians l ike Gilberto Gil, Mart inho da Vila, and Djavan often play, belonged,

in a remarkable continuity, to Simon Congo.

Shohat : The New York/Brazil [connection] also involves the Jews from Rec ife

who came to then New Amsterdam with the Dutch to found the fir st synagogue

in New York. We often forget that the Inquis it ion continued in the Americas,

including in Brazi l. A [Luso-]Brazi lian fi lm, called O Judeu 36, by Jom Tob Azulay

[ treats this link] . So the Dutch did not have Inquisit ion, and in fact , a lot of

Portuguese Jews came here [ to the Netherlands] Sp inoza, etc. . So in the North

of Brazi l with Pernambuco, the Dutch domination was a haven for a lot of

persecuted Jews and when New Amsterdam was happening and as the Dutch

were retreat ing from Pernambuco, they kept to New Amsterdam that is New

York, which is why the first synagogue in New York is a Portuguese synagogue :

because of the Jews that came from Pernambuco.

Stam : And that synagogue was the fir st place in what is now the US to teach the

Portuguese language. There is another expression in English, by the way, that is

“pickaninny” to refer to a lit t le black child, which comes from Portuguese

pequin inho. So through language you see a certain cultura l interconnectedness,

despite myths of separateness.

Shohat : That is why translat ion was a lso a key issue for us. Not just litera l

translat ion but also as a trope to evoke all the fluidit ies and transformat ions and

indigenizat ions that occur when ideas “ fora de lugar” 37 cross borders and travel

from one place to another. In intellectual li fe also, navegar é pre c iso .

ES/PS: Race, however, is not usually an issue, a question in Cultural

Translation Studies, which became an important field of scholarship. Is

this absence the reason why you chose the tit le Race in Translation to

your new book? Is it a provocation?

Stam : Not really. We tr ied so many t it les so it is almost an accident that race

ended up so foregrounded. 36 O Judeu. Dir. Azulay, Jom Tob. Tatu Filmes, Metrofilme Actividades Cinematográficas, A&B Produções, 1996. Film. 37 Schwartz, Roberto. ‘Idéias fora do lugar,’ Estudos Cebrap, 3 (1973). Print.


Shohat : We actually had Cultura l Wars in Translat ion orig inally but the

publisher did not l ike it , f inding it too heavy, so we ended up with Race in

Trans lat ion . Actual ly race has been a common theme in Cultura l Studies –

including in f igures like Stuart Hal l – usually as part of the “mantra” (class ,

race, gender, sexual ity etc.) . In the fie ld of Postcultura l Studies, you find race as

a theme via the references to Fanon, but it is sometimes downplayed as being

too t ied to “identity pol it ics” supposedly deconstructed by poststructural ist

theory. Postcolonial Studies, in our view, is sometimes rather patronizing

toward the various forms of Ethnic Studies and Area Studies (Native Amer ican

Studies, Afro-diasporic Studies, Lat ino Studies, Lat in American Studies, Pac if ic

Studies, Asian Studies etc.) , ignoring their contribution, including in the ways

that Ethnic Studies opened up the academe for Postcolonial Studies to have

such an important space.

Stam : Postcolonia lism sometimes presents itself as theoret ical ly sophist icated ,

while Ethnic Studies is unfair ly presented as lacking in theoret ical aura and

prest ige. African American writ ing is also theoret ical; it is not as if it is only

one side that is theoret ical. In the US, these issues also get caught up in the

tensions between immigrants, including African immigrants, who do very wel l,

while Afr ican Americans st i ll remain oppressed and marginal ized , even desp ite

Obama’s victory. You have immigrants from India, who are very prosperous and

sometimes quite conservat ive, and then you have black Americans who have

been in the US for centuries and are not doing so wel l. One even f inds tens ions

between African Americans and Africans , and between US born blacks and

Caribbean blacks, because Car ibbeans are sometimes portrayed as “the good

minority” like Asians. (One finds these same divides in France)…

And then, people do not know this but, the most educated immigrants in

the US are Africans. Which is a shame for Africa, it is the brain drain, but a

boon to the US. But all these, including Francophone intellectuals do not get

jobs in France. So, they go to Canada and to the US and to the UK, but not to

France, part ial ly because France, despite the key role of Francophone writers in

al l these movements, besides having a re lat ive ly c losed academic system, was

refractory to Cultural Studies, Ethnic Studies, Postcolonial Studies. But we a lso

point out that there has been a huge explosion of writ ing on these issues dur ing


the XXI century, especial ly after the 2005 banl ieue rebel lions. Now we find Black

Studies à la França ise in the form of Pap Ndiaye’s La Condit ion Noire 38.

Shohat : But the resistance to Postcolonia l and Mult icultural Studies sometimes

come from left ist Leninist rad ica ls like [Slavo j] Ž ižek, who attacks

mult icultura l ism and identity polit ics in a very uninformed way. (He obviously

hasn’t read the kind of work we talk about) . One has to wonder why the Right

(Bush, Cheney, Cameron, Sarkosy, Merkel) and some left ists al l oppose identity

polit ics today, a lthough not, obviously, from the same angle.

Stam : And in some ways it has to do with class-over-race and economics-over-

culture arguments. Because “the real struggle is with global capita lism,” let us

not be distracted by feminist issues, police harassment, marginalized b lack

people, Lat inos in the US, the descendants of Arab/Musl ims in France, blacks

and indigenous people in Brazi l, etc. .

Shohat : An issue where Postcolonia l Studies is very valuable is in the crit ique

of the assumptions undergird ing Area Studies, wh ich unl ike Cultural Studies had

a very top-down orig in in US foreign pol icy, and which often separates Latin

America (over there) and Latinos (back here) , the Middle East (over there) and

the Middle Easterners (spread throughout the Americas, including in Brazi l

where it is often sa id that there are more Lebanese than in Lebanon itself) . An

anthology I co-edited, due out soon, treats this topic. So what we are arguing

for is to bring those things together, because Area Studies problematical ly

segregates this g lobal f low of people, of ideas, of cultures; if it does not look at

diasporic back and forth movements.

Stam : We find a similar kind of Eurocentric segregat ion in how history is

recounted. Most of the books about revolut ion and the “age of revo lut ion,”

never talk about Hait i, wh ich was the most radica l of the revolut ions, because it

was nat ional, socia l, ant i-slavery, etc. . And we remind our readers that the first

“postcolony” and “neo-colony” was newly independent Hait i. In 1804 France

punished them for defeat ing the French army, by giving them huge debts. So the

38 Ndiaye , Pap. La Condit i on Noir e . Par i s : Calmann-Lévy , 2008 . Pr int .


IMF of its t ime was France. Later , the US invaded Hait i, and France and the US

collaborated in deposing Arist ide. And that is why Hait i is so poor.

PS : Latin Americans and Caribbeans, despite excitement over concepts,

often express ambivalence about Postcolonial Studies and theory. Where is

Latin America in the discussion?

Stam : Yes, it should not be seen as “The postcolonials are over there and we

attack them”. No, we are part of that and that is part of us and we advance it ,

but , I think a lot of Lat in Americans have this reserve: “And what about Latin

America?” But in a sense we should just do our work, and not just complain

about Postcolonia l Studies not doing it . We are part of Postcolonia l Studies ,

after al l.

ES/PS: In your chapter in Eu rop e i n B la ck a n d Wh i te 39 you have warned

against the “master narratives of comparison” in Postcolonial criticism,

which impose travel routes “within rigidly imagined cultural

geographies.” In your opinion, which ideas, concepts and theories are not

traveling enough?

Shohat : I think this whole quest ion of making l inks, the method of making links

and what we emphasize as l inked analogies are missing for us in certain

geographies of trave l ing theory. We have always been against a certain kind of

isolat ionist and nat ion-state based approach, much more in favor of a broad,

mult id irect ional, more relat ional approach.

Stam : But in our recent book we were limited to what we knew—which is

France, Brazil, and the US (and for Ella, the Middle East , although I know a b it

about that from having l ived in North Africa and now in Abu Dhabi) . One

could argue for South-South Studies, for example embracing India and Brazi l as

mult i-ethnic, mult i-rel igious countries from the Global South. It always occurs

to us that Brazi l ian theories of f ilm would be highly relevant to Indian cinema.

In India you have this binar ism, for the intellectuals , of “the bad Bol lywood”

and “the good art film,” whi le Brazi l ians were quest ioning this hierarchy already 39 Stam, Robert, and Ella Shohat. "The Culture Wars in Translation." Europe in Black and White: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Immigration, Race and Identity in the "Old Continent". Eds. Manuela Ribeiro Sanches, et al. Bristol and Chicago: Intellect, 2011. 17-35. Print.


in the 1970s by looking posit ive ly at the Chanchadas . Tropic ál ia , Carmen Miranda,

da-da… So I think a lot of places could learn from Brazil, which is why people

argue that Brazi l was post-modern avant la le t re . Tropicál ia was quest ioning high

and low culture, incorporat ing global mass-media culture, promoting

syncret isms. In terms of syncret ism, you look at a 1928 novel, Macunaíma , 40 who

was himse lf rac ia lly mult iple, and who created a character “s em nenhum caráter . ”

The character constantly mutates like a chameleon. If that is not postcolonial

hybridity, I don’t know what it is.

Shohat : The problem is that this type of knowledge and analys is tends to be

limited to Brazil ian Studies, when it is relevant to the whole world. So it ’s

Brazi l, and Brazi l ian culture and Cultura l Studies, that is not trave l ing enough.

Every country has rebelled against co lonial ism, produced it s quantum of

thought and art , including the Arab world, Asia, and the indigenous wor ld.

Stam : Every country should be part of the postcolonial debate. Now its t ime for

countries like Brazil to be the source of ideas fora de lugar ! So, even though

Brazi l is emerging as a kind of g lobal economic power, it remains peripheralized

as a cultural/phi losophica l power when it is st i l l too often seen as irre levant to

Postcolonial Studies and Cultura l Studies.

Shohat : So, for us it is not only about mult iply ing geographies but a lso about

mult ip lying the rubrics and theories and gr ids in order to see the relat ionalit ies

and l inked analogies. You can take any place on the planet ; to speak of Vietnam

is to speak of French and American imperial ism, to see it as ex ist ing in relat ion

to Senegal and Tunisia as fe llow French colonies, or in relat ion to France and

the US as colonia l/ imperia l powers. But it does not have to pass via a center,

which is why we argued early on in Unthinking Eurocentrism for polycentrism and

mult iperspect iva l ism with a cyber- l ike openness of points of entry and

departure, whi le also recognizing geopolit ical asymmetries and uneven-ness.

Stam : Part of the point of our new book is to defend Brazi l ian intel lectuals,

suggest ing that Roberto Schwarz, Ismai l Xavier , Haroldo de Campos, Sérgio

Costa, Abdias do Nasc imento are just as interest ing as Fredric Jameson or

40 Andrade, Mário de. Macunaíma, O Herói Sem Nenhum Caráter. São Paulo: Oficinas Gráficas de Eugenio Cupolo, 1928. Print


Pierre Bourdieu. It is not a hierarchy. They should al l be translated. So we talk

about the fact that Brazil ian intel lectuals tend to know the French and the

Americans, but how many French and Americans know the Brazi lian writers?

Brazi l ian popular culture is a d if ferent case, but it too should be better

known, since Brazi lian music, for example, is so amazingly erudite and

sophist icated, and popular , at the very same t ime. Caetano Veloso, for instance,

dia logues with Roberto Schwarz’ essay on Tropicália by answering: “Bras il é

absurdo mas não é surdo . ” 41 How many places in the world have popular music ians

who talk about Heidegger in their songs, or write a lyr ical history of a film

movement, as Caetano does in “Cinema Novo 42?” or l iterary intel lectuals l ike Zé

Miguel Wisnik who compose erudite sambas and p lay Scott Joplin composit ions

backwards! To us, music and art can often say as much as academic writ ing.

ES/PS: The Atlantic is a recurrent trope in the common analogies and

frequent routes taken in the traveling of ideas. Do you consider the

Atlantic, as much as L u s ofon i a for instance, one such a master narrative of

comparison that dominates the Postcolonial field? Is it possible to

appropriate them and use them productively or should we aim to get rid of

them in due course?

Shohat: Perhaps Lusofon ia has been visib le in Postcolonial Studies because of

the quest ion of the Black Atlantic and s lavery but in fact , if we think of the

“Lusophone world”, then we wil l have to connect it to India, Goa, the Indian

Ocean, Macao, even the remnants of Portuguese sett lements in what is today

Abu Dhabi, those areas, the Gulf Area.

Stam : In the new book, we note the explosion of aquat ic metaphors to speak of

these issues – Black Atlantic (we speak of a Red Atlantic) , circum-Atlantic

performance (Roach), t idalect ics (Kamau Brathwaite) , liquid modernity

(Bauman) – as a way to find a more fluid language that goes beyond the

r ig idit ies of nat ion-state borders. It ’s not a matter of “gett ing r id of” but of

expanding to see the currents of the Atlantic feeding into the Pacific.

41 Veloso, Caetano. "Love, Love, Love." Muito (Dentro da Estrela Azulada). Universal, 2007. CD. 42 Veloso, Caetano. "Cinema Novo." Tropicália 2. WEA, 1993. LP.


Shohat : You have Pac ific Studies, you have Indian Ocean Studies, you have

Mediterranean Studies, and even Delta Studies, and Island Studies . A recent

paper stressed Obama as an is lander – Hawai, Indonesia, Manhattan! It is a lso a

quest ion of modesty. We cannot know everything – the Black and Red and

White Atlantics are a lready huge subjects. So it is more about connecting other

currents. Françoise Vergès, who was born in Reunion, but went to Alger ia to

join the Revolut ion and subsequently studied in the US and France, but teaches

in England – thus incarnat ing this transnational approach -- always makes this

point that slavery penetrated Reunion; colonial ism was everywhere so, wherever

travelers trave led and left their marks. Actual ly what is useful here is James

Clif ford’s metaphor of routes. Routes are also oceanic of course, so they are

important. But this is not to subst itute land. It is not an either-or quest ion; it is

a matter of focus and openness to new knowledges, languages, and grids.

ES/PS: You spoke of the “Red Atlantic,” and about the traveling of

indigenous epistemologies between Europe and the indigenous Americas.

Could you elaborate?

Stam : Yes, we point out that there have been five centuries of

philosophical/l iterary/anthropologica l interlocution between French writers and

Brazi l ian indians , between French protestants like Jean de Léry, between three

Tupinambá in France and Montaigne, al l the way up to Lévi-Strauss – who

worked with the Nambiquara – and Pierre Clastres (“Society against the State” 43)

and René Girard (who ta lks about Tupinambá cannibal ism), and reversing the

current, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, who sees the Amazonian indians through a

Deleuzian gr id. We start to f ind a more equal d ia logue between western

intellectuals and nat ive thinkers. For example, Sandy Grande is a Quechua from

Peru who teaches in an American University. She wrote a book cal led Red

Pedagogy 44, which is a cr it ica l d ia logue with the most radical Marxist , femin ist ,

revolut ionary, mult icultura l advocates of a Freire-style rad ica l pedagogy, but she

speaks as an equal and even a cr it ic who says they have a lot to learn from

indigenous peoples. Native intellectuals and media-makers c irculate

43 Clastres, Pierre. Society against the State: Essays in Political Anthropology. Trans. Robert Hurley and Abe Stein. New York: Zone Books, 1987. Print. 44 Grande, Sandy. Red Pedagogy: Native American Social and Political Thought. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004. Print.


internat ionally . Kayapo filmmakers – who could not travel with passports unti l

the 1988 Brazi lian const itut ion – meet aboriginal Austra lian and indigenous

Alaskan fi lmmakers in fest ivals in New York and Toronto. Davi Yanomami

relates the massacre of the Yanomami outside of Brazi l. Raoni and St ing meet

with François Mitterrand in the 1980s. Already in the XVI century, Paraguaçu

met French royalty. In the XVII century, Pocahontas met Brit ish royalty and

playwr iters l ike Ben Jonson. We forget that , in the early centuries of contact ,

Native leaders l ike Cunhambebe (portrayed in Como Era Gostoso meu Francês 45)

were received as royalty by the French. We forget that the Tupinamba went to

Rouen to perform before King Henry II and Catherine de Medici , a fact that

was celebrated by a samba school in the 1990s. We have an Aymara pres ident in

Bolivia , Evo Morales, who has appeared – to wild applause – on the Jon Stewart

Daily Show. Some Andean countries have inscribed in their const itut ions “the

r ight of nature not to be harmed.”

So without being euphoric, as we know th ings are not going exact ly we l l

for indigenous peoples, there are nevertheless very important counter-current s .

45 Como Era Gostoso meu Francês. Dir. Nelson Pereira dos Santos. Regina Films, New York Films, 1971. Film.


CLAUDIA DE LIMA COSTA Universidade Federa l de Santa Catar ina

FEMINISMO E TRADUÇÃO CULTURAL: SOBRE A COLONIALIDADE DO GÊNERO E A

DESCOLONIZAÇÃO DO SABER1

Introdução

As teorias pós-coloniais vêm exercendo uma influência signif icat iva

na reconfiguração da crít ica cultura l. Provocando um deslocamento de

abordagens d icotômicas dos confl itos sócio-polít icos a favor de um

pensamento do interst ício – o qual enfat iza redes de re lac ional idades entre

forças hegemônicas e subalternas, e a proliferação de temporalidades e

histórias – essas teorias const ituem hoje um campo transdiscipl inar ub íquo

e profuso. Nas páginas que se seguem, anal iso as relações entre a cr ít ica

pós-colonial e as teorias feministas da d iferença ( lat ino-americana) a part ir

do processo de tradução cultural . As teorias femin istas lat ino-americanas ,

art iculadas por sujeitos subalternos/racia l izados, operam dentro de uma

referência epistemológica d ist inta do modelo que estrutura as relações

entre centro e perifer ia, trad ição e modernidade. Produto da

transculturação e da d iasporização que criam dis junturas entre tempo e

espaço, o cronotopo desses feminismos é o interst ício e sua prát ica, a

tradução buscando abertura para outras formas de conhecimento e

humanidade.

De que forma as teorias femin istas no contexto lat ino-americano

“traduzem” e descolonizam a crít ica pós-colonial? Que t ipos de mediação

são necessár ios nessas traduções feministas e lat ino-americanas do pós-

colonial? Quais são seus l imites? Estas são algumas indagações a respeito 1 Gostaria de agradecer as recomendações de revisão dos/as pareceristas anônimos/as, bem como as inúmeras leituras e sugestões generosas de Sonia E. Alvarez.


das tendências teóricas contemporâneas dentro do feminismo que

explorarei a seguir na tentat iva de mapear – necessar iamente de forma

abreviada – poss íve is rumos para os estudos de gênero e feminismo no

contexto lat ino-americano/brasi le iro.

O uso que faço do termo tradução é o mesmo da acepção dada por

Niranjana (47-86), isto é, ele não se refere exclus ivamente às d iscussões

sobre estratégias dos processos semióticos na área dos estudos da tradução,

mas também aos debates sobre tradução cultura l. A noção de tradução

cultura l (esboçada, em um primeiro momento, nas discussões sobre teoria e

prát ica etnográf icas 2 e, posteriormente, exploradas pelas teorias pós-

coloniais) 3 se baseia na visão de que qualquer processo de descr ição,

interpretação e disseminação de ide ias e visões de mundo está sempre

preso a relações de poder e ass imetrias en tre linguagens, regiões e povos.

Não é de se estranhar, então, que a teoria e prát ica da tradução

hegemônicas tenham surgido da necessidade de d isseminação do

Evange lho, quando um dos sentidos de traduzir signif icou converter .

Tradução cultural na virada “pós-colonial” 4

Diante das profundas mudanças ocas ionadas pelos processos cada

vez mais intensificados da global ização, as categorias trad icionais de

anál ise da modernidade ( inc luindo as marxistas) 5 já não conseguem mais

dar conta das transformações identitár ias, espaciais, econômicas, cultura is

e polít icas de nossa contemporaneidade. Como nos mostrou Appadurai, os

fluxos tecnológicos, f inanceiros, imagéticos, ideológicos e d iaspóricos ,

entre outros, que caracter izam o mundo globalizado estabelecem

interconexões e fraturas t ão complexas – e em níve is t ão d iversos – entre o

local e o global que tornam obsoletos os protocolos discip linares

convencionais ut il izados na descrição do mundo sociocultura l. A crít ica

pós-colonial surge, então, como uma tentat iva teórica e metodológica de

2 Veja, por exemplo, as discussões na antologia organizada por Clifford e Marcus. 3 Faço referência aqui aos escritos de Spivak (Critique of Postcolonial Reason) e de Bhabha (The Location of Culture). 4 Para as acirradas disputas sobre a adequação do termo pós-colonial no contexto da América Latina, veja a antologia recente editada por Moraña, Dussel e Jáuregui. 5 Refiro-me às categorias tais como classe, nacão, racionalidade, etc., principalmente quando abordadas fora do marco da interseccionalidade do gênero, raça, etnia e sexualidade, entre outras.


preencher o vácuo anal ít ico causado pela proliferação de novas

temporalidades d is juntivas e instabi lidades do cap ital ismo contemporâneo,

bem como pela complexif icação das relações e assimetrias de poder. O

pós-colonial busca vis ibi lizar os mecanismos const itut ivos dessa rea l idade

global (produto da convergência entre capitalismo, modernidade europeia e

colonial ismo) e, em seu projeto maior de t ransformação radica l, i luminar o

caminho para além do moderno e do ocidental. Nas palavras de Venn,

ecoando Young,

postcolonial cr it ique therefore cannot but connect with a

history of emancipatory struggles, encompass ing anti-colonia l

struggles as wel l as the struggles that contest economic,

religious, ethnic, and gender forms of oppression […], on the

principle that it is possib le and imperat ive to create more

equal, convivia l and just soc iet ies. It fol lows that the

construct ion of an analyt ica l apparatus that enables the

necessary interdisc ipl inary work to be done is a central part of

the task. (35)

À luz do remapeamento de todos os t ipos de fronteiras e em um

contexto de viagens, migrações e des locamentos sempre interconectados,

incluindo o trânsito transnacional de teorias e conceitos, a questão da

tradução se torna premente, const ituindo, de um lado, um espaço único

para a análise dos pontos de intersecção (ou transculturação) entre o

local/global na produção de cosmopolit ismos vernaculares (Hal l,

“Thinking the Diaspora 11) e, de outro, uma perspect iva privi legiada para a

anál ise da representação, do poder e das ass imetrias entre linguagens na

formação de imaginár ios soc ia is. Na cr í t ica pós-colonia l, a lógica da

tradução cultura l se refere ao processo de des locamento da noção de

diferença para o conceito derrid iano de dif f é rance que, segundo Hall , aponta

para “um processo que nunca se completa, mas que permanece em sua

indecibi l idade” (“Quando foi o Pós-colonia l?” 74) . Trata-se da noção de

tradução como relac ionamento com a diferença rad ica l, inass imilável, do/a

outro/a. Nas palavras de Venn, agora ressoando as ideias de Bhabha (The

Locat ion o f Culture ) ,


translat ions across heterolingual and cultural ly heterogeneous

and polyglot borders allow for the feints, the camouflages, the

displacements, ambivalences , mimicries, the appropriat ions,

that is to say, the complex stratagems of d is identif icat ion that

leave the subaltern and the subjugated with the space for

resistance. (115)

A part ir do reconhecimento da incompletude e incomensurabi l idade

de qualquer perspect iva anal ít ica ou experiencia l, Santos propõe para a

cr ít ica pós-colonia l uma teoria da tradução como negociação dialógica,

art iculadora de uma inteligib il idade mútua e não h ierárquica do mundo. A

virada tradutória, por ass im dizer, mostra que a tradução excede o processo

linguíst ico de transferências de s ign if icados de uma l inguagem para outra e

busca abarcar o próprio ato de enunciação – quando falamos estamos

sempre já engajadas na tradução, t anto para nós mesmas/os quanto para

a/o outra/o. Se falar já implica traduzir e se a tradução é um processo de

abertura à/ao outra/o, nele a identidade e a alter idade se misturam,

tornando o ato tradutório um processo de des-locamento. Na tradução, há

a obrigação moral e polít ica de nos desenraizarmos, de vivermos, mesmo

que temporariamente, sem teto para que a/o outra/o possa habitar ,

também provisoriamente, nossos lugares. Traduzir signif ica ir e vir ( ‘world ’-

t rave l ing para Lugones [“Playfulness, ‘World’-Trave l ing”]) , estar no

entrelugar (Santiago), na zona de contato (Pratt) , ou na fronteira (Anzaldúa

Borderlands/La Frontera) . Signif ica, enfim, exist ir sempre des-locada/o.

É aqui – no tropo da tradução – que gostaria de traçar uma estreita

relação entre femin ismos e pós-colonial ismos, relação essa que tem sido

historicamente silenc iada e, portanto, invisib il izada nos debates lat ino-

americanos (provenientes do norte e do sul das Américas) sobre a cr ít ica

pós-colonial. Quando mencionadas, tan to feministas quanto teorias

feministas são apropriadas apenas como signif icantes de res istência e não

como produtoras de conhecimentos outros. Elas figuram, para lembrar

Richard (“Feminismo, experiencia” 738), como um espaço vazio (corpo

concreto) para ser preenchido com o conhecimento (mente abstrata)

daque les intelectuais s ituados em inst ituições acadêmicas de el ite. Contudo,


como saliento acima, se o conceito de tradução está a lojado no cerne da

crít ica pós-colonial , e tendo em vista que o feminismo é uma prát ica

teórica e polít ica invariave lmente tradutória, engajada em um constante ir e

vir ( ‘world’- t rave l ing) , então urge trazer as contribuições feministas para a

mesa da ce ia pós-colonia l e, num gesto de traição (presente em todo ato de

tradução), subverter sua gastronomia patr iarca l e descolonizá- la. A

invis ibil idade, não somente da crít ica feminista, mas de outros suje itos

indígenas e afro-lat ino-americanos na configuração de novos saberes

subalternos já se tornou bus isness as usual nas antologias sobre o pós-

colonial pub licadas em universidades de el i te nas Américas.

Cabe, então, perguntar: qual o lugar das teorias feministas nos

debates sobre o pós-colonia lismo lat ino-americano? Quais as impl icações

dessas questões para geopolít icas do conhecimento e estratégias de

tradução cultural? Para melhor entender como a teorização feminista sobre

o pós-colonial representa uma forma de descolonização do saber, aludire i

ao conceito de colonia lidade do poder, abordando uma contenda

signif icat iva entre dois intelectuais: o peruano Anibal Quijano, quem (a

part ir do sul) cunhou o conceito de colonial idade do poder, e a cr ít ica

deste a part ir da noção de colonial idade do gênero art iculada pela emigré

argentina Maria Lugones.

Feminismo e pós-colonialismo: as colonialidades do poder e do

gênero

Colonial idade do poder, na acepção de Quijano,

é um conceito que dá conta de um dos e lementos fundantes do

atual padrão de poder, a c lass ificação socia l básica e universa l

da população do planeta em torno da ideia de “raça”. Essa

ideia e a class if icação socia l baseada nela (ou “racista”) foram

originadas há 500 anos junto com América, Europa e o

capita lismo. São a mais profunda e perdurável expressão da

dominação colonia l e foram impostas sobre toda a população

do planeta no curso da expansão do colonial ismo europeu.

Desde então, no atual padrão mundia l de poder, impregnam


todas e cada uma das áreas de existência social e const ituem a

mais profunda e ef icaz forma de dominação socia l, material e

intersubjet iva, e são, por isso mesmo, a base intersubjet iva

mais un iversal de dominação pol ít ica dent ro do atual padrão

de poder. (“Colonialidade, poder” 4)

Na América, a ide ia de raça, Qui jano (“Colonial idad de l poder,

eurocentrismo”) continua,

foi uma forma de dar legit imidade às relações de dominação

impostas pela conquista . O estabe lecimento subsequente da

Europa como uma nova id-entidade depois da América e a

expansão do colonial ismo europeu pelo resto do mundo

conduziram ao desenvolvimento da perspect iva eurocêntrica

do conhecimento . . . Desde então [a ideia de raça] provou ser o

instrumento mais ef icaz, duradouro e universal de dominação

socia l, dependendo inclusive de outro, igualmente universa l

porém mais antigo, o interssexual ou de gênero. (203, minha

tradução)

Vale ressa ltar dois pontos sobre as citações acima. Pr imeiro, para

Qui jano ( ‘Colonial idad de l poder, eurocentrismo’) , colonial idade e

colonial ismo se referem a fenômenos diferentes, porém interrelacionados.

Colonial ismo representa a dominação polí t ico-econômica de alguns povos

sobre outros e é (analit icamente fa lando) anterior à colonia lidade que, por

sua vez, se refere ao s istema de c lassificação universal existente no mundo

há mais de 500 anos. Colonial idade do poder, portanto, não pode exist ir

sem o evento do colonial ismo. Segundo, e mais significat ivo para o

propósito deste ensaio, a colonia lidade do gênero ficou subordinada à

colonial idade do poder quando, no século XVI, o princípio da classif icação

racia l se tornou uma forma de dominação socia l. De acordo com Quijano

(“Colonia lidad de l poder, eurocentrismo”), a dominação do gênero se

subordina, então, à hierarquia superior- inferior da classificação rac ia l.

A produtividade do conceito de colonia lidade do poder está na

art iculação da ideia de raça como o elemento s ine qua non do colonia lismo e


de suas man ifestações neocoloniais. Quando trazemos a categoria de

gênero para o centro do projeto colonial, podemos então traçar uma

genealogia de sua formação e ut il ização como um mecanismo fundamental

pelo qual o capita l ismo colonia l global est ruturou as ass imetrias de poder

no mundo contemporâneo. Ver o gênero como categoria colonial também

nos permite historicizar o patr iarcado, sal ientando as maneiras pelas quais

a heteronormatividade, o cap ital ismo e a class ificação rac ia l se encontram

sempre já imbricados. Segundo Lugones (“Heterosexualisms”),

Intersect ionality reveals what is not seen when categories such

as gender and race are conceptual ized as separate from each

other. The move to intersect the categories has been

motivated by the difficult ies in making visible those who are

dominated and vict imized in terms of both categories. Though

everyone in capital ist Eurocentered modernity is both raced

and gendered, not everyone is dominated or vict imized in

terms of their race or gender. Kimberlé Crenshaw and other

women of color femin ists have argued that the categories have

been understood as homogenous and as picking out the

dominant in the group as the norm; thus women picks out

white bourgeois women, men picks out white bourgeois men,

black p icks out black heterosexual men, and so on. It

becomes logica lly c lear then that the logic of categorica l

separat ion d istorts what ex ists at the intersect ion, such as

vio lence against women of color. Given the construct ion of

the categories, the intersect ion misconstrues women of color.

So, once intersect ionality shows us what is miss ing, we have

ahead of us the task of reconceptualizing the logic of the

intersect ion so as to avoid separabi l ity. It is only when we

perceive gender and race as intermeshed or fused that we

actual ly see women of color. (192-3)

Para esta autora, o conceito de colonial idade do poder, introduzido

por Quijano (“Colonial idad del poder, eurocentrismo”), ainda se apoia em

uma noção biológica (e binár ia) de sexo e em uma concepção


heterossexual/patr iarcal do poder para explicar a forma pela qual o gênero

figura nas disputas de poder para o “control of sex, its resources, and

products” (190). No colonial ismo e no capita lismo global eurocêntrico,

“the natural iz ing of sexual dif ferences is another product of the modern

use of science that Quijano points out in the case of ‘race’ .” (195).

Portanto, delimitar o conceito de gênero ao controle do sexo, seus recursos

e produtos const itui a própria colonial idade do gênero. Ou seja – e esta é

uma crít ica fundamental à visão que Qui jano tem do gênero – a imposição

de um sistema de gênero binário fo i tão const itut iva da colonia lidade do

poder quanto esta últ ima foi const itut iva de um s istema moderno de

gênero. Assim sendo, tanto a raça quanto o gênero são ficções poderosas e

interdependentes. Ao trazer a colonial idade do gênero como elemento

recalc itrante na teorização sobre a colonia lidade do poder, abre-se um

importante espaço para a art iculação entre feminismo e pós-colonial ismo

cujas metas são, entre outras, lutar por um projeto de descolonização do

saber eurocêntrico-colonia l através do poder interpretat ivo das teorias

feministas, visando o que Walsh irá chamar de pensamiento própio lat ino-

americano. Segundo a autora,

[ i]n this sense ‘pensamiento propio’ is suggest ive of a

different cr it ical thought, one that seeks to mark a

divergence with dominant ‘universa l’ thought ( including in it s

‘cr it ica l’ , progress ive, and left ist formations) . Such divergence

is not meant to s implify indigenous or black thought or to

relegate it to the category or status of local ized, s ituated, and

cultura lly specif ic and concrete thinking; that is to say, as

nothing more than ‘ local knowledge’ understood as mere

experience. Rather it is to put forward its pol it ical and

decolonial character , permitt ing a connection then among

var ious ‘pensamientos propios’ as part of a broader project of

‘other’ cr it ical thought and knowledge. (231)

Apesar de Walsh não fazer nenhuma menção em seu art igo às teorias

feministas que surgem na América Latina como parte integrante do

movimento de descolonização do saber, de construção de “opposit ional


polit ics of knowledge in terms of the gendered bodies who suffer racism,

discr imination, re ject ion and violence” (Prada) , gostar ia aqui de apropriar

sua d iscussão – sobre a geopolít ica do conhecimento e a necessidade de

construção de novas cosmologias e epistemologias a part ir de outros

lugares de enunciação – para inc luir a in tervenção polít ica feminista de

tradução translocal dentre esses outros espaços de teorização, interpretação

e intervenção na América Latina.

Feminismo e tradução: rumo à descolonização do saber

No cenário contemporâneo que marca o desaparecimento de vias de

mão única e o surgimento de ‘zonas (cada vez mais voláte is) de tradução,’ 6

e epistemologias de fronteira, cabe à cr ít ica feminista examinar com

atenção o processo de tradução cultura l das teorias e dos conceitos

feministas de modo a desenvolver uma habil idade transnac ional para ler e

escrever (Spivak, “Po lit ics of Translat ion” 187-95). Esta tarefa requer o

mapeamento dos deslocamentos e da tradução contínua das teorias e dos

conceitos feministas, das d inâmicas de le i tura, bem como das limitações

impostas por mecanismos de mediação e tecnologias de controle sobre o

tráfego das teorias.

Corajosamente traficando teorias feministas pelas zonas de contato,

feministas lat ino-americanas e lat inas residindo nos Estados Unidos, por

exemplo, desenvolvem uma pol ít ica de tradução que se ut i l iza de

conhecimentos produzidos pelos femin ismos lat inos, de cor, pós-colonia is

no norte das Américas para iluminar anál ises de teorias, prát icas, culturas e

polít icas no sul e v ic e -versa. A prát ica do “world”-t rave l ing evidencia como a

tradução é indispensável, em termos polít icos e teóricos, para a formação

de a lianças feministas pós-colonia is/pós-ocidentais, já que, conforme

argumenta Alvarez, a América Latina – entendida “enquanto formação

cultura l transfronteir iça e não terr itorialmente delimitada” (744) – deve ser

vista como translocal. A noção de translocalidade poss ibi lita, por sua vez, a

6 Tomo emprestado de Emily Apter (“On Translation in a Global Market” 10) esta expressão. Zona de tradução – uma apropriação do conceito de zona de contato, cunhado por Pratt (7) – significa um lugar intersectado por várias fronteiras linguísticas em constante confronto e disputa. Qualquer zona de contato é sempre já uma zona de tradução (Apter, The Translation Zone).


art iculação da colonia l idade do poder/gênero “em várias escalas ( locais,

nacionais, regionais, g lobais) a posições de suje ito (gênero/sexual, étnico-

racia l, classe etc.) que const ituem o s e l f” (Laó-Montes 122, minha

tradução).

Em um art igo introdutório a um debate sobre mestiçagem, publicado

na Revis ta Estudos Feminis tas , Costa e Ávi la discorrem sobre a importância

dos escritos de Anzaldúa (Borderlands/La Frontera) em relação à nova

mestiça como exemplo do que seria um suje ito pós-colonial feminino no

espaço lat ino-americano. Marcado por uma subjet iv idade nomádica

moldada a part ir de exc lusões materiais e históricas , o suje ito pós-colonial

de Anzaldúa art icula uma identidade mestiça que já antecipava a cr ít ica

descolonia l ao pensamento binário e a modelos de hibridismo cultura l

ancorados em noções de assimilação e cooptação. Enfat izando que os

terrenos da diferença são mais que nunca espaços de poder, a autora

complica rad ica lmente o discurso feminista da d iferença, inclus ive da

diferença colonial. Migrando pelos entrelugares da d iferença, mostra como

esta é const ituída na história e adquire forma a part ir das intersecções

sempre locais – suas mest içagens múlt iplas reve lam s imultaneamente

mecanismos de sujeição e ocasiões para o exercício da l iberdade. Em um

dos trechos canônicos e de grande força retórica de La conc ienc ia de la

mes t iza, Anzaldúa conclama:

Como mest iza, eu não tenho país, minha terra nata l me

despejou; no entanto, todos os países são meus porque eu sou

a irmã ou a amante em potencial de todas as mulheres. (Como

lésbica não tenho raça, meu próprio povo me rejeita; mas sou

de todas as raças porque a queer em mim existe em todas as

raças.) . Sou sem cultura porque, como uma femin ista, desaf io

as crenças culturais/rel igiosas co let ivas de origem masculina

dos indo-hispân icos e anglos; entretanto, tenho cultura porque

estou part icipando da criação de uma outra cultura, uma nova

história para exp licar o mundo e a nossa part icipação nele, um

novo sistema de valores com imagens e s ímbolos que nos

conectam um/a ao/à outro/a e ao planeta. Soy um amasamiento ,


sou um ato de juntar e unir que não apenas produz uma

criatura tanto da luz como da escur idão, mas também uma

criatura que quest iona as def inições de luz e de escuro e dá-

lhes novos signif icados. (707-8)

A mediação tradutória que Anzaldúa aborda neste art igo, cruzando

mundo e identidades, tem s ido vista como uma prát ica de quest ionamento

de nossas certezas epistemológicas em busca de abertura para outras

formas de conhecimento e de humanidade. Como enfat iza Butler , Anzaldúa

nos mostra que “it is only through exist ing in the mode of translat ion,

constant translat ion, that we stand a chance of producing a mult icultura l

understanding of women or, indeed, of society” (Undoing Gender 228).

Outros lugares no contexto lat ino-americano desses sujeitos

subalternos femininos e pós-coloniais podem ser encontrados nos

testemunhos da guatemalteca Rigoberta Menchú (Me l lamo Rigoberta Menchú)

e da bol iviana Domitila Barrios de Chungara (Let me Speak!) , nos diár ios da

catadora de l ixo bras ile ira Caro lina Maria de Jesus (Quarto de despe jo) , nos

escritos da femin ista afro-brasi leira Lél ia Gonzalez (Lugar de neg ro) , nas

poesias, graf ite e performances de rua do grupo boliviano anarco-feminista

Mujeres Creando (La Virgen de los Deseos ) , e nos romances autobiográficos da

escritora afro-brasi le ira Conceição Evar isto (Ponc iá Vicênc io) , entre tantas

outras, bem como nos escritos e relatos que jamais chegarão aos cânones

homogeneizadores da academia, 7 principalmente na fase atual de cur ioso

desencanto, por parte dos intelectuais lat ino-americanos e lat ino-

americanistas, com as promessas do testemunho como gênero literário ex-

cêntrico dos anos de lutas pela democracia na América Latina. 8 Lembrando

a famosa cr ít ica de Nancy Miller (103-7) aos teóricos estrutura listas e pós-

estrutura l istas – ao dizer que a morte do autor declarada por Foucault

(101-20) e Barthes (142-8) coincid iu ironicamente com a ascensão da

mulher de objeto à condição de autora /sujeito – acredito também não ser

acaso que, por exemplo, quando mulheres rac ia lizadas e subalternas

7 Walsh faz referência a vários intelectuais indígenas (infelizmente, seus exemplos são todos masculinos) que estão redesenhando um pensamento crítico descolonizado a partir da própria América Latina. 8 Ver, por exemplo, os ensaios nos livros organizados por Gugelberger e por Arias.


reivindicam no testemunho um lugar de enunciação contra hegemônico,

este imediatamente perde sua aura, como dir ia Benjamin (19-57). 9

Norma Klahn, em lúc ida anál ise sobre o lugar da escrita das

mulheres na época do lat inoamer ican ismo 10 e da global ização, mostra como o

testemunho (bem como ficções autobiográf icas, romances, ensaios e

poesias) de autoria femin ina e ligados a lutas e mobil izações polít icas e

socia is foram fundamentais na construção de uma prát ica feminista su i

generis . A autora argumenta que, a part ir da tradução cultural,

Lat in American and Latina feminists readapted femin ist

liberat ion discourses from the West , resignify ing them in

relat ion to self-generated pract ices and theorizat ions of

gender empowerment that have emerged from their lived

experiences, part icular histories and contestatory polit ics

(Klahn).

Tomando o exemplo do testemunho, Klahn mostra como esse gênero

literár io foi mobil izado por sujeitos subalternos como Menchú e Chungara

para, a part ir da interseção entre gênero, etnia e classe socia l, desestabi l izar

um feminismo ocidenta l ainda centrado na noção de mulher essencia lizada.

Ao desconstruir o d iscurso feminista dominante, os testemunhos não

apenas configuram outros lugares de enunciação e se apropriam da

representação, mas rompem também com o paradigma surrea l ista lat ino-

americano (real ismo mágico) a favor de uma estét ica real ist a que traz o

referente de volta ao centro das lutas s imbólicas e polít icas, documentando

as violências da representação e da opressão: a vida não é fição. Esses

textos, “traduzindo/translocando teorias e prát icas”, imaginam formas de

descolonização da colonia l idade do poder. Leio Menchú e Chungara –

9 Gostaria de relatar uma anedota pessoal. Quando comecei a lecionar na Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina uma disciplina de teoria literária na graduação (cujo objetivo era o de introduzir o cânone literário ocidental), optei por uma abordagem não ortodoxa. Líamos escritores canônicos ao lado de testemunhos como o de Menchú (Burgos and Menchú Me llamo Rigoberta Menchú) e Chungara, mostrando aos/as alunos/as que esses textos ex-cêntricos solicitavam outras formas de ler. Em reunião departamental sobre mudanças do currículo, um colega, professor titular, expressou sem qualquer tipo de embaraço que textos de “mulheres, indígenas, negros e paraplégicos” deveriam ser ensinados em disciplinas optativas, não nas obrigatórias. Após essa nefasta reunião, continuei desafiando o currículo disciplinar em minhas práticas docentes. 10 Latinoamericanismo se refere à produção de conhecimentos sobre a América Latina, por latino-americanos ou não, a partir das universidades e centros de pesquisa situados no Norte global (Europa e América do Norte).


através de Klahn – como traduções feministas e lat ino-americanas do pós-

colonial que oferecem novas propostas epistemológicas a part ir do sul.

Ana Rebeca Prada, d iscorrendo sobre a circulação de escritos de

Anzaldúa no contexto plurinac ional boliviano, expl ica que qualquer

tradução, sem uma adequada mediação, corre o r isco de se tornar uma

dupla traição: primeiro, traição que qualquer tradução já necessar iamente

implica em re lação ao d ito orig inal e , segundo, tra ição d iante da

apropriação do texto traduzido como parte de um sofist icado aparato

teórico proveniente do norte. O trabalho de mediação se faz necessár io

para que a tradução desses textos, provenientes de outras lat itudes no

norte, possam dialogar com textos e prát icas locais, ass im contestando as

formas pelas quais o sul é consumido e conformado pelo norte –

integrando a cr ít ica pós-colonial em diá logos não apenas norte-sul, mas

também sul-sul. Prada anal isa de forma inst igante como o grupo de

feministas anarquistas bol ivianas, Mujeres Creando – que se autodescrevem

como cho las , chotas e birlochas ( termos racistas usados em referênc ia a

mulheres indígenas imigrantes nas c idades) e que também adotam outras

designações de subjet iv idades abjetas (tais como puta, re chazada , des c lasada,

extranjera) –, d ia logaram com Anzaldúa ao transportar Borderlands/La

Frontera para um contexto de polít ica feminista além dos muros da

academia (onde esta autora havia s ido inicia lmente lida) , estabelecendo

afin idades entre os dois projetos polít icos . Ass im sendo, a linguagem de

Anzaldúa, enunciada ao sul do norte, foi apropriada pe lo sul do sul e

“incorporated de fac to in a transnational feminism which (as Mujeres Creando

since its beginnings st ipulated) has no frontiers but the ones which

patr iarchy, rac ism and homophobia insist on” (Prada) . 11 Conforme explica

Prada

Translat ing, then, becomes much more complex. It has to do

with l inguist ic trans lat ion, yes, but a lso with making a work

11 Mujeres Creando é um movimento feminista autônomo criado em 1992, em La Paz, Bolívia, e formado por mulheres de diferentes origens culturais e sociais. Enfoca a criatividade como instrumento de luta e participação social.


avai lab le (with a ll the consequences this might have, a l l the

“betrayals” and “erasures” it might include) to other audiences

and lett ing it trave l. It also has to do with opening scenarios

of conversat ion and proposing new horizons for dialogue. It

also means opening your choices, your tastes, your affinit ies

to others – which in polit ics (as in Mujeres Creando ’s) can

compromise (or strengthen) your principles. Translat ion in

those terms becomes r igorously “strategic and select ive”.

Entretanto, segundo Prada, sabemos que nas viagens das teorias

feministas pelas Américas, principalmente em suas rotas contra

hegemônicas, ex istem vár ios postos de controle (por exemplo, publicações

e inst ituições acadêmicas) e mediadores ( intelectuais, at ivistas,

acadêmicos/as) que regulamentam seus movimentos através das fronteiras,

faci l itando ou d if icultando acesso a textos, autoras e a debates. Para

exemplif icar como este controle opera, gostaria de c itar aqui um exemplo

que a teórica pós-colonia l aymara S ilv ia Rivera Cusicanqui nos dá a

respeito de tais barreiras – e que nos remete part icularmente à questão da

descolonização do saber.

Falando em prol de uma economia polí t ica – ao invés de uma

geopolít ica – do conhecimento, Cusicanqui (60-6) examina os mecanismos

materiais que operam atrás dos discursos , argumentando que o discurso

pós-colonial do norte não é apenas uma economia de ide ias, mas também

de salár ios, comodidades, privilégios e valores. Univers idades no norte se

al iam com centros de estudos no sul, através de redes de trocas

intelectuais , e se tornam verdadeiros impérios de conhecimentos

apropriados dos sujeitos subalternos e resignificados sob o signo da Teoria.

Cria-se um cânone que invis ibil iza certos temas e fontes, ocultando

outros. 12

As ide ias f luem, tais como os r ios, de sul para norte e tornam-

se afluentes do grandes f luxos de pensamento. Mas, como no

12 Cusicanqui se refere aqui ao livro de Javier Sanjinés (El espejismo del mestizaje), discípulo de Mignolo, quem realizou um estudo sobre mestiçagem na Bolívia sem fazer qualquer menção ao debate boliviano, inclusive entre os indígenas, sobre o tema.


mercado mundial de bens materiais, as ideias também saem do

país convert idas em matéria prima, que retorna misturada e

regurgitada na forma de produto acabado. Assim se const itui o

cânone de uma nova área do discurso científ ico social : o

pensamento “pós-colonial.” (68, minha tradução)

A menção que Cusicanqui faz ac ima é a sua discussão sobre

colonial ismo interno, formulada nos anos 1980 a part ir da obra pioneira de

Fausto Reinaga dos anos 1960 e que, nos anos 1990 foi (re)formulada por

Qui jano (“Colonial idad de l poder, eurocentrismo” 201-246) na ideia de

“colonia lidade do poder” e, subsequentemente, por Mignolo (3-28) na

noção (com novos matizes) de “diferença colonial.” Cusicanqui expl ica ,

Minhas ide ias sobre colonial ismo interno no plano do saber-

poder surgiram de uma tra jetória totalmente própria,

iluminada por outras le ituras - como a de Maurice Halbwachs

sobre a memória colet iva, a de Franz Fanon sobre a

internalização do inimigo e a de Franco Ferraroti sobre as

histórias de vida – e, sobretudo, a part ir da experiência de ter

vivido e part icipado da reorganização do movimento aymara e

da revolta indígena nos anos setenta e oitenta. (67, minha

tradução)

Com grande força retórica, a teórica aymara nos mostra que para a

descolonização do saber não basta art icular um discurso descolonia l, mas é

preciso, sobretudo, desenvolver prát icas descolonizadoras.

Dando seguimento ao gesto dessa teórica aymara, gostaria de

argumentar que o feminismo brasi le iro, em sua art iculação pós-colonial,

precisa trazer para o centro de suas traduções figuras tradutoras e traidoras

de qualquer noção de original, de tradição, de pureza, de unicidade e de

binarismos. Porém, para ta l ser ia necessár io também confrontarmos

radicalmente as prát icas rac istas, sex istas e homofóbicas que ins istem em

emudecer nossas mest iças, índias, negras, lésbicas e queers nos seus vários

lugares de enunc iação, porém part icularmente na academia. Um dos


espaços cruciais para ta is intervenções/mediações é , obviamente, o das

publicações feministas, que abordarei a seguir .

Publicações feministas e mediações culturais: des/locando o signo da

teoria

Como evadir as economias epistemológicas que inst ituc ional izaram

os centros acadêmicos anglófonos como grades de intel ig ibi lidade para as

teorias e, mais espec if icamente, para as teorias feministas?

Rosi Braidott i (715-28), falando sobre a importação-exportação de

ideias ao longo da d ivisa transat lântica, argumenta, de forma deleuziana,

que uma percepção crít ica de como nossos conceitos estão histórica e

empiricamente encrustados, requer tanto al ianças transversa is entre

diferentes intelectuais, bem como um exercício constante de tornarmo-nos

polig lotas, transdiscip linár ias, enfim, nômadas. Como podemos, nos vár ios

espaços feministas, desenvolver uma prát ica de tradução que responda,

simultaneamente, às contingências locais e aos f luxos globais dos d iscursos

sobre gênero e feminismo? Ou, colocado de outra forma, como expor as

lógicas perversas da hegemonia?

No papel de coeditoras de uma sessão de debates numa das

principais revistas femin istas acadêmicas brasi le iras, Rev is ta Estudos

Feminis tas , eu e minhas colegas temos traduzido e publ icado art igos

teóricos de vanguarda e convidado contribuições de feministas bras i leiras e

de outros países lat ino-americanos na tentat iva de proporcionar uma

recepção crít ica destes textos. No entanto, infel izmente as respostas não

viajam de volta aos seus lugares de part ida devido à fa lta de recursos para

sua versão à língua franca acadêmica (o inglês) , revelando, portanto, um

dos muitos fatores ocultos que interferem nas prát icas de tradução cultura l

e na art iculação de femin ismos transnacionais, pós-colonia is. Como Emily

Apter (“On Translat ion” 10) sa l ienta com acerto, essas camadas de

intervenções invis íveis são, de forma muito óbvia, cruc ia is para que o texto

tenha acesso à tradução. É nesse terreno que devemos lutar contínua e

incansave lmente para deslocar teoricamente o signo do ocidente rumo a

novas l inguagens e geografias pós-colonia is (Chow 303-4) . Um outro fator


mais evidentemente oculto da colonialidade do poder que impede o

deslocamento do s igno teórico, aludido por Chow, se refere às prát icas de

citação dos periódicos na construção de um mercado transnac ional de

citações.

É sabido que as prát icas de c itação são em grande parte responsávei s

não só pela formação de cânones acadêmicos, mas são também vistas como

a medida mais objet iva do mérito acadêmico (Lutz 261-2) . Como nos

lembra Cusicanqui,

Através do jogo de quem cita quem, as hierarquias são estruturadas

e acabamos tendo que comer, regurgitado, o pensamento

descolonizador que os povos e intelec tuais indígenas de

Bolívia , Peru e Equador haviam produzido de forma

independente. (66, minha tradução)

Há um número signif icat ivo de estudos, na sua maioria provenientes

das áreas de linguíst ica aplicada /anál ise do discurso e da bib liometria ,

sobre os usos de citações como uma at ividade central na produção do

conhecimento (Lill is et a l. 110-35). Quem é citado, aonde e por quem, ou

seja , a geol inguíst ica das citações expõe as rotas através das quais as teorias

viajam e as maneiras pelas quais linhagens intelectuais (masculinas) são

construídas no contexto global. Temos aqui uma l igação nem tão tênue

entre essas microprát icas e prát icas sociais mais amplas de produção e

circulação do conhecimento.

Uma das conclusões relevantes – e não surpreendentes – do estudo

de Lil l is para a minha discussão (cuja pesquisa abrangeu 240 art igos da área

de psicologia publ icados em revistas em inglês) , é que

the global status of Engl ish is impacting not only on the

linguist ic medium of publ icat ions but on the linguist ic

medium of works that are considered c itable – and hence

on which/whose knowledge is being allowed to

circulate. (121)


À luz dessa d iscussão, quais são as prát icas de citação na Revis t a

Estudos Feminis tas? Tendo em vista que se trata de uma pub licação em

português, um levantamento que rea l ize i dos art igos que foram ve iculados

no periódico em um período de 10 anos (1992-2002) evidenc ia um

equi líbrio razoáve l de cit ações de autoras brasi leiras e estrange iras. Entre

as autoras estrange iras, há uma c lara predominância de referências a textos

em inglês, seguido pelos franceses. Citações de autoras que escrevem em

espanhol são muito escassas no período estudado, ganhando maior

visib il idade nas edições mais recentes da revista. Esse aumento coincidiu

com maior publicação de art igos em espanhol por autoras residentes na

América Latina, consequênc ia de uma clara intervenção editoria l da Revis t a

Estudos Feminis tas buscando intensif icar o diálogo com feministas

congéneres lat ino-americanas. No entanto, é interessante observar que em

um número especia l do periódico sobre raça (1994), nenhum dos textos na

área de epistemologias e/ou metodologias feministas t inha sequer qualquer

citação a art igos em português ou espanhol.

Algumas conclusões preliminares podem ser extraídas dessa anál ise

inic ia l. Primeiro, é razoáve l esperar que para uma publ icação acadêmica

brasi leira com foco no desenvolvimento e fortalecimento do campo dos

estudos femin istas e de gênero a nível nacional, a referência a autoras

brasi leiras nos art igos esteja d iretamente ligada às espec ific idades

contextuais. Entretanto, em uma tentat iva de legit imar e consol idar o

feminismo como campo discipl inar na academia, nota-se uma tendência

muito clara das autoras na Rev is ta Es tudos Feminis tas de c itar mais

frequentemente pensadores eurocêntricos (como Foucault , Giddens,

Bourdieu e Lyotard, entre outros) sempre que questões teóricas são

abordadas. Este achado corrobora apenas um ponto que já havia s ido fe ito

por Christ ian (51-63) e Lutz (249-66), as quais e loquentemente destacaram

o colonialismo dos paradigmas teóricos na supressão de vozes subalternas .

De acordo com Lutz,

[ t ]heory has acquired a gender insofar as it is more frequently

assoc iated with male writ ing, with women’s writ ing more often


seen as descr ipt ion, data, case, personal, or , in the case of

feminism, ‘merely’ sett ing the record straight . (251) 13

Em segundo lugar, sempre que a balança se inclinava para citações

de trabalhos em inglês, o tema dos art igos t inha um foco mais

transnacional, principalmente aque les cujas discussões eram sobre teorias e

metodologias na construção de um saber feminista, bem como sobre a

intersecção de gênero e raça. Em terceiro lugar, com a chegada e crescente

influência do pós-estrutural ismo e da teoria queer no feminismo brasile iro

na década de 2000 (part icularmente por meio da tradução para o português

de Gender Trouble , de Butler) , e d iante do lento declínio das abordagens

estrutura l istas, até então predominantes na soc iologia e antropologia

feministas, a tradução ao português de textos em inglês em grande parte

suplantou a tradução daque les em francês , fazendo com que o inglês se

tornasse a l ingua franca teórica nas páginas do periódico. 14

Curiosamente, tais mudanças teóricas s ísmicas coincid iram, por um

lado, com a proliferação na revista de art igos de outros campos

disc ipl inares (tais como história, literatura, educação, fi losof ia, estudos

cultura is, estudos de cinema, para c itar alguns) e com a diminuição no

número de art igos a part ir de perspect ivas antropológicas e sociológicas, as

quais haviam s ido até então o lo cus prevalecente de enunciação para o

feminismo bras i leiro. Por outro lado, essa divers if icação das anál ises

feministas, que se abriram para abordagens mais trans ou pós-discip linares ,

também pode ser interpretada, entre outros fatores, como uma resposta à

mudança da casa inst itucional do periódico de uma un iversidade centra l

(Univers idade Federa l do Rio de Janeiro, o berço original da revista) para

outra (Universidade Federa l de Santa Catarina) , situada fora do eixo (São

Paulo-Rio de Janeiro) do poder acadêmico.

Por últ imo, a presença das teorias pós-coloniais ainda é exígua nos

debates feministas bras ile iros, exceto nos estudos l iterários. Análises

13 Christian (51-63) traz para esta discussão a importância do elemento racial, ou seja, como a teoria ganha não apenas um gênero, mas também é sempre já racializada. 14 Para uma reflexão sobre os primeiros 15 anos da Revista Estudos Feministas na Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, veja seção especial da revista organizada por Minella e Maluf.


interseccionais art iculando gênero a outros vetores da identidade (apesar

de suas cr ít icas recentes na academia anglófona) 15 surgem aos poucos na

medida em que a raça e o rac ismo têm ocupado o centro das atenções nos

debates públicos e nas polít icas governamentais para corrig ir desigualdades

socia is e econômicas duradouras.

À guisa de conclusão, gostar ia de argumentar, seguindo o conselho

de Nelly Richard (“Globalizac ión” 4-5) , que, ao examinar o papel que as

revistas feministas desempenham como mediadoras cr ít icas e

tradutoras/tra idoras no tráfego das teorias, torna-se imperat ivo a cr iação

de um espaço para textual idades heterogêneas. Isto impl ica não só “na

coexistência de uma d ivers idade de f il iações intelectuais , discipl inares e

antidiscip linares, mas também de uma variedade de tons e formas

discurs ivas textuais autorizando vários lugares de enunciação e registros de

representação” (Richard, “Global ización” 7-8, minha tradução). Tal

heterogeneidade possib il ita uma fért i l interação entre as reflexões

acadêmicas e outros t ipos de prát icas enunciatórias e tradutórias no projeto

feminista da descolonização do saber. Outrossim, mostra que os saberes

excedem os l imites estreitos da academia e abarcam outros topoi

discurs ivos, como ONGs e os espaços da militânc ia feminista. Somente

ass im poderemos construir uma tradição de pensamiento próp io feminista do

pós-colonial (ou descolonial) lat ino-americano/brasi leiro.

15 Para exemplos dessas críticas, ver Jasbir Puar e Kathy Davis.


Obras Citadas

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KAMILA KRAKOWSKA Universidade de Coimbra

O TURISTA APRENDIZ E O OUTRO: A(S) IDENTIDADE(S) BRASILEIRA(S) EM TRÂNSITO

O homem é um "ser ambivalente que une em si um eu e um não-eu,

ele próprio e o Outro, o seu Outro e o estranho" (Kapuściński 65). Com

estas palavras Ryszard Kapuśc iński descreve a complexa condição humana

no mundo contemporâneo, onde se desmoronam as trad icionalmente

estabelecidas fronteiras entre as culturas , nações, e identidades. Na era

pós-colonial, as representações identitár ias que até agora defin iam de

maneira unívoca e exclusiva o lugar do homem dentro da sua comunidade

deixaram de ser vál idas quando confrontadas com o "novo mapa-mundo,

mult ico lor, r ico e extremamente complexo" (Kapuściński 62) . O processo

da criação deste novo mapa, que gradualmente revogou as antigas relações

de poder, começou muito tempo antes do surgimento das teorias pós-

coloniais, que permit iram compreender mais profundamente os fenómenos

socia is e cultura is em curso. A urgênc ia de repensar e reconfigurar as

identidades, tanto ao nível individual como colect ivo, de retrabalhar e

readaptar a herança colonial como uma parte signif icat iva da cultura

nacional pode ser observada, entre outros , em vár ias obras brasi leiras da

época modernista. Não cabe nos object ivos deste ensaio discutir se a

produção art íst ica modernista no Brasi l, vista como um sistema integra l ,

pode ser considerada como sendo pós-colonial. Neste trabalho l imitaremo-

nos a anal isar apenas as configurações identitár ias presentes no d iár io de

viagem de Már io de Andrade, O Turis ta Aprendiz, a part ir da perspect iva

pós-colonial. Esta abordagem, na nossa opinião, permit irá desconstruir a

visão do Eu e do Outro proposta por Mário de Andrade no diár io e

determinar o seu papel na construção da identidade nacional.


A aplicação de ferramentas teóricas forjadas no âmbito de estudos

pós-coloniais pode parecer surpreendente, visto que estes conceitos e

categorias são a lheios ao horizonte epistemológico do escritor em causa .

No entanto, é nossa convicção que esta a abordagem é adequada para

compreender plenamente a visão da cultura bras i leira que Már io de

Andrade projeta nas suas obras, em geral, e no Tur is ta Aprend iz , em

part icular . O escritor, como demonstraremos ao longo da anál ise do diár io,

acredita que a identidade cultura l bras ile ira é composta por várias e muito

dist intas expressões étnicas e regionais, frequentemente menosprezadas ou

até desconhecidas pelas e l ites intelectuais do seu tempo. Na sua busca da

identidade brasi leira, o turista aprendiz recupera as vozes si lenciosas, e

si lenciadas , dos cantadores nordest inos que improvisam os cocos, dos

índios que recontam os seus mitos, dos mestres do candomblé que invocam

os seus santos com danças dramáticas. Neste processo, o autor não apenas

inverte as hierarquias tradic ionalmente estabelecidas entre o centro e a

perifer ia, entre o nacional e o local, entre a arte erudita e popular , mas de

facto constrói uma nova visão da cultura brasi le ira onde procura “redef inir

o processo simbólico através do qual o imaginár io soc ia l [ . . . ] se torna o

sujeito do discurso e o objeto da identidade psíquica” (Bhabha 2005a 217).

De acordo com João Luís Lafetá , as primeiras produções dos

modernistas bras ile iros e, entre elas, o l ivro de poesia o Clã do Jabut i do

próprio Mário, foram profundamente marcadas pela exaltação da cultura

popular e pela busca de ser “bras i leiro” “que levava o poeta a exagerar a

linguagem, que ass im perdia, de novo, a natura lidade e a sut i leza” (Lafetá

105). No entanto, como comentam Lafetá e mais t arde Maria Aparecida

Silva Ribe iro (20-21), Már io de Andrade rapidamente se apercebe que o

imperat ivo fo lclorizante é limitador e empobrecedor. Assim, na abertura do

Ensaio sobre a Mús ica Bras ile i ra , publ icado apenas uns meses depois do Clã do

Jabut i , o art ista (e musicólogo) redime-se parante os seus le itores:

Nós, modernos, manifestamos dois defe itos grandes: bastante

ignorancia e leviandade s istematizada. É comum entre nós a

rasteira derrubando da jangada nac ional não só as obras e

autores passados como até os que atualmente empregam a


tematica brasi le ira numa orquestra europea ou no quarteto de

cordas. Não é bras ile i ro se fa la. [ . . . ] Um dos conselhos europeus

que tenho escutado bem é que a gente si quiser fazer música

nacional tem que campear e lementos entre os aborigenes pois

que só mesmo êstes é que são legit imamente brasile iros. Isso é

uma pueri l idade que inclui ignorancia dos problemas

sociologicos, etnicos, psicologicos e estet icos. Uma arte

nacional não se faz com escôlha d iscrec ionaria e d iletante de

elementos: uma arte nacional já está fe ita na inconsciência do

povo. [Grafia orig inal da publicação de 1928] (Andrade 1928

3-4)

O Tur is ta Aprend iz , que conhecemos na versão organ izada e edit ada

recentemente por Telê Ancona Lopez, relata as impressões de Mário de

Andrade de duas viagens pe las regiões do Amazonas e do Nordeste no

Brasi l, empreendidas no final da década de 20. Em 1927, o escritor parte

para o Amazonas como membro da expedição organizada por Dona Olívia

Guedes Penteado, famosa dama paul ist a e mecenas dos modernistas, e

anota livremente as sensações, ide ias e imagens desta experiência, com uma

vaga intenção de transformar este diár io pessoal num livro de viagem. Este

projecto, retomado de facto em 1943, não chegou a ser f inalizado. Em

1928, Már io de Andrade viaja para o Nordeste como jornal ista do Diário

Nacional e desta vez publ ica as suas impressões como crónicas regulares

int ituladas “O Tur ista Aprendiz”. A obra apresentada por Telê Ancona

Lopez reúne os textos relat ivos às duas viagens etnográf icas: o d iár io de

1927, reescrito pelo autor em 1943 sob o t ítulo longo e parodiante O

Tur is ta Aprend iz: Viagens pe lo Amazonas at é o Peru, pe lo Madei ra at é a Bol ív ia e

por Mara jó at é dizer chega , e a sér ie de crónicas de carácter mais object ivo, de

1928.

As duas viagens, como destaca fortemente Telê Ancona Lopez na

introdução ao diár io, foram a real ização de um sonho de Mário de

Andrade, que considerava a Amazónia como “uma sede de uma vivência

tropical, marcada pelo ócio criador” (2002 17) e o Norte e o Nordeste

como “ricos repositórios de trad ição e cultura popular” (2002 16) . A ideia


de que é preciso conhecer o Norte – o Outro, bem dist into da real idade do

sul metropolitano do Brasil – para conseguir cr iar uma rica e independente

cultura bras i leira está entretecida dentro de vár ias observações do escr itor,

que descreve as paisagens, os costumes, a comida e as festas, como se fosse

um verdade iro aprendiz de etnógrafo. A insistência na necess idade de

reconhecimento do valor cultura l do norte brasi leiro preconiza a ide ia de

que para “se aprender a part ir do Sul, devemos, antes de mais , de ixar fa lar

o Sul, pois o que melhor identif ica o Sul é o facto de ter sido silenc iado”,

proposta por Boaventura de Sousa Santos (344), resguardada a d iferença de

referencial a part ir do qual é traçado o azimute: no caso de BSS o Norte é

o “Primeiro Mundo” e o Sul o “Terceiro”; no contexto brasile iro é o Sul

que é r ico e o Norte pobre. No caso do Brasi l visto por Mário de Andrade,

é o Norte que ficou s i lenciado pelo dinâmico e moderno Sul, que se tornou

no novo centro de produção cultura l, ar t íst ica e c ientíf ica, fortemento

ligado, no entanto, com os valores europeus. O chocante contraste que o

escritor sente entre o norte e o sul inc lina-o a repensar os fundamentos da

cultura bras i leira. Na opinião de Mário de Andrade existe um desequi líbr io

entre a herança colonia l europeia dominante e as influências indígenas e

afr icanas que representam as vozes subalternas da rea l idade bras ile ira

daque la altura, usando o termo no sentido que lhe atr ibui Gayatr i Sp ivak

(1995), e este desequi l íbrio impossibi l ita a construção de uma cultura

nacional própria. O autor argumenta:

Quero resumir minhas impressões desta viagem litorânea por

nordeste e norte do Brasil, não consigo bem, estou um bocado

aturdido, maravilhado, mas não se i. . . Há uma espécie de

sensação f icada da insufic iência , de sarapintação, que me

estraga todo o europeu cinzento e bem-arranjad inho que a inda

tenho dentro de mim. Por enquanto, o que mais me parece é

que tanto a natureza como a vida destes lugares foram feitos

às pressas, com excesso de castroalves. E esta pré-noção

invencível, mas invencíve l, de que o Brasi l, em vez de se

ut i lizar da África e da Índia que teve em si, desperdiçou-as ,

enfeitando com elas apenas a sua f isionomia, suas epidermes,

sambas, maracatus, trajes, cores, vocabulários, quitutes. . . E


deixou-se f icar , por dentro, justamente naquilo que, pelo

clima, pela raça , al imentação, tudo, não poderá nunca ser , mas

apenas macaquear, a Europa. Nos orgulhamos de ser o único

grande (grande?) país c ivi lizado tropica l. . . Isso é o nosso

defeito, a nossa impotência. Devíamos pensar, sentir como

indianos, chins, gente de Benin, de Java. . . Talvez então

pudéssemos criar cultura e civi l ização próprias. Pelo menos

seríamos mais nós, tenho certeza. (Andrade 2002 59-60)

Este longo d iscurso revela o chocante contraste que o turista sente

entre o Brasil imaginado pe los habitantes das grandes metrópoles, tais

como São Paulo, que aspiram a fundar uma civil ização moderna à imagem

da Europa, e o Norte e Nordeste brasile iro, cultura lmente híbridos. Um

aspecto marcante nestes pensamentos da personagem de Már io de Andrade

é a conceptual ização da nação. A sua visão da nação brasi leira em processo

de reformulação cultura l e identitár ia, aqui apresentada, é crucial para

perceber o projecto nacionalista que o escritor propõe no seu diár io e, em

part icular , a posição do narrador – que assume vár ios papéis, ta is como o

art ista, o poeta, o fotógrafo, o jornalist a e o etnógrafo, ao longo da

narrat iva 1 – frente ao mundo que o rodeia.

Ao desenvolver estas reflexões inspiradas pelo contacto com os

lugares “fe itos muito às pressas, com excesso de castroalves”, Már io de

Andrade descontrói os fundamentos ideológicos e conceptuais do

nacional ismo ofic ia l, v igente na época. Nas suas impressões, o escritor

apresenta a imagem da nação brasile ira cr iada pelo discurso nacional ist a

das el ites intelectuais e polít icas a part ir do conceito da nação moderna.

Nesta visão, o Brasi l é definido como um país “grande”, “c ivi lizado” e

“tropical”. Os adject ivos “grande” e “c ivil izado”, de cariz claramente

posit ivo, conotam-se com os valores do Estado-nação moderno, com um

sistema económico e administrat ivo desenvolvido segundo os princ ípios do

mundo ocidental. “Tropica l”, por seu lado, é usado como um marco de 1 O papel do Mário de Andrade-personagem é multifacetado e vai constantemente mudando ao longo da narrativa. No entanto, uma análise minuciosa das várias faces deste protagonista, desenvolvida na nossa tese de doutoramento, não cabe nos objectivos deste ensaio. Em relação à construção e descontrução da narrativa etnográfica (e da figura do etnógrafo) nas obras Turista Aprendiz e Macunaíma, veja-se o nosso artigo “As viagens de Mário de Andrade: entre os factos e a ficção” (Krakowska, 2012).


diferença, um e lemento identitár io, crucial para a dist inção do Bras il das

outras “grandes civi l izações”, t anto na perspect iva dos estrange iros como

dos seus próprios cidadãos. A adaptação de certas caracter íst icas locais ,

descritas pela noção de “tropical”, para o discurso nac ional ista demonstra

que os e lementos fundamentais para a construção da ide ia de nação são o

reconhecimento da identidade nac ional pe lo Outro e a cr iação de laços de

pertença e identificação entre os membros da comunidade. Este carácter

bilatera l do processo da formação da ide ia de nação, que se vai construindo

no espaço liminar entre o Eu e o Outro, é coerente com a análise

apresentada por Benedict Anderson em Comunidades Imag inadas , em que o

estudioso destaca a importância da part ilha do imaginár io comum para a

edif icação da nação. Este imaginár io pode ser inconscientemente escolhido

pela própria comunidade, ou pode surgir como consequência do olhar

classificador do Outro, como acontece no caso da criação de mapas, censos

e museus no contexto colonial (Anderson 121). No entanto, tal como o

projecto nacionalist a dos grandes impérios europeus do século XIX não

conseguiu concret izar as suas ambições unif icadoras (Anderson 124), o

discurso nacionalista, cr it icado por Mário de Andrade, também falhou o

seu object ivo de conseguir focar o verdadeiro núcleo da identidade

nacional bras ile ira. O escritor enfat iza que o Bras i l, ao forjar a sua cultura

nacional, desperdiçou o elementos de origem afr icana ou índia, “enfe itando

com elas apenas a sua f is ionomia, suas epidermes, sambas, maracatus ,

trajes, cores, vocabulários , quitutes. . .” (o defeito que o escritor

problematiza t ambém no trecho acima c itado do Ensaio sobre a Músic a

Bras ile ira) .

Na visão do turista aprendiz, é preciso desestabi l izar a visão do

Brasi l como um país que dá continuidade exclusivamente à sua herança

europeia. Sem abandonar a ideia da nação moderna (associada aqui à

civil ização), o escritor propõe uma revisão dos seus fundamentos cultura is

num contexto mult icultura l. Para ele, a condição para “criar cultura e

civil ização próprias” consiste em interiorizar os e lementos das vár ias

culturas que convivem no terr itório brasileiro. A justaposição dos termos

“cultura” e “civil ização” reforça a ide ia recorrente ao longo do texto de

que a nação é uma “forma de cultura”, usando a expressão de Anthony


Smith (1991 118). Esta cultura é moldada de forma s ign if icat iva pe los

factores exteriores, ta is como o clima, a raça, a a l imentação, etc. , o que

diferencia, na perspect iva de Már io de Andrade, o Brasi l da Europa. Além

disso, os sambas, maracatus e vocabulários locais, enumerados pe lo

escritor, são uma herança de toda a comunidade, e não apenas dos

descendentes directos das vár ias etnias que a compõem. Isto é, como no

Brasi l não há um único núc leo étnico, os mitos, símbolos e memórias

comuns são necessár ios para a cr iação de laços de pertença. Assim, ao

anal isar o discurso de Mário de Andrade sob a perspect iva da teoria etno-

simbóloca de Anthony Smith, a incorporação no imaginário nacional de

tradições e costumes locais, que surgiram numa determinada região devido

à presença de raízes afr icanas ou indígenas, é crucia l para a formação da

ideia de nação, porque a nação “pode ser uma formação socia l moderna,

mas é baseada de certa forma em culturas, identidades e heranças pré-

existentes” 2 (1999 175).

A ideia de comunidade é conscientemente destacada no discurso do

turista aprendiz. Na últ ima parte das suas considerações, o escritor de ixa

de referir o Brasil como uma entidade abstracta e passa a dir ig ir-se

directamente aos membros da nação. A repetição do pronome possess ivo

“nosso” e a ut i lização de verbos na primeira pessoa do plura l (nos

orgulhamos, devíamos, pudéssemos, seríamos) cr ia um laço de af inidade e

fraternidade entre os cidadãos, remetendo para a ideia de Benedict

Anderson de que a nação é uma comunidade limitada, tal como a família

(Anderson 27) . Além disso, na af irmação “Deviamos pensar, sentir como

indianos, chins, gente de Benin, de Java. . .” reve la- se uma proximidade

epistemológica entre as várias comunidades que nasceram nas ruínas do

sistema colonia l e estão a forjar a sua cultura e a sua identidade a part ir de

e contra a cultura dominante do colonizador.

A renúncia da cultura própria em favor duma cópia irreflect ida dos

valores e das matrizes ocidenta is é, segundo Mário de Andrade ,

part icularmente vis íve l quando se compara a cultura bras ile ira com a

2“The nation may be a modern social formation, but it is in some sense based on pre-existing cultures, identities and heritages” (Smith, 1999:175).


peruana. O via jante repara ao chegar ao terr itório peruano que os

“peruanos, descendentes de espanhóis, fa lam com orgulho patr iót ico dos

Incas, na c ivil ização incaica, na música incaica” (Andrade, 2002:105). Em

contraste, no Brasil , segundo o autor, há apenas tentat ivas de “lançar o

est ilo marajoara” (2002 105), que se refere ao est ilo muito e laborado das

cerâmicas cr iadas pelas tr ibos indígenas pré-colombianas que ocupavam a

I lha de Marajó no estado do Pará 3.

A descendência Inca tornou-se, como observa o escr itor, uma

referência cultural cruc ia l tanto para a auto-definição do povo peruano

como para o reconhecimento da sua integridade pelos Outros. No entanto,

quando o turista visit a, no Peru, a povoação índia Huitôta observa uma

decadência vis íve l das tradições e dos costumes cult ivados pela tr ibo, que

vive na terra cedida pelo governo e que trabalha apenas 20 d ias por ano,

conforme exigido pelas autoridades. Além disso, o “a ldeamento é já um

pueblo de índio se vest indo como nós, is to é calça e paletó, ou calça e

camisa, e hablando uns farrapos de espanhol” (Andrade 2002 104). Nesta

descrição fragmentária destaca-se uma forte oposição entre “nós” –

supostamente civi l izados, vest idos de maneira ocidental, a falar línguas

impostas pelo colonial ismo – e os “índios” – os Outros, cuja aparência e

cujo comportamento supreendemente não correspondem à visão exótica do

índio se lvagem. A expectat iva do exotismo no encontro com o Outro era

um marco das narrat ivas colonia is que apresentavam as populações nat ivas

dos terr itórios explorados como curiosos objectos de estudo. No entanto,

na nossa opinião, a visão de Mário de Andrade, apesar de certas

semelhanças com a at itude colonizadora, inverte e desconstrói as antigas

relações do poder.

Enquanto nas narrat ivas eurocêntricas o Outro era visto como um

objecto sem agência e sem qualquer influência sobre o Eu-colonizador, no

Tur is ta Aprend iz há uma rede de interações entre o Eu e o Outro. Por um

lado, o índio é um Outro exótico, mas simultaneamente é um portador de 3 A existência do património marajoara foi descoberta apenas em 1871 pelos pesquisadores Charles Hartt e Domingos Penna e até ao final da década 40 do século XX os estudos arqueológicos na área foram muito fragmentários. Só em meados do século, já depois da morte de Mário de Andrade, começaram estudos mais sistemáticos. Veja-se a respeito, por exemplo, a dissertação de Denise Pahl Schaan A Linguagem Iconográfica da Cerâmica Marajoara.


referências identitár ias para a nação inteira. Por outro lado, as leis e os

costumes indígenas vão-se transformando e adaptando sob a inf luênc ia dos

valores culturais e sociais cult ivados pelo resto da sociedade e também das

suas expectat ivas enquanto culturas minoritár ias. Um Huitôta explica a

Mário de Andrade este processo de complexas mudanças culturais e socia is

numa parábola que conta como os Incas de ixaram de construir seus

palác ios impress ionantes:

Huitôta nem carece imaginar se é fe l iz, porque agora ele j á

passou pra d iante do tempo do palácio e da lei. Huitôta é fel iz ,

moço, não é gente decaída não. [ . . . ] Huitôta só sabe o que

Deus manda porque os huitôtas agora possuem um deus que

manda neles. Não se amolam mais com o palácio de pedra nem

com o palácio que tem no fundo da gente no escuro. (2002

108)

Assim, neste processo de múlt ip las transformações identitár ias , as

comunidades subalternas (ta is como os índios, os negros, e os orientais)

cult ivam a diferença sem renunciar às novas inf luências, especia lmente

vindas da Europa. De facto, a g lobal ização da cultura já estava presente,

embora espacialmente limitada, no tempo das expedições de Mário de

Andrade 4. As comunidades culturalmente dominantes, por seu lado,

redefinem as suas raízes e, remetendo à metáfora de Kapuściński ac ima

citada, reconhecem “o seu Outro”; isto é, compreendem que na perspect iva

de outras comunidades elas próprias são vistas como um “Outro”. A

reconstrução da identidade nacional através da f igura do Outro, que

podemos observar no diár io, é uma representação modernista e pessoal de

um fenómeno muito mais amplo, que Mary Louise Pratt descreve como a

“reinvenção da América”, in iciada no século XIX pelas e lites cr ioulas sul-

americanas. A estudiosa argumenta:

4 Nos tempos de Mário de Andrade, a zona de contacto entre índios e brancos no Norte do Brasil limitava-se às margens dos rios, visto que o transporte fluvial era o único meio de contacto com o resto do mundo. Note-se que a Rodovia Transamazónica foi inaugurada apenas em 1972. A sua localização remota e o difícil acesso classificam o Norte do Brasil como uma região periférica, na acepção da teoria de sistemas-mundo de Immanuel Wallerstein (2004). A periódica extensão e retracção de zonas de influência culturais ao longo da História foi sempre condicionada pela facilidade de contacto entre centro e periferia (Braudel, 1993).


One would seriously misinterpret creole relat ions to the

European metropolis (even their neocolonial d imensions) i f

one thought of creole aesthet ics as s imply imitat ing or

mechanical ly reproducing European discourses. … One can

more accurately think of creole representat ion as

t ransculturat ing European materia ls , se lect ing and deploying

them in ways that do not simply reproduce the hegemonic

visions of Europe or simply legit imate the designs of

European capital. (187-188)

A estratégia de desconstruir e reformular as relações entre o Eu e o

Outro é desenvolvida no diár io em dois níveis conceptuais. Além da

dist inção baseada na categoria rac ia l ( índio vs . branco) que comporta

certos elementos da identidade cultura l da comunidade, Már io de Andrade

mostra o forte carácter regional da cultura brasi le ira e a ex istência duma

identidade bem-definida em cada região, cuja formação foi influenciada

pela presença das comunidades índigenas e de origem afr icana nos

respect ivos terr itórios. Sob a óptica do paulista, os estados do Norte como

o Pará ou o Amazonas são zonas do domín io do Outro. Assim, ao chegar a

Belém, “a cidade princ ipal da Pol inésia” (Andrade 1995 62) , o viajante

estranha o ambiente exótico, as mangue iras que dominam a paisagem e os

costumes, ta is como o hábito de passear com os porcos-de-mato de

correntinha. O contraste entre a capital do Pará e o Brasi l que Mário de

Andrade conhecia até a ltura faz com que o turista f ique com a impressão

de estar no estrangeiro exótico. Nas palavras do autor, é “engraçado” o

facto de que “a gente a todo momento imagina que vive no Brasi l mas é

fantást ica a sensação de estar no Cairo que se tem” (2002 62) .

A chocante sensação de estranhamento em contacto com o “outro”

Brasi l repete-se, embora por razões estet icamente diferentes, também na

chegada a Santarém. Desta vez, a c idade nortenha impressiona não tanto

pelo seu carácter exótico e exuberante, como pela sua semelhança com a

Veneza ita liana. O tur ista descreve:


Pelo anúncio da tarde, chegamos a Santarém, com estranhas

sensações venezianas, por causa do hotel ancorado no porto,

enfiando o paredão n’água, e com janelas em ogiva ! Os

venezianos falam muito bem a nossa língua e são todos duma

cor tapuia escura, mui lisa. Fomos recebidos com muita

cordial idade pelo doge que nos mostrou a cidade que acaba de-

repente. (2002 70)

Nesta descr ição o escritor conscientemente desenvolve a comparação

entre as duas cidades atr ibuindo metaforicamente a identidade veneziana a

todo Santarém, incluindo os seus moradores. Este procedimento permite

não só destacar a curiosa semelhança, mas também, ou em part icular ,

transmit ir a sensação de estar no estrangeiro. Deste modo, Santarém-

Veneza passa a pertencer a uma rea lidade dist inta à real idade bras ile ira ,

embora os seus habitantes se jam capazes de falar bem “a nossa língua”.

Também a pequena anotação na foto do hotel em causa, que constava entre

os materia is de Mário de Andrade para a elaboração do l ivro de viagem e

foi inc luída na ed ição de Te lê Ancona Lopez, levanta a questão da

construção de identidades. A inscrição “To be or not to be Veneza / Eis

aqui estão ogivas de Santarém” (Andrade 2002 71) sat ir icamente invoca o

famoso dilema de Oswald de Andrade do Manife s to Antropófago “Tupy, or

not tupy that is the quest ion” (Andrade 1995 419), que por seu lado

parodia o famoso dilema do Hamlet Shakespeariano. A cómica interpelação

sobre as ogivas de Santarém pode incitar a formulação de várias perguntas.

Como construimos a nossa identidade? Como nos diferenciamos dos

outros? Como nos identificamos com a nossa comunidade? Como pode

uma cidade como Santarém marcar a sua identidade dentro do panorama

cultura l brasi le iro? “To be or not to be Veneza” passa a ser , nesta

perspect iva, uma questão crucia l para a compreensão dos processos

identitár ios da nação brasi le ira.

Tal como o Norte e o Nordeste parecem um país estrange iro nos

olhos dos paulistas, assim o parece São Paulo nos olhos dos habitantes dos

estados do norte do Brasi l. O próprio turista aprendiz, sendo natura l de

São Paulo, no norte do país passa vár ias vezes por um estrangeiro


(Andrade 2002 95) . Durante a vis ita à missão franciscana, os frades

ital ianos expl icam ao escritor que São Paulo é, na sua opinião,

profundamente marcado pela influência ita liana, de modo que até Mário de

Andrade fala com uma pronúncia muito característ ica. De facto, o fre i

Diogo dir ige-se com muita f irmeza à comit iva de Dona Olívia: “Vocês são

paul ist as. . . Vocês não são bras ile iros não! Pra ser bras ile iro precisa vir no

Amazonas, aqui s im” (Andrade 2002 94) .

No entanto, embora São Paulo não se ja visto como espaço de

referência na formação da identidade autóctone do Brasil, a metrópole é

sem dúvida considerada como um centro de produção art íst ica, pol ít ica e

científ ica. Os jornais, ta is como Estado de S. Paulo , são regularmente

adquir idos pelos frades e outros habitantes letrados do norte do país, o que

dá a Mário de Andrade “meio orgulho estadual, meio susto da importância

do Estado” (2002 94) . Porém, o acesso aos jornais é também um marco de

diferença que dist ingue as classes e as regiões. O turist a observa as cr ianças

que frequentam a escola primária de Maracagüera, no estado do Pará, e no

tempo livre de pesca leem as notícias do Brasi l nos jornais que serviram

como papel de embrulho:

O recreio é pra tomar banho de brinquedo no furo. Depois se

volta pro b-a-bá e ass im mais tarde aqueles pescadores somam

sozinhos o dinheiro ganhando com os camorins e as pescadas

e lêem no jornal que veio embrulhando a far inha d’água de

Belém, o caso de Lampeão e mais desordens dos brasi leiros de

nascença. (2002 66)

A expressão “bras ile iros de nascença”, aqui de carácter claramente

irónico, reve la o o lhar cr ít ico e desconstrutor sobre a nacionalidade

brasi leira por parte de Mário de Andrade. Ao destacar ironicamente o facto

de que os habitantes das grandes cidades adquirem a identidade brasi le ira

logo no momento de nascença, enquanto os índios podem tornar-se

“completamente brasile iros” apenas quando “vivem por aí fa lando l íngua

nossa, sem memória talvez de suas tr ibos” (2002 91-92), o turista parodia

as re lações de poder entre o colonizador e o colonizado. No sistema


colonial, os co lonizadores eram, de facto, v istos como civil izados

portadores de identidade cultura l e nac ional, em contraste com os povos

colonizados que precisavam de passar pelo processo de assimil iação e

aculturação para serem considerados membros (embora de estatuto

inferior) da comunidade. Homi Bhabha explica esta visão estát ica da

real idade, que reforçava o estereótipo na visão do Outro e just if icava a

situação colonia l:

O estereótipo é, assim, enquanto ponto primeiro de

subject ivação no d iscurso co lonia l, t anto para o colonizador

como para o colonizado, o cenário de uma fantas ia e defesa

similares – o dese jo de uma orig inariedade que é mais uma vez

ameaçada pelas diferenças de raça, cor e cultura. O meu

argumento está esplendidamente contido no t ítulo de Fanon

Pele negra, máscaras brancas em que a recusa da d iferença

transforma o súbdito colonia l em inadaptado – numa imitação

grotesca ou num “dup lo” que ameaça c indir a alma e toda a

pele, indiferenciado, do ego. O estereótipo não é uma

simpl if icação por ser uma fa lsa representação de uma dada

real idade. É uma s impl if icação porque é uma forma

imobil izada, fixa, de representação que, ao negar o jogo da

diferença (que a negação através do Outro autoriza) , const itui

um problema para a representação do sujeito nas suas

signif icações das relações psíquicas e socia is. (2005b 155)

No Turis ta Aprendiz , Mário de Andrade desenvolve um complexo

“jogo da d iferença” que reve la múlt iplos estereótipos provenientes do

discurso colonia l que se mantiveram na sociedade brasi le ira quase um

século depois da proclamação da independência. Neste novo contexto, em

que as figuras do colono e do colonizado foram oficia lmente abolidas, a

simpl if icação da representação da rea l idade continua a ser vis íve l na

relação entre as novas metrópoles bras ile iras (nomeadamente São Paulo e

Rio de Janeiro) e as regiões cultura lmente dist intas e pouco modernizadas

(Amazónia e Nordeste) . A desconstrução desta relação aparentemente

unívoca e uni latera l é real izada no diár io em termos de diferenciação entre


as regiões inteiras e não apenas entre os indivíduos. Quando Mário de

Andrade, por exemplo, cr it ica a ignorância dos habitantes das metrópoles

brasi leiras e dos turistas estrangeiros fascinados pela Amazônia, apresenta

todos os via jantes, quer que fa lem português quer inglês, como um grupo

homogéneo que, em geral, não consegue compreender a real idade

observada:

Todos se propõem conhecedoríssimos das co isas desta

pomposa Amazônia de que t iram uma fantást ica vaidade

improváve l, “terra do futuro”.. . Mas quando a gente pergunta,

o que um responde que é castanheira, o outro discute pois

acha que é pato com tucupi . Só quem sabe mesmo alguma

coisa é a gente ignorante da terceira classe. Poucas vezes, a

não ser entre os modernistas do Rio, tenho visto instrução

mais desorientada que a dessa gente, no geral fa lando inglês .

(2002 92) .

Estas profundas diferenças entre o norte e o sul do Bras i l, que em

geral não são suf ic ientemente conhecidas e compreendidas, são vistas pelas

autoridades como uma desvantagem que deveria ser eliminada. Már io de

Andrade, obrigado a proferir um discurso improvisado durante o almoço

com o prefeito de Belém, fica surpreendido com o entusiasmo com que

todos os convidados recebem as suas palavras sobre a possível an iquilação

das fronteiras culturais entre os estados. O turista comenta:

Fale i que tudo era muito l indo, que estávamos maravi lhados, e

idênticas besteiras verdade ir íss imas, e soltei a idé ia: nos

sentíamos tão em casa (que mentira!) que nos parecia que

t inham se eliminado os limites estaduais! Sentei como quem

tinha levado uma surra de pau. Mas a idéia t inha . . . t inham

gostado. Mas isso não impediu que a champanha est ivesse

estragada, uma porcaria. (2002 62)

Na visão de Mário de Andrade, que se vai revelando nas páginas do

diár io, a diferença é uma vantagem que deve ser estudada e cult ivada.

Apenas percebendo a r iqueza das culturas locais, inf luenc iadas em grão


diferente pela presença das trad ições e dos costumes indígenas, afr icanos,

orientais, e também europeus, é possível construir uma cultura nac ional

heterogénea, híbrida, mas simultaneamente coesa. Sob esta perspect iva, as

noções do Eu e do Outro de ixam de ser conceitos opostos e exclusivos ,

passando a ser vistos como componentes da mesma identidade. A ideia de

criar unidade a part ir da d iferença é c laramente vis íve l, por exemplo, no

estudo sobre as manifestações de feit içar ia em várias regiões do Bras i l, que

o turista aprendiz desenvo lve nas crónicas de 1928. O cronista descreve a

distr ibuição espacial destas prát icas de maneira seguinte:

A feit içaria bras i leira não é uniforme não. Até o nome das

manifestações de la muda bem dum lugar pra outro. Do Rio de

Janeiro pra Bahia impera a designação “macumba”. As sessões

são chamadas de macumbas e os fei t iceiros e demais

ass istentes, às vezes, são os “macumbeiros”. Os feit iceiros ,

“pais-de-terreiro”, real izam as macumbas e invocam os santos,

etc.

Já no norte as sessões são “paje lanças” e é frequentíss ima a

palavra “pajé” des ignando o pai-de-terreiro, assim como o

santo invocado.

Se vê logo as zonas onde atuaram as inf luências dominantes

dos afr icanos e ameríndios. Do Rio até a Bahia, negros; no

norte os ameríndios. Os deuses, os santos das macumbas são

todos quase de proviniência afr icana. No Pará quase todos

saídos da rel ig ios idade ameríndia.

O nordeste, de Pernambuco ao Rio Grande do Norte pelo

menos, é a zona em que essas influências rac ia is misturam.

Palavras, deuses, prát icas se trançam. (2002 216).

Este pequeno estudo etnográf ico-l inguíst ico descreve as diferenças

na denominação das prát icas de fe it içaria, t ais como os nomes da cerimónia

e dos próprios feit iceiros, e indica quais são as influências culturais

dominantes na sua const ituição. No entanto, embora haja uma c lara

fronteira etno-cultura l entre o norte e o sul litora l do país, Mário de

Andrade não fala em manifestações locais ou regionais de feit içar ia. Na sua


opinião, existe um fenómeno de “feit içaria bras i leira”. O adject ivo

“bras ile iro” não tem aqui sent ido apenas terr itorial ou polít ico, que se

refira ao terr itório do estado bras i leiro, mas comporta toda a série de

valores emocionais relacionados com os sentimentos nacional istas. A

“feit içar ia brasi leira” é vista como uma referência cultural que pode criar

laços de pertença entre os membros da nação. Além disso, a ide ia de

trânsito entre identidades cultura is, necessár ia para construir uma

comunidade híbr ida, é fortemente destacada nos comentários de Mário de

Andrade sobre o Nordeste. Este terr itório, onde “palavras, deuses, prát icas

se trançam”, é uma “zona de contacto”, usando o termo de Mary Luise

Pratt (4) , entre as tradições ameríndias, afr icanas e europeias, a condição

que permit iu o surgimento de novas tradições e novas manifestações

identitár ias. Este espaço pós-colonia l oferece, segundo o tur ista aprendiz,

imensas oportunidades que precisam de ser exploradas antes de serem

abandonadas e esquecidas . Por isso, o cronista, ao assist ir ao bailado

tradicional em Para ibá, ironicamente comenta o gradual dec lín io da r iqueza

cultura l do Brasi l:

Os grupos e as formas de bailados são diversos. Além dos

“Cabocolinhos”, tem os “Índios afr icanos”, tem os

“Canindés”, os “Caramurus”, etc. Mas tudo vai se acabando

agora que o Brasi l principia. . . (2002 285).

No entanto, apesar da possíve l uniformização da cultura brasi le ira, a

forte diferenciação das trad ições e dos costumes locais, c ircunscr itos

frequentemente às fronteiras estaduais, const itui uma importante referência

identitár ia para os seus habitantes. Ass im, quando os passageiros do

Vaticano, onde via ja Már io de Andrade, são solic itados pelos missionários

ital ianos a assinar o l ivro de vis itas, indicando as suas nac ional idades,

aparecem designações tais como “paul ist a” ou “amazonense”. De facto, o

escritor confessa: “Dentre os brasi leiros de bordo, fui o ún ico brasi le iro,

sem querer” (2002 116). Esta tentat iva de auto-defin ição demonstra como

as identidades formadas num contexto altamente mult icultural e

mult iétnico, como acontece no caso brasileiro, passam a ser múlt iplas e

fluidas. As categorias identit ár ias unívocas e exc lusivas, impostas pelo


sistema colonial, de ixam de ser vá lidas quando confrontadas com o grupo

de dança “Índios afr icanos” ou com a feit içar ia pernambucana que une os

elementos de relig iões indígenas , afr icanas e do catolicismo. Neste

contexto, é possível ser um escr itor paulista e brasi leiro que procura as

suas origens entre os macumbeiros da Baía, interligando as várias

identidades sobrepostas num mosaico complexo e sempre em construção.

Em conclusão, O Tur is ta Aprend iz é um diário de busca de um

“outro” Bras i l, cuja identidade se baseia na diferença. Már io de Andrade ,

inspirado pelo exemplo do Peru que constrói a sua identidade a part ir da

herança inca, procura as manifestações da cultura indígena que poderiam

servir como referências da cultura nacional brasi leira. Nas suas viagens, o

escritor descobre sít ios, tais como Belém ou Santarém, que lhe provocam

um profundo estranhamento, o que lhe permite desconstruir e repensar a

unívoca visão co lonia l do Outro. Além disso, nestes encontros com o

Outro (o índio, o negro, o orienta l, mas também o amazonense ou o

pernambucano) Mário de Andrade percebe a sua própria condição de ser

um estrange iro dentro do panorama do Brasi l. Ass im, o Outro passa a ser

uma das manifestações do Eu. A d iferença passa a ser um marco

característ ico da cultura nac ional.


Obras Citadas

Anderson, Benedict . Imagined Communit ie s : Re f le c t ions on the Or igin and Spread

o f Nat iona l ism . London: Verso, 1991. Impresso.

Andrade, Mário de. O Tur is ta Aprend iz . Belo Horizonte: Itat iaia, 2002.

Impresso.

--- . Ensaio sobre Musica Bras ile i ra . São Paulo: Editores I . Ch iarato & Cia,

1928. Impresso.

Andrade, Oswald de. “Manifesto Antropófago” . Literatura Bras ile ira. Ed.

Maria Aparecida Ribeiro. L isboa: Universidade Aberta, 1995. 419-420.

Impresso.

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LETÍCIA MARIA COSTA DA NÓBREGA CESARINO Universi ty of Cali fornia , Berke ley

BRAZILIAN POSTCOLONIALITY AND SOUTH-SOUTH COOPERATION: A VIEW FROM

ANTHROPOLOGY

In both lay and academic circ les, it is not common to find the term

postcolonial associated with Latin America, and perhaps even less so with

Brazi l. Th is probably has to do with the dynamics of this idea, a relat ive ly

recent construct that was born overseas and has c irculated mostly in

Anglophone scholarly environments other than Latin America. But this low

currency of postcoloniality versus notions such as modernity or nat ion-

bui lding in the subcontinent might point to some of the very issues

postcolonial theory seeks to approach: the const itut ion of postcolonia l

subjects , the polit ics of enunciat ion, and so forth.

In Latin America, postcolonial ity has invo lved the construct ion, by

Creole elites, of a corpus of polit ica l thought and socia l theory during

lengthy and contested processes of state -formation and nat ion-bui ld ing

which are part icular to the former Iberian colonies (among which, as wil l

be discussed here, Brazi l holds an even more peculiar post-colonia l

outlook). The contemporary approximation between Brazil and other

countries in the global South, those in Sub-Saharan Africa in part icular ,

invites us to revis it this nat ion-bui ld ing l iterature in terms of an

art iculat ion between processes of internal and external colonial ism.

Contemporary postcolonial theory may provide a fresh avenue for looking

at this literature as an early effort to make sense of Brazil’ s post-colonial

condit ion.

This paper wi ll begin by reviewing two contrast ive approaches in

the anthropologica l and neighboring l ite ratures on Lat in America: the


postcolonial and the mult iple modernit ies perspect ives. It then discusses

the possible p lace(s) of Brazi lian classic nat ion-bui lding literature in these

debates, putt ing forth an argument for the need for substantia l historica l

embedding when address ing the postcolonial in relat ion to Brazi l. It

concludes with remarks based on ongoing ethnographic research about

contemporary South-South cooperat ion between Brazi l and the African

continent.

1. Perspectives on Brazil and Latin America: modernity, nation-

building and postcoloniality

Differently to the postcolonial, the notion of modernity is a

common one in indigenous and foreign socia l sc iences literature about

Latin America and Brazi l. That modernity is no longer to be thought of in

monolithic terms seems to be by now part of scholarly commonsense:

mult ip le (Eisenstadt “Introduction”, “The Fir st Mult ip le Modernit ies”,

Roniger and Waisman), a lternat ive (Gaonkar) , other (Rofel) , global

(Featherstone, Lash and Robertson), cr it ical (Knauft) , at large (Appadurai)

– and, more specifical ly for Latin America or Brazil, subaltern (Coronil) ,

subterranean (Aldama), mauso leum (Whitehead), cannibal (Madureira) , or

tropical (Oliven) – are among the wide range of ep ithets that can be found

in the literature.

Contemporary global izat ion is the preferred chronological and

epistemological start ing point of much of the l iterature on mult iple

modernit ies. According to one of the champions of this approach, the

adject ive mult iple is meant to come to terms with the fact that “the actual

developments in modernizing societ ies have refuted the homogenizing and

hegemonic assumptions of th[e] Western program of modernity”

(Eisenstadt “Introduction” 1) . Modernity is thus disentangled from “the

West”, and its unfold ing into mult iples is regarded as the outcome of

Western modernity’s intr insic opening to reflexivity which, with the

intensif icat ion of global connections, would have a llowed for the

emergence of non-Western moderns. In anthropology, the idiom of

mult ip le modernit ies is present among those working on “areas and locales


that have different cultura l histories” than the West (Knauft 1) – that is,

regions caught within the grasp of Western colonial expansion much later

than Latin America , such as Asia (Appadurai, Rofel , Tambiah) and Africa

(Piot , Deutch et al.) .

There are however fundamental dif ferences between the Latin

American experience with modernity and colonial ism and that of the areas

typical ly covered by the anthropology of mult ip le modernit ies. As a “firs t

mult ip le modernity” (Eisenstadt “The First Mult iple Modernit ies”) , Lat in

America entertains a re lat ion with the West that vast ly predates

contemporary globalizat ion, reaching as far back as ear ly European

modernity. Historical depth is therefore a part icular ly important analyt ica l

element when reflect ing on postcoloniality in Latin America, as the

subcontinent has a long colonial and post-colonial history that cannot be

reduced to the more recent accelerat ion of g lobal processes, and even to

modernizat ion and development discourse.

Thus, mult iple modernit ies l iterature general ly associates modernity

in Latin America less with one linear, continuous process than with

periodic “modernizing moves” (Domingues xi) . Repl icat ing a common

argument in Brazil ian h istoriography, Brazi lian socio logist Renato Ortiz

locates the consolidat ion of Brazi l’s interest in modernity in the 1930’s,

when, according to him, it became

something present, an imperat ive of our t imes, and no longer

a promise dislocated in t ime. Problematic modernity,

controversial but without doubt an integra l part of day-to-day

li fe (television set s, automobiles, a irports, shopping centers,

restaurants, cab le televis ion, advert ising, etc.) . (258)

Another important claim is that Creole el i tes in newly independent

states have been the key architects of Lat in America’s post-colonia l

versions of modernity (Roniger and Waisman). Indeed, in contrast with

European colonizat ion in Asia and especia l ly in Africa, during much of the

nineteenth century the Latin American republ ics were, even if st il l large ly


financial ly dependent on Europe (Britain in part icular) , relat ively left a lone

to carry out their own state-formation experiments.

As others (Tavolaro, Calde ira, Domingues) , Ortiz deploys the idea of

mult ip le modernit ies to counteract the incomplete modernity paradigm

common in Brazi l’ s classic socia l theory – briefly put, those works that ,

implic it ly or explicit ly, def ine modernity in Brazil in terms of a lack .

Brazi l ian socio logist Sérgio Tavolaro advocates the mult iple modernit ies

approach as an alternat ive to what he calls socio logy of dependency and

sociology of the patr iarchal-patr imonial ist heritage, which would be

“incapab le of thinking contemporary Brazil as a fin ished exemplar of

modernity” (6) , being therefore responsible for “our permanence in a sort

of s emi-modern limbo” (10) . Following Eisenstadt , he argues that an

acknowledgement that modernity is “historica l”, “contingent”,

“mult ifaceted” and “tending towards the global” would be enough of a way

out of Brazil ian intel lectuals ’ – in his view wrong-headed – obsession with

unauthenticity and peripheral ity (11) .

A quest ion can be raised here that paralle ls the one put by Ferguson

(Global Shadows ) concerning mult ip le modernit ies perspect ives on Afr ica .

Would the brushing away of the incomplete modernity paradigm with the

stroke of a pen, and by select ively associat ing modernity with the diffusion

of certain material and immateria l forms, 1 be enough to wipe it out of the

self-consciousness of the actors themselves? Moreover, this would imply

dismiss ing an entire corpus of Brazi lian classic soc ia l thought that has

more to offer than being either wrong or r ight .

At least since independence in 1822, Brazi l’s intel lectual and

polit ica l el ites have been struggl ing with the challenge of construct ing a

nat ion-state. But it was the inception of the Republ ic in 1889 that

prompted an onrush of what would become known as ensa ios de int erpre tação

do Bras i l (essays of interpretat ion of Brazi l) , a hybrid literary-pol it ica l-

scholarly genre characterized by a quest for Brazil’ s uniqueness as a nat ion

while at the same t ime diagnosing obstacles to, and proposals for, its self- 1 Like a “modern” cultural industry, urbanization, telecommunication technologies, a “rationalizing mentality” in public management, or greater commitment to “market efficiency” (Ortiz 257).


fulfi l lment. The most interest ing aspect of this literature is not whether it

“accurately” descr ibes Brazil’ s socio-cultural configurat ion or its part icular

brand of modernity, but to which extent such publ ic ly acknowledged and

highly inf luentia l works have effect ive ly concurred for shaping their own

object .

Modernity in this case refers not to one divid ing l ine between the

nat ional and the foreign, or between center and periphery, but encapsulates

a host of other cleavages that are part icular to Brazi l’s historica l

experience. A key c leavage refers to the idea of the “two Brazi ls”.

Generally associated with Jacques Lambert ’s Os Do is Bras is , this notion

maps a divide between the modern and the tradit ional onto spat ial

discontinuit ies (such as urban-rural and coast-backlands) whereby the

underdeve loped regions and peoples of the country are seen as the past of

modern ones.

Historical ly, this dual ism has been t ightly connected to the slow

process of occupation of the Brazil ian h interlands, which culminated in the

country’s polit ico-terr itorial unif icat ion. Although offic ia lly completed

with the consolidat ion of Brazil’s contemporary borders in the early

twentieth century, this integrat ion effort persists to this day in other fronts

ranging from infra-structure (transportat ion, telecommunicat ions, energy ,

agriculture, etc.) to culture (educat ion, mass media, etc.) . The very forging

of a Brazi lian nat ional identity is int imately connected to these processes,

and indigenous socia l theory has been a key ideological mediator in both

internally and external ly-directed nat ion-build ing efforts.

Virtual ly al l ensa ios draw on some version of the modern-tradit ional

dichotomy, but often wind up complicat ing rather than reaffirming it . By

the t ime Gilberto Freyre was writ ing Casa-Grande & Senzala (1933) – later

translated as The Masters and the Slaves – for instance, the Brazi lian

Northeast had long lost the polit ica l and economic weight it held dur ing

colonial t imes to Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo in the Southeast . From the

standpoint of this new domestic hegemony, the Northeast came to be seen

as a tradit ional region, the prest ige of which Freyre tr ied to rescue by


elevat ing the status of it s culture from regional to nat ional. In the same

masterly tour-de-force, he appealed to nat ionalist appetites by providing a

language with which to talk about Brazi l as a civi lizat ion in its own terms,

that is, outs ide of the rac ia l degenerat ion strait jacket implicated by

biological approaches to race and by the whitening ideologies prevalent in

Brazi l dur ing the early twentieth century (Skidmore) . In his oeuvre,

Freyre’s regional ism – often opposed to the cosmopolitanism of São Paulo

modernists l ike Már io and Oswald de Andrade, also on the spotlight dur ing

the 1920’s and 30’s – is further coupled with Lusotropicalism, his

transnational a lternat ive to Western European hegemony based on a

supposed cultura l unity and superior c ivil izat ional potentia ls of the

“Portuguese wor ld” (Freyre, Um Bras ile i ro em Terras Portuguesas 244).

An earl ier manifestat ion of the two Brazi ls paradigm is even more

tell ing of the contradictory and complex nature of post-colonial nat ion-

bui lding efforts: Eucl ides da Cunha’s 1902 masterpiece Os Sertões –

translated as Rebe l l ion in the Backlands . The key d ichotomy here is between

the coast and the backlands, but the book’s core effort lies precisely in an

ambiguous revers ion of the common associat ion between the former as

civil ized, and the latter as primit ive. In Da Cunha’s hands, European

scientif ic theories of environmental determinism turn into a contradictory

praise of the s ertane jos (backlanders) as a race better-adapted – and

therefore more authentic and in a sense superior – than the moderns of the

coast . Towards the end of the book, these paradoxes unfold into an

unprecedented denunciat ion of the coastal el ites’ neglect (or

misconceiving) of their own civi lizing mission towards “our rude nat ive

sons, who were more a l ien to us in this land of ours than were the

immigrants who came from Europe. For it was not an ocean which

separated us from them but three whole centuries” (161). Da Cunha’s

account is therefore set apart from Freyre’s in its refusal to think in terms

of the assumption of a harmonic whole underpinning Brazi lian culture and

society. Not by chance, Da Cunha has been framed (e.g. , by Sanj inés) as a

sharp postcolonial cr it ic avant la le t t re .


More recently, the idea of the two Brazils has been cast by Brazi lian

anthropologist Cardoso de Oliveira (“A Noção de ‘Colonialismo Interno’”)

in terms of the concept of internal co lonial ism (Stavenhagen), that is, the

continuance of external colonialism, this t ime led by nat ional elites over

domestic subaltern groups. Unti l the 1988 Constitut ion, the Brazil ian state

used to conceive of this relat ion from the perspect ive of indigenous

peoples’ incorporat ion to the nat ional pol ity. The paradigm of

incorporat ion has been rendered problematic both by indigenous

movements and by scholarship inspired, among others, by postcolonial

cr it ique. Alcida Ramos has looked at the Brazi lian state’s re lat ions with

indigenous peoples a long the l ines of Edward Said’s Oriental ism. Going a

bit further, Teresa Calde ira has shifted the focus of the ethnographic

authority cr it ique away from central, empire-building anthropologies in

order to ask the important (though barely addressed) quest ion of if, and

how, nat ional peripheral anthropologies l ike Brazi l’s would reproduce

domestical ly the predicaments of the colonial encounter (Asad).

On the other hand, cr it iques from a mult ip le modernit ies st andpoint

(e.g. , Tavo laro) cla iming that the ensaios essentia l ize a supposed Brazil ian

character , might be missing the point by reducing their complex reflect ions

on what we would today ca l l the postcolonial quest ion, to an assert ion of

Brazi l’s inabi l ity to become fully modern due to its Iberian roots.

Intellectuals like Freyre and Da Cunha were not simply identifying

obstacles to Brazi l’s modernizat ion, but unsett ling the very grounds on

which modernity was thought of as possible in the peripheries. In this

sense, the nat ion-building literature paved the way for rendering

problematic, always in an ambivalent fashion, the very epistemologies of

central ideologies and inst itut ions – thus presaging future postcolonia l

moves. Here, moreover, a situated posit ion is made exp lic it : these authors

were not just descr ibing some object ive real ity out there, but part icipat ing

in the very const itut ion of their object , the Brazi lian nat ion-state. 2

2 Even though such works came to be associated with a genre – the ensaio – that partly deprives them os scientific status, Caldeira and others have convincingly extended the nation-building claim to Brazil’s contemporary social sciences. The nation-building drive is here contrasted with the empire-making implications of central anthropologies (cf. Stocking, Cardoso de Oliveira “Peripheral Anthropologies”).


This literature has therefore a different character than a simple

either-or focus on coloniality and modernity, as it has performed the very

quest ions ra ised by the contemporary scholarship d iscussed here. If, for

example, the foreign appears as the ful l-f ledged modern which opposes the

domestic as backward and incomplete, the latter simultaneously appears as

the autochthonous authentic in contrast to the foreign spurious. This

dichotomy intersects further with other cleavages that bring into relief

internal contradict ions to the nat ion-state. Ideas of Brazi lian modernity are

mult i faceted depending, in each case , on the art iculat ions between the

regional and the nat ional, and the local and the universal. One can see, for

instance, how the idea of the nat ion is deflected by regional disposit ions in

the works of authors such as Gilberto Freyre (Northeast) , Roberto

DaMatta (Rio de Janeiro) , and the 1922 modernists (São Paulo) ; and how

these relat ions can be further art iculated with (and complicated by)

statements of un iversal ity, as with the 1922 modernists. F inal ly, Brazil ians

have seen and continue to see their own reality vis-à-vis centra l

modernit ies from a mult ip lic ity of angles: opposit ion, hybridism,

difference, deference, dependency, mimicry, defic it , catching up, creat ive

absorption, inappropriateness, and so forth. The authors approached here

are but a smal l (albeit inf luentia l) sample of these mult iple possib il it ies.

In general, the postcolonial l iterature is more sensit ive to such

complexit ies than its mult ip le modernit ies counterpart . But as virtually a l l

discussions on the quest ion of postcolonia lity in Latin America suggest

(Mignolo, Ashcroft , Moraña et al. , Moraña and Jáuregui) , turning the

disc ipl inary lenses of postcolonia l studies to the subcontinent is not a

simple t ask. The overarching quest ion seems to be whether postcolonial

analysis could be appl ied to earl ier post-colonia l experiences such as Latin

America’s, that is, beyond the late twentieth century context from which

the field emerged, mostly in response to independence struggles in Africa

and Asia .

Ashcroft has traced a useful picture of the mult ip le layers involved

in this debate: whether it makes sense to speak of decentering modernity at

a moment (that of the conquest of America) when modernity itself was


being formed in Europe; differences between the Spanish and Portuguese

colonial isms and the ones to which postcolonial studies normal ly refer

(especial ly Brit ish and French); whether and how the occupant of the

Empire posit ion has changed over t ime (to include, chiefly , the United

States) ; the greater ambiguity between colonizers and colonized, often

framed in terms of hybrid or Creole cultures; the quest ion of internal

colonial ism in relat ion to black, peasant and indigenous populat ions; the

part icular d ia lect ics of acceptance-resist ance to colonial domination and

foreign influence by nat ional elites; and whether the attempt to extend

postcolonial studies to Latin America wouldn’t be it self a neocolonia l ist

move.

As is a lso the case e lsewhere, to think of Latin America from a

postcolonial standpoint requires go ing beyond the Colonial Period as

demarcated by the historiographical canon ( in the case of Brazi l, from 1500

to 1822). Colonia l ism as a h istorica l experience is, in this sense ,

dist inguished from colonial ity, where the latter concerns those more

elusive yet pers istent and contradictory effects of colonizat ion on formerly

colonized peoples’ self-consciousness. Moreover, given the longer t ime

span elapsed since the demise of colonizat ion, the primordial colonizer has

lost ground to further waves of external influence that have succeeded the

period of Portuguese and Spanish dominion: most obviously Brita in and

the US in geopolit ica l economy, but also France and even Germany in

“softer” ( intellectual and inst itut ional) spheres. Such longue durée , coupled

with Brazi l ian part icular it ies within Lat in America, make the applicat ion of

postcolonial theory insights to Brazil a rather complicated task indeed.

Various attempts have been made by students of (and from) the

subcontinent to bring ins ights from contemporary postcolonial cr it ique to

bear on Latin American part icular it ies : to expand the problem of

colonial ity as conceived by postcolonial theory’s chief paradigms (Said,

Fanon, Spivak, or Bhabba) (Moraña et al .) ; more focused approaches from

a subaltern studies (Rodrigues) or cultural studies (Del Sarto et al.)

perspect ive; and studies connecting colonial ism in Brazi l with it s

counterparts in Lusophone Africa (Santos, Fiddian) . Dependency theory


has also been a favorite topic, be it as the object of, or in contrast to,

postcolonial approaches (Grosfogue l, Kapoor) . For Brazi l, popular themes

have inc luded cultural movements l ike the 1920’s Brazi lian modernism

(Madureira) or mid-century Cinema Novo (New Cinema) (Stam). The

quest ion of race, part icular ly fraught with tension in the contestat ion of

Freyre’s rac ia l harmony legacy by late-century black act ivism, is extensive

enough to make up a subfie ld on its own (for instance, Bourdieu and

Wacquant, Sansone, and other contributors to the same issue of the

Brazi l ian journal Estudos Afro-Asiát icos ) .

In general l ines, one could say that i f the mult iple modernit ies

approach has its ult imate reference in contemporary global izat ion, views

the history of modernity as start ing in eighteenth century Europe and

unfold ing through a mult ipl icat ion of modernizing projects mediated by

local e lites, and privi leges modernity’s “bright side” ( i.e . , its emanc ipat ing

aspects) , the postcolonial approach to Latin America begins with the

Conquest and the world-system which unfolds thereof, views the history of

modernity as the systemic art iculat ion of colonial ity’s mult iple elements,

and privi leges modernity’s “dark side” ( i.e . , its subalterniz ing aspects) .

A collect ive of Latin-American scholars (many of whom US-based)

has been part icular ly vocal in these debates. According to one of it s

members, the Colombian anthropologist Arturo Escobar (“Wor lds and

Knowledges Otherwise”) , the group’s chief claim for innovat ion lies in the

uniqueness of its “deco lonia l cr it ique”, firmly grounded in the

part icular it ies of Lat in America’ s experience. This cr it ique does not cla im

to be situated outs ide of modernity, but at its margins , and proposes that

modernity-coloniality (rather than modernity alone) be the unit of analys is .

One of the notions propounded by this group, that of colonial ity of power ,

seeks to account for the tenacity of colonial ism’s materia l and discurs ive

structures beyond national independences, and refers to a chain of

entangled global hierarchies that extrapolates military and economic

domination to include racial, gendered, sp ir itua l, epistemic , and linguist ic

elements. Al l these forms of power are art iculated in what has been


referred to as the “modern colonial world system” (Qui jano and

Wallerste in, Escobar “World and Knowledges Otherwise” 185).

The idea of border-thinking (Mignolo) also has a subcontinental

flavor in its evocat ion of the tropes of mixture and Creol izat ion so famil iar

to Latin-American socia l thought, but now str ipped of connotat ions of

harmony (as in Freyre) . If, on the one hand, border-thinking may be seen

as occupying that othering space of alternat ive ( i.e . , non-modern)

civil izat ional matrixes that was , in the case of Latin America, eventually

fi lled by the Creole, on the other it takes place in the epistemological and

polit ica l space opened up by colonial dif ference, from where it aims at

reaching at an outs ide of Western hegemony. This view is in line with that

of many postcolonial cr it ics, but in Lat in America the idea of margins

acquires greater prominence, since its subaltern point of view has been

historica lly const ituted as int ernal to the West .

The postcolonial perspect ive therefore opens up a f ield of inquiry

for which most mult iple modernit ies approaches lack appropriate

conceptual tools. Some of the latter ’s ins istence in detach ing modernity

from the West (Eisenstadt “Introduction”, “The First Mult iple

Modernit ies”, Roniger and Waisman), for instance, is tel ling of, as Mignolo

would put it , their bl indness to colonia l dif ference, or to the fact that

modernity’s cla ims to universa l ity are the result of a historical process of

expansion of Western soc iet ies predicated on the hierarchizat ion and

subjugat ion of a lternat ive worldviews. Moreover, mult iple modernit ies ’

focus on col lect ive identit ies cannot address the postcolonia l quest ion of

subaltern enunciat ion in al l its complexity. It is no surprise, then, that the

pool of actors populat ing such studies, pictured as struggling for the

hegemony of their own version of the modern project , is almost exclus ively

limited to nat ional el ites, intel lectuals , or organized soc ia l movements. The

subaltern who does not exist as a wel l-def ined collect ive sub ject ( in other

words, who does not have an explic it , bounded identity) does not find

much room in this framework. 3 Most of the mult iple modernit ies

3 The idea of “popular culture” is one way of framing these amorphous identities (Rowe and Schelling).


approaches to Latin America only seem to be able to work against

contradict ion, ambiguity, and indeterminacy. In this sense, a postcolonia l

approach would have the advantage of thinking not against but through the

latter in order to make sense of subaltern subject ivity, instead of

dismiss ing the incomplete modernity paradigm in Latin America by

generously democrat izing modernity to the global peripheries.

A st imulat ing engagement with the quest ion of Brazi l’s status within

the postcolonial terrain has been put forth by the Portuguese socio logist

Boaventura de Sousa Santos. Among Santos’s arguments on the

part icular it ies of Portuguese colonial ism are the original hybridity of

Portuguese culture; Portugal’ s status as a subaltern colonia lism (vis-à-vis

the Brit ish, but at points a lso in re lat ion to Spain) ; the fact that it s

enterprise was more colonial than capital ist , result ing in that “the end of

Portuguese colonia lism did not determine the end of the colonialism of

power” (10) ; and that , g iven the incompleteness of the nat ion-build ing

process in Portugal it self , Portuguese culture became a “borderland

culture” where form would prevai l over content.

According to Santos, these would have shaped a peculiar (post-)

colonial outlook in Portugal’ s former colonies, espec ia lly Brazil, which was

not only the largest of them but eventually became itself the center of the

Portuguese Empire between 1808 and 1821. The fact that the Portuguese

colonizer had to retroact ively reckon with what became the new norm –

namely, Brit ish imperalism – had paradoxica l and long- last ing

consequences for its colonies : they came to suffer , Santos argues, from

both an excess and a defic it of colonial ism. Portuguese colonial ism came

thus to be seen by those in Brazil both as a root cause of its

underdeve lopment and as a sort of “fr iendly colonial ism”.

Santos goes on to argue that the particular it ies of Portuguese

colonial ism entai l a specif ic kind of postcolonia lism. In the case of Brazil ,

two points stand out in this regard. On the one hand, the abovementioned

double colonizat ion (by Portugal and then by the Empires that followed it)

“became later the const itut ive e lement of Brazi l’s myth of orig ins and


possibi lit ies for deve lopment. . . . It divides Brazi lians between those who

are crushed by the excess of past and those that are crushed by the excess

of future” (19) . On the other hand, the “colonial weakness and

incompetence of the Portuguese Prospero” did not al low for the

persistence of neocolonial ist relat ions, but “by the same token it

faci l itated, part icular ly in the case of Brazil, the reproduction of colonia l

relat ions after the end of colonialism – what is known as internal

colonial ism” (34) .

Indeed, the intensity with which colonia lism was turned inwards in

Brazi l might have been a h istorica l effect of having had a colonizer that

was itse lf subaltern (but wh ich had nonetheless the trad it ion of a strong

patr imonial st ate) . One can think of the gap in Brazil between those

“crushed by the excess of past” and those “crushed by the excess of

future” as moving a long the lines of internal colonia lism (most

prominently, in relat ion to indigenous peoples, but a lso encompass ing

peasants and descendents of Afr ican s laves) . But it also overlaps with other

long-last ing gaps in Brazil such as those in income and education. On the

other hand, the “excess of future” – eloquently encapsulated in the

recurrent motto in Brazil ian culture: “Brazil, the land of the future” –

nourishes the long-last ing expectat ion of one day becoming a fully

developed country, as wel l as a major g lobal player.

The part icular it ies of Brazil ian postcolonial ity as accounted for by

Santos also seem to have shaped nat ion-bui ld ing ideo logies as they turned

outwards . From the point of view of double colonizat ion, for instance ,

Freyre’s The Masters and the Slaves can be regarded as a retroact ive response

to Britain’s redefin it ion of “the rules of colonia l discourse – rac ist sc ience,

progress, the ‘white man’s burden’” (Santos 12) . Freyre’s borrowing of

Franz Boas’s notion of culture as an alternat ive to biologica l

understandings of race (The Masters and the Slaves xxvi) al lowed him to

recast in a posit ive light what was unti l then understood as a source of

degenerat ion (Skidmore) : miscegenat ion. Many of the dichotomies present

in the ensaios and e lsewhere also struggle with the perceived gap that

emerged between Brazi l’ s Iberian roots and Western European hegemony.


Each of their poles refer , as it were, to one “colonizer”: hierarchy-equality

(DaMatta) , patr imonial ism-bureaucracy (Faoro), or cordiality-civi l ity

(Hollanda) .

Finally, Santos invites us to think in terms not of a generic

postcolonialism accessed by means of postcolonial theory’s abstract

constructs, but of a s ituated pos t co lonial ism , which supposes “a careful

historica l and comparat ive analys is of the different colonia l isms and their

aftermaths” (20) . I would add to this the importance not only of historica l

but ethnographic embedding when reflect ing on postcolonial ity in

part icular peripheral regions (or between them, as in South-South

relat ions) . In this vein, one could take “situated” a lso in the sense put

forth by Donna Haraway: making explic it the concrete interests

undergird ing epistemological constructs and their corresponding claims to

universa lity. In the remainder of this paper, I will tentat ively take up these

and other insights by exploring recent approximations between Brazil and

the African continent within the context of (re)emerging South-South

al ignments.

2. Postcolonial ity in Contemporary South-South Alignments:

Brazil and Africa

As suggested by Santos’s notion of situated postcolonia lism,

discussing contemporary relat ions between Brazi l and Africa should not be

an intellectual exercise in the abstract . Moreover, a longue durée historica l

frame as we ll as Brazil’ s ambivalent posit ion between its historica l a l liance

with the West and t e rc e iromundis ta (Third-Worldist) al ignments are key for

understanding how such relat ions are unfo lding today. The trajectories o f

Brazi l and the African continent have crossed each other at various points

during the half mil lennium of European colonia lism in the Americas and in

Africa, and continue to do so along l ines that are fundamentally shaped by

their respect ive post-colonial legac ies. From the very beginning, relat ions

between the two continents have been a const itut ive part of the world

system inaugurated by Western European expansion from the fi fteenth

century onwards. These have often been framed by the historica l l iterature


in terms of the “At lantic tr iangle” whereby Europeans provided Afr ican

traders with manufactured goods such as text iles and guns, in exchange for

slaves to work in their New World colonies (the so-cal led Middle Passage) ,

while the latter supplied Europe with high ly valued products as sugar and

precious meta ls ( to be jo ined by coffee, co tton and others) (Mintz) . In the

case of Brazil, however, it makes more sense to think in terms of a four-

vertex f igure, as by the late seventeenth century Portugal itse lf had become

polit ica l ly and economically dependent on the r ising Brit ish empire

(Penha).

Throughout Brazi l’s co lonia l history, its relat ions with Africa have

been fundamental ly mediated by the transat lantic s lave trade, in which the

Portuguese, and later on the Brazi lians themselves, played a prominent

role. The mid-nineteenth century, when England f inal ly succeeded in

curbing the inf lux of African slaves to Brazi l, is general ly regarded as

inaugurat ing a century of stalled relat ions between the two regions,

eventually punctuated by free and forced movements of returned slaves and

slave-descendents especial ly to West Africa. Meanwhile, the Brazil ian state

was busy with its own process of internal colonizat ion and terr itoria l

unif icat ion and, later on into the twentieth century, industr ial izat ion. It is

not until later in that century, with the African continent ushering into

independence struggles, that Brazi lian diplomats (and businessmen) would

look again with interest across the Southern Atlantic (Saraiva, D’Ávi la) .

But regardless of the flow of people, goods and information between

the two regions, Africa had an important role to play in Brazil dur ing the

early twentieth century. This was not, however, the actual Afr ica, but an

Africa seen through the mirror- image of Brazi l’s nat ion-bui ld ing

ideologies. In the best-known and most influentia l vers ion of Brazi lian

nat ional ity, Africans joined the Amerindians and the Portuguese to make

up the Brazi l ian “melt ing pot” – the Freyrean picture of a rac ia lly mixed

society devoid of segregat ion and rac ism. According to another axis of

Freyre’s oeuvre (Um Bras ile iro em Terras Portuguesas ) , which would also wie ld

high influence in Brazil ’s foreign policy circles , Portuguese colonies in


Africa part icipated in the fantasy of a Lusotropical c ivi l izat ion sharing

similar character ist ics with the Brazi lian post-colonial experience.

Historical works (such as Saraiva ’s, or D’Ávi la’ s recent account of

Brazi l’s stance on independence struggles in Portuguese colonies in Africa)

suggest that the power of Freyrean discourse in Brazil ians’ self-

consciousness and its inf luence on the country’s internat ional moves

should not be underest imated. This is especia lly true with regard to Brazil’ s

specia l relat ion – which some have descr ibed as sentimental (Penna Fi lho

and Lessa) – with Portugal , wh ich prevented it from taking a c lear stand

opposing the last stronghold of European colonizat ion in Afr ica. Freyre

himself played a role in this respect , not only in Brazi l but also in Portugal ,

where he supported, sometimes in person, the ideologica l apparatus of the

Salazarist regime. This eventually came at a cost to Brazil , by breeding

acrimonious resentment among leaders not only from former Portuguese

colonies in Afr ica (Mozambique in part icular) but from the remainder of

the continent as wel l.

Brazi l’s foreign policy for Africa therefore reflects its fundamental ly

ambivalent insert ion in the world system that gradually emerged with the

conquest of America. On the one hand, there has been an a lmost automatic

privi leging of relat ions with the former empires of Portugal, Western

Europe and the US. On the other, there is an opposite drive towards

t e rc e iromundismo , where a closer al ignment is sought with other developing

nat ions across what is being today cal led the global South. While the

former follows the typical dynamics of center-periphery relat ions, the latter

is driven by a wil l to shed polit ical and economic dependence on Northern

nat ions (the US in part icular , whom Brazi l ian dip lomacy has always

resented for being treated like a “ junior partner”) while str iving for

regional – and more recently, global – leadership. It is not casual, then,

that closer relat ions with Africa were most aggressively sought by Brazi l in

moments of emergence, such as during the 70’s “economic mirac le” and

recently during Lula ’s two terms in off ice (2003-2010). 4 Therefore, by

4 A partial exception was the independent foreign policy pursued during Jânio Quadros and João Goulart’s short-lived presidencies (1961-64). Attempts at approximation with Africa would be resumed during the


becoming a provider of internat ional cooperat ion, Brazi l is address ing as

much its Southern counterparts as Northern powers, from whom it seeks

recognit ion as a major g lobal player.

Such efforts at approximation with Africa , based on the doctr ine of

responsible pragmat ism (Sara iva) , submit foreign relat ions to the

imperat ives of nat ional deve lopment to the point of sometimes clash ing

frontally with geopolit ics. Probably the most str ik ing instance of this was

during the Geise l years (1974-79), when the paradoxica l s ituat ion came

about where a harsh anti-communist mil itary d ictatorship was the f irst

non-African regime to recognize a Marxist government: independent

Angola under the MPLA (People’s Movement for the Liberat ion of

Angola) . This was a late attempt at redeeming Brazi l from the lack of a

firm commitment against the persistence of colonizat ion in Lusophone

Africa and the South-African apartheid regime, which had bred host i lit ies

among many of the new Afr ican leaders and put Brazi l in the black list of

oil-producing Afr ican nat ions and their Arab a ll ies dur ing the 1970’s oi l

shocks (Sara iva) .

Much in Brazil’ s d iscourse on its re lat ions with Africa has been

retained since then. In cooperat ion act ivit ies, the Itamaraty’s (Brazi l’ s

Ministry of Foreign Relat ions) st andard discourse on Brazi l ian culture

tends to follow the Freyrean l ines of rac ia l mixture and harmony – even if

during the last decade or so, as happened occas ional ly in the past , such

hegemonic discourse has been increas ingly chal lenged by race-based

movements in Brazil (Saraiva) . As one moves however from policy to

operat ional staff involved in cooperat ion act ivit ies , references to race

polit ics (and even to quest ions of race in general) become increasingly less

common. This points to the relevance of other analyt ical angles or rather,

to the need for an art iculated approach, as has been suggested by the Latin

American postcolonial l iterature discussed above.

An analyt ica l angle that stood out dur ing fie ldwork relates to the

idea of culture, part icular ly in the central way assumptions of cultura l Military Regime, but such efforts eventually fell apart during the 80’s under the weight of an economic crisis that swept both sides of the Atlantic (Saraiva).


aff init ies between Brazi l and (especia l ly West and Lusophone) Africa are

deployed in cooperat ion. Most typical ly, such affinit ies are evoked in the

spheres of music, food, dance, sports, rel ig ion, or language. Such emphasis

on assumed affinit ies at the level of culture is in line with arguments

stressing the central ity of “non-conceptual forms” of “embodied

subject ivity” in Afr ica’ s trans-At lantic diaspora (Gilroy 76) . But it could as

wel l ref lect gaps in historiography that are being gradually bridged by

studies focusing for instance on the African origins of agr icultura l

techniques brought to the Americas (e.g. , Carney) . 5 What this indicates

most forcefully, however, is the peripheral izat ion of both world regions

during the r ise to hegemony of the West and its dominance in “harder”

socia l dimensions such as ( industr ia l -capital ist) economy, ( liberal-

democrat ic) polit ical inst itut ions, and (techno-scientific) knowledge. Thus,

what would be the proper terrain for relat ions across the Southern Atlantic

was left to what is understood, according to Western modernity’s

normativity, as the “softer” (and autonomous) spheres of religion, culture,

and so forth.

But culture is not a pre-given essence that would have remained

unchanged throughout the centuries, untouched by history or polit ics. Th is

becomes especial ly evident when dissonances ar ise between Brazi l’ s

constructed image of it s African heritage and actual contemporary Africa.

Especia lly in the aftermath of the independence struggles, not all Africans

saw such supposed cultura l legacies in a posit ive l ight , connected as they

were with a trad it ion that those eager to modernize wished only to leave

behind. A tell ing anecdote recounted by D’Ávi la (61) speaks of a Nigerian

student in Salvador who went crazy of fear of candomblé gods, 6 associated as

they are by many urban, Christ ianized Africans with the dangers of the

“bush” – a reveal ing contradict ion between Africa’s place in Brazil’ s

nat ion-build ing and contemporary Africa’s own processes of internal

colonial ism.

5 An important lacuna in Gilroy’s account relates precisely to technique (and technology). In the case of African slaves brought to Brazil, this dimension of embodied knowledge includes fields such as metallurgy, herbal medicine, construction, textiles, and the manufacturing of sugar (cf. Furtado, Cunha Jr.). 6 Candomblé is a modality of Afro-Brazilian religion akin to the Haitian Vodou or the Cuban Santería.


But cultural polit ics may a lso t ake on a deliberate form, as in the

invention of shared trad it ions focused on African returnees from Brazil .

D’Ávi la tel ls of how vis its to communit ies of returnees in Benin, Togo,

Ghana and Nigeria were mandatory in Brazi lians’ miss ions to Afr ica in the

60’s and 70’s. More recently, the Brazil ian government has been act ively

engaged in enhancing the visib il ity of these historica l t ies, even including

them in the cooperat ion it provides. I have visited a house in Jamestown

(Accra) that has been turned into a small museum tel l ing the story of one

such community of returnees, the Tabon people of Ghana. It also housed

weekly Portuguese c lasses and periodica l screenings of Brazi lian movies.

President Lula vis ited the new museum (named “Brazi l House” and located

at “Brazil Lane”) in one of his many officia l tr ips to Africa.

Such act ive construct ion of shared ident it ies does not mean that

spontaneous aff init ies may not ar ise dur ing cooperat ion act ivit ies. Indeed,

I have sometimes heard from African par t icipants of how their Brazi l ian

counterparts were more easy-going, less patronizing and had a better sense

of humor than – as one of them tellingly put it – “other Europeans”. But

that these are manifestat ions of some l ingering shared culture or even

consequential for the success of technica l cooperat ion itself is far from

obvious. After a ll , other social dimensions at play during cooperat ion

act ivit ies – polit ical constraints, career interests, bureaucrat ic protocols,

inst itut ional environments, materia l infra-structure – carry s ign if icant

weight.

But neither is the assumption of s imilar it ies l imited to the realm of

the social, it a lso includes nature in a central way. In the world of Brazil-

Africa cooperat ion, it is common to hear of how, as in a very easy j igsaw

puzzle, the Eastern coast of Brazi l and Africa’ s West fit each other

perfect ly, united as they once were before the Atlantic Ocean came into

existence. Thus, Brazil ian technologies would be more easi ly adapted to

Sub-Saharan Africa, the discourse goes, because of their shared geo-

climat ic condit ions. The imagery of the tropics is sal ient here. In the 70’s,

Brazi l ian manufacturers a imed at gett ing a piece of Nigeria’ s at the t ime

burgeoning consumer market (what would also help offset the r is ing cost


of importing Nigerian oi l) by act ive ly advert is ing domestic appliances

especia lly suited to tropical areas. According to one of the ads, which

brought soccer star Pelé as poster boy, these appliances, “tested at the

source: a tropical country, Brazi l”, were made to work “no matter the

condit ions of heat , humidity and voltage fluctuat ions” (D’Ávi la 240-1) .

These and other arguments about how Brazi l was “determined to share the

technological patr imony it has accumulated in its experience as a tropical

country with these African nat ions” (D’Ávila 225) bear str iking

resemblance to the ones put forth by cooperat ion agents with respect to

agricultura l technologies being currently transferred to Africa.

Brazi l is indeed a g lobal leader in tropical agriculture, and

similar it ies in soi l and cl imate are assumed (and advert ised) as a

comparat ive advantage vis-à-vis both tradit ional and emerging donors. In

the pract ice of projects, however, such correspondence between contexts

has to be act ively establ ished (or some would say, constructed) by the

adaptat ion and val idat ion work carr ied out by Brazil ian researchers in

partnership with their African colleagues. Moreover, such work involves

not only overcoming technical hurdles, but deal ing with the broad range of

socia l elements that also have a play in the successful transfer of

technology and knowledge – agr icultura l research, educat ion and extension

inst itut ions, land and labor systems, market access, availabi lity of inputs ,

credit , and r isk management mechanisms, among others. And these are

elements in Brazi l’s and Afr ican countries’ colonial and post-colonia l

his torie s that are not always marked by s imilar it ies, for instance in regions

like West Africa where agriculture remains large ly a domain of polit ica lly

weak subsistence smal l-holders ( in sharp contrast with Brazi l’ s inf luentia l

lobby of export-driven large landowners) .

In cooperat ion discourse, such topography of natural-cultura l

simi lar it ies is further art iculated with a temporal dimension: if Brazi l and

Africa can entertain today a potentially promising cooperat ion partnership,

it is because, as a tropical developing country, Brazil has a lready suffered

from, and overcame, many of the problems plaguing Afr ican nat ions today .

This is a part icular way of rearranging the developmentalist t imel ine of


modernizat ion discussed by Ferguson (Global Shadows 188). I f, on the one

hand, it reproduces the classic modernizat ion t e los by assuming that the

path already treaded by a more developed periphery (Brazil) could

somehow show the way for a less developed periphery (Africa) , on the

other it claims that the kind of knowledge ( in this case, in tropical

agriculture) historical ly accumulated by Brazil would be bet t e r than

alternat ive so lut ions offered by the deve loped world. As Freyre’ s, this is an

ambivalent view on modernizat ion deflected by postcolonia l

preoccupations about turning a peripheral historica l experience into a

posit ive asset vis-à-vis central hegemonic models.

In a similar ve in, some vers ions of cooperat ion discourse c la im that

Brazi l, as a receiver of internat ional aid for decades, would know how not

to provide it – for instance, by not tying condit ional it ies and not

interfering in the receiving countries’ internal affa irs. Moreover, Brazi l ian

cooperat ion is deeply shaped by quest ions related to internat ional

asymmetries, especial ly with respect to global governance and trade

frameworks that are considered as no longer appropriately responding to

the realit ies of an increas ingly mult ipolar world.

Thus, one of Brazi l’ s most visib le interests in cooperat ing with

Africa has been to muster support for a reform of the United Nations

Security Council that would inc lude Brazil as a permanent member. Other

prominent arenas of interest have included other leve ls of the UN system

(the Food and Agriculture Organizat ion, for instance, has recently elected a

Brazi l ian for its Director-General) and trade negotiat ions in the WTO

(especial ly over agricultura l subsid ies and market access to Europe and the

US). In this sense , it could be argued that South-South cooperat ion

presents a more situated view than the “god tr ick” (Haraway) frequently

assoc iated 7 with Northern development inst itut ions such as the World

Bank: that is, an interest-free view of everything that is itself situated

nowhere.

7 For instance, by Escobar (Encountering Development) or Ferguson (The Anti-Politics Machine).


Finally, Brazil’ s rhetoric of cultural aff init ies a lso d iverges from

Western views of Africa as “absolute otherness” (Mbembe). Rather than

being that which one is not, Africa has been incorporated in a central

(albeit ambivalent) way in Brazil’ s nat ion-build ing ideologies, most

prominently and consequentia lly in the Freyrean framework on focus here.

Both Africas are no doubt imagined; but not in the same way, and not with

the same consequences. On the other hand, the fact that the racia l

harmony paradigm is today under heavy fire domestical ly attests to the

precarious nature of ideologies that c la im to be all-encompassing in a

world region marked by the postcolonial ambivalences and contradict ions

sketched above.

As history unfolds, then, new quest ions are raised. If once Freyre

and others took seriously the project of creat ing “future Brazils” in Africa

(D’Ávila) , in contemporary pract ice this seems to unfold less in the spheres

of culture and race relat ions than at the harder levels of technology

transfer, inst itut ion-bui ld ing, g lobal trade and other areas direct ly or

indirect ly addressed by cooperat ion efforts. Moreover, even though

Lusophone Africa remains a privileged target of Brazi lian cooperat ion, the

al ignment currently sought with the continent at large is fed not by the

dream of a transnational community heir to a common colonial Empire,

but by a long-term polit ical project , spearheaded by Brazi l and other

emerging countries, of changing global structures of governance and trade

along l ines more congruous with the growing re levance of the so-called

global South.

In a historical sense, then, Freyre’s legacy may be seen posit ively ,

not so much in terms of how it came about at a t ime when sc ientif ic rac ism

and whitening polic ies were prevalent in Brazi l (Skidmore) , but by having

provided a necessary ideologica l foundation for Brazil’ s nat ion-bui lding

efforts in the aftermath of the inception of the Republ ic. In other words,

the racial harmony cla im had an ideologica l part to play in a broader

historica l process of construct ion of a nat ional economy and state

inst itut ions during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, that eventual ly

became a firm foundation for Brazil’ s contemporary emergence as a global


player and trader. Contrast ive ly, in the wake of nat ional independences few

if any countries in Sub-Saharan Africa were able to carry forward such

process in a susta ined manner. In this sense, one may say (not without

some irony) that if , as race-based movements in Brazil claim today,

Freyrean discourse was a mistake, it is at least a mistake Brazi lians did have

an opportunity to commit. If the Freyrean legacy is today being rethought

and challenged, this is done in a highly g lobal ized context in relat ion to

which Brazi l is less vulnerab le and dependent than most African nat ions,

both economically and polit ica lly. Meanwhile, part icular ly in weakly-

governed African states “the nat ional economy model … appears less a

threshold of modernity than a brief, and large ly aborted, post-

independence project” (Ferguson, Global Shadows 207) . Today, expectat ions

of modernity in the African continent are also being shaped by re lat ions

with Brazi l and other emerging donors like China or India. It seems ear ly

to assess the effects of this new state of affairs – whether it wil l actually

correspond to the invariably beneficent discourses that usual ly accompany

and legit imize South-South cooperat ion. But one consequence that is

already visible is that these new presences are providing Afr ican actors at

var ious leve ls with extra leverage to deal with tradit ional donors.

Therefore, when looking at Brazil-Afr ica relat ions, Lat in American

postcolonial l iterature’ s ins ight about looking not at discrete levels of

analysis (such as race or ethnicity) but at the chain of entangled,

historica lly const ituted world-system hierarchies ( in the economy, trade,

geopolit ics, knowledge and technology, and so forth) is most we lcome.

Moreover, in spite of the discurs ive construct ion of South-South

cooperat ion contrast ively to North-South development, it must be

recognized that the global South is neither homogeneous, nor external to

the world system bui lt under Western hegemony. This entai ls reinstat ing

the analyt ica l re levance of margins, ambiguit ies, contradict ions, and

situatedness. Ins ights from ethnography (e.g. , Watts) , which draws on the

pract ice of cooperat ion rather than exclusive ly on inst itut ional ized

discourse, also point in these direct ions. Finally, for al l that was said about

Brazi l’s perspect ives on Africa, the reverse must also be true: Afr ica’ s

var ied post-colonial experiences and expectat ions must have a play in


current attempts at approximation from both sides. This however has

rarely been the object of attention by scholars. For the picture to be

complete, it is in need of scrut iny by historians, anthropologists, and the

wide array of actors, from both Brazil and African countries, involved in

the design and pract ice of South-South cooperat ion.


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CAROLINA CORREIA DOS SANTOS Columbia Universi ty

SOBRE O OLHAR DO NARRADOR E SEUS EFEITOS EM OS SERTÕES E CIDADE DE DEUS

Garreth Wil liams af irma que, devido às suas histórias comuns de

colonização, a modernização dos países da América Latina, demandava e

continua a demandar o esforço de formação de um povo que, apesar de sua

heterogeneidade const itut iva, deveria estabelecer-se “as a potential ly

hegemonic formation designed to suture the totality of the nat ion’s

demographic and cultural d if ferences to the formation and expansion of

the nat ion-state” (5) . O Brasi l não seria exceção à regra. O estranho hábito

de entender a história brasi le ira como uma espécie de exceção dentro da

América Latina, hábito que feste ja a interação harmônica entre os povos

const itut ivos do Brasi l, vem sendo, ainda que tardiamente, contestado.

Neste sentido, José Muri lo de Carvalho afirma que o evento

conhecido por “descobrimento do Brasil” deveria se chamar “encobrimento

do Brasil”, cr it icando o fato de o termo “descobrimento” ter sido pouco

contestado no país, na ocasião da comemoração dos 500 anos. Ao contrário

dos nossos vizinhos hispano-americanos, explica Carvalho, o debate acerca

da palavra não nos dir ia respe ito, ou seja, o eurocentrismo que a ut il ização

de “descobrimento” impl ica não ser ia problema para os bras ile iros. Uma

das razões res idir ia na crença de que no nosso caso as re lações entre os

nat ivos e os portugueses foram amigáveis, diferentemente das relações

estabelecidas pelos espanhóis. Desse modo, a carta de Pero Vaz de

Caminha, por exemplo, tem servido muito bem ao propósito de criar uma

“imagem quase idí l ica do encontro entre portugueses e nat ivos” (400). No

entanto, muitos documentos provariam o contrário e chegariam mesmo a

igualar , em termos relat ivos, o genocíd io de índios no Bras i l com o

genocídio de índios na América hispânica . Segundo Carvalho, ao final de


três séculos de colonização portuguesa três milhões de nat ivos

desapareceram, três quartos da população original: “ imenso encobrimento,

construção de memória” (400). Os comentários de Carvalho sobre os 5oo

anos do Brasi l, paradoxalmente, demonstram que há, entre nós, alguma

consciência da vio lência inerente ao processo de formação da nação ao

mesmo tempo em que há, talvez a inda majoritar iamente, a negação dela.

Eucl ides da Cunha publica Os Sertões em 1902. Embebido do

cientif icismo que o século dezenove apresentou e exigiu de seus

intelectuais , a obra é um tratado sobre o sertão nordest ino brasile iro e uma

tentat iva de introduzi- lo em um rol de conhecimentos acerca do Brasil. Mas

não só isso: Os Sertões tem o intuito de abarcar e incluir paisagens e t ipos

humanos no que vir ia a ser o Brasi l moderno. Assim, e contraditoriamente,

para Euc lides da Cunha, o sertanejo era o símbolo de um Bras i l “original”

e talvez a única via por meio da qual a cultura nac ional res ist ir ia ao avanço

dos imperial ismos europeu e norte-americano, desprezados pelo autor que

os via como a ass imilação impensada de usos, costumes e ideias. Ao mesmo

tempo, o sertanejo desapareceria devido à força da história. Descontadas as

superst ições que os homens que povoavam o interior t inham, Euclides

acreditava serem eles os “sedimentos básicos da nação” (qtd. in Sevcenko

145), capazes de livrar o Bras il das falácias de um cosmopolit ismo

insustentáve l. Nicolau Sevcenko chega a afirmar que para o escr itor do

final do século dezenove “somente a descoberta de uma orig inal idade

nacional daria condições ao país de compart ilhar em igualdade de

condições de um regime de equiparação un iversal das sociedades ,

envolvendo inf luências e ass imilações recíprocas” (122).

A supressão do sertanejo – cogitada na “Nota Preliminar” – não teria

portanto, o poder de apagar o fe ito histórico do homem do sertão, que

ter ia sido, resumidamente, o de ajudar a construir (sedimentar) a nação

brasi leira. Ass im, pode-se afirmar que para Eucl ides sua própria obra deve

compor o esforço de uma formação potencialmente hegemônica. É por

meio deste entendimento do autor e sua obra que Euc l ides passa a ser visto

como colaborador na construção de um discurso mestre hegemônico sobre


o Brasi l que prevê uma tota lidade harmônica, não homogênea, mas coesa ,

e, portanto, um discurso colonia l.

Levando em conta que um discurso colonial se arroga a tarefa da

criação de um discurso de dominação que garanta a hegemonia num

determinado espaço de a lguns sobre outros, ou melhor, de det erminadas

ide ias sobre outras , me parece, a inda, que a construção de um texto como Os

Sertões vem a corroborar uma interpretação sobre o Brasil que perdura. O

livro de Eucl ides, ao mesmo tempo em que cria um núc leo étnico para a

nação brasile ira que necess itava naque le momento de uma narrat iva para

const ituir-se como tal 1, não deixa de defender os ideais europeus (e

republicanos) , herança própria de um país colonizado, inculcada em toda

América Latina.

Quando muito da crít ica vê, na denúncia da matança desnecessária

dos canudenses pelo exérc ito, uma inversão do pensamento usual dos

intelectuais lat ino-americanos, creio que essa cr ít ica fecha os olhos para o

fato de que Eucl ides censura a repúbl ica por agir barbaramente, como os

sertanejos, e rejeitar , portanto, uma missão mais pedagógica e menos

vio lenta ou retrógrada, como talvez Euclides colocasse. Ou se ja, nem

exérc ito e nem sertane jos s er iam suf ic ient ement e modernos para o autor de Os

Sertões . Euclides não teria tomado o lado dos vencidos 2 , como se costuma

dizer, mas s im cooperado com o entendimento do Brasil como país em

falt a, sempre na busca de modernizar-se completamente. A denúncia, desse

modo, colabora com uma interpretação sobre o Brasi l com contornos

hegemônicos, reiterado com nuances dist intas nos trabalhos de Sérgio

Buarque de Holanda e Roberto Schwarz 3.

O argumento primeiro deste art igo, portanto, não é simples. Haveria

em Os Sertões algo contrário à característ ica que Will iams enxerga no

discurso nac ional hegemônico, ao mesmo tempo em que, major itar iamente,

cooperaria com sua construção no contexto brasile iro. Ou se ja, Os Sertões

1 Para uma discussão sobre a necessidade de um núcleo étnico nacional, ver Smith. 2 Para um exemplo desta leitura de Os Sertões, ver Santiago. 3 Como ilustração, ver a famosa expressão “desterrados em nossa terra” em Raízes do Brasil de Holanda, e o não menos conhecido início de “Nacional por subtração” de Schwarz.


traz à tona uma s ituação de ass imetria de poder – a obra denuncia a bruta l

vio lência do estado republ icano, mais forte que os homens e mulheres de

Canudos – criando, s imultaneamente, um discurso hegemônico mestre

sobre o Brasil. Por um lado a denúncia, por outro, a execução de outro ato

vio lento, cr ista lizado na categor ização dos sertanejos enquanto “Outro”

bem como sua inserção numa re lação assimétrica de poder, via ass imilação.

Afinal, segundo o autor, os sertanejos far iam parte dos estágios inic ia is de

evolução do brasi leiro. Não obstante, é importante ressaltar que a denúncia

eucl id iana do atraso também dos patríc ios mais desenvo lv idos , reforça os

contornos de boa parte do pensamento intelectual sobre o Brasil: nunca

moderno, uma falácia constante.

Finalmente, a ut il ização da forma científica de conhecer, isto é, o

uso das t axonomias e teorias como evolucionismo para compreender o

sertão e seus hab itantes também deve ser entendido como o desejo de

fi liação do escritor de Os Sertões a uma tradição l igada ao poder (da

ciência) . Devemos pensar no eurocentrismo, aqui, a contragosto de grande

parte da crít ica 4.

Isso posto, deve-se admit ir , entretanto, que Os Sertões não se deixa

sintet izar fac ilmente. A principal obra de Eucl ides da Cunha parece, neste

sentido, suportar d ist intas le ituras. Roberto Gonzalez-Echeverría, por

exemplo, sugere a mudança do próprio escritor. Eucl ides, ass im, apelar ia “

to the rhetoric of amazement, to the language of the sublime, to account

for the presence of his fragi le and transf iguring se lf before a real ity that is

bewildering as wel l as compell ing” (132). Esse apelo à “retórica do

deslumbramento”, ademais de indicar uma leitura testemunhal de Os Sertões ,

ajuda a entender uma parte da recepção crít ica do livro: Os Sertões é

majoritar iamente compreendido como obra híbrida ( literatura, c iência e

história) , a lém de a principal e original denúncia do curso que a recém-

instaurada repúbl ica havia tomado 5. Como aludido anteriormente, Eucl ides

acreditava que a repúbl ica dever ia ter ensinado os brasi leiros a tornarem-se

cidadãos e não ter optado pela el iminação do arraia l de Canudos. É

4 Um exemplo está em trecho do primeiro capítulo de The Lettered City, de Angel Rama. 5 Sobre o caráter híbrido de Os Sertões, entre muitos outros, ver Ventura, Valente e Zilly.


importante ressalt ar que para Euc l ides os sertanejos sequer conformavam

um perigo à inst ituição republicana, visto que, aos o lhos do autor, essas

pessoas não t inham consciência polít ica.

O resultado da postura moral de Euc l ides formalizada em Os Sertões

desemboca no enaltecimento da simpatia do escritor pelo sertanejo (ta lvez

algo realmente inédito) em quase todo texto crít ico sobre Os Sertões . Da

mesma forma como sua crença no evolucionismo é abrandada, considerada

apenas como consequência óbvia das circunstâncias a que estava submetido

o autor, a. retórica euc l idiana de indignação, diante do que o escr itor

considerou atrocidades cometidas pe lo exército, parece ter sido seu maior

feito.

Essa retórica t ambém está a serviço do apelo de Euc lides ao seu

leitor: no intuito de que este, brasi leiro majoritar iamente do litoral, se

al inhasse com sua compreensão sobre a formação da nação brasi leira 6, além

de sensibi lizar-se para aqui lo que considerou um cr ime. Os canudenses

deveriam ter s ido ens inados a ser modernos e republ icanos 7 e não

barbaramente assass inados, já que faziam parte de um estágio anterior na

evolução da história. Ve jamos como o autor de Os Sertões descreve a

distânc ia t emporal entre seu leitor e o sertanejo:

I ludidos por uma c ivi lização de emprést imos; respingando, em faina

cega de copistas, tudo o que de melhor existe nos códigos orgânicos de

outras nações, tornamos, revolucionariamente, fugindo ao transig ir mais

ligeiro com as ex igências da nossa própria nacionalidade, mais fundo o

contraste entre o nosso modo de viver e o daque le s rudes patr íc ios mais

estrangeiros nesta terra do que os imigrantes da Europa. Porque não no-los

separa um mar, s eparam-no-los t rê s s éculos…(Cunha 209) (grifos meus)

Partha Chatterjee, ao descrever o percurso intelectual do Subaltern

Studies Group, afirma que um ponto importante para o grupo era a certeza 6 Leopoldo Bernucci sugere que haveria no próprio escritor uma cisão. Euclides não deixaria de ter o Romantismo como paradigma literário. Como assinala Bernucci, “A impressão que temos é que ele começa a criticar a ideologia romântica. (. . .) Mas termina, no final, exaltando essa mesma ideologia ao criar um enorme painel de vinhetas românticas para o festejar dos nossos olhos: a imagem da formação de uma nação através do esforço de querer buscar a especificidade do brasileiro (. . .).” (33). 7 Para um desenvolvimento dessa questão, ver Johnson, Sentencing Canudos.


de que “e lite historians, even those with progressive views and sympathetic

to the cause of the rebels, sought to ignore or rat ional ly explain away what

appeared as mythical i l lusory, mi l lenarian, or utopian in rebel act ions” e

que, ass im, “they were actual ly miss ing the most powerful and s ign if icant

elements of subaltern consciousness” (292). A observação de Chatterjee

sobre a revisão historiográfica a que se propôs o grupo de intelectuais

indianos a juda a compreender por que, af inal , Eucl ides não consegue

representar o sertanejo como sujeito. Sua visão não permit ia, por exemplo,

interpretar o papel de Antonio Conselheiro em Canudos de outra maneira

que não a de excêntrico líder rel ig ioso, nem de imaginar que os sertanejos

pudessem ter optado por seguir o Conselhe iro. N’Os Sertões , a simpatia pelo

sertanejo advém de uma at itude paternalista, do entendimento de que

aquele não possuía as caracter íst icas e condições necessárias para

efet ivamente fazer uma escolha soberana,que para Eucl ides só poderia ter

sido a de não aderir à excentricidade de Antonio Conselheiro, mas uma

opção a favor da ide ia moderna de nação.

Tentando recuperar a agência que haveria na formação de Canudos

pelos sertanejos, Adr iana Johnson, em “Everydayness and Subalternity”,

discorre sobre a poss ibil idade h istórica de entender os canudenses da

mesma maneira que os subalternos indianos de que fala o Subaltern Studies

Group. Uma vez que a subalternidade “forces us to think about what has

remained outs ide that province we ca ll modernity” (2007 22) , e que o

subalterno é sempre “misread”, os canudenses ter iam sido entendidos

como pré-polít icos e provocadores, ao invés de agentes, e, portanto,

sujeitos que podiam compreender as causas e consequências das suas ações

(2007 27) . Para Johnson, então, os sertanejos, ao seguirem Antonio

Conselheiro, resist iam ao poder regulador do Estado brasi leiro, que se

impunha naque le iníc io de repúbl ica. Eram sujeitos que agiam

historicamente e por isso t inham suas ações rasuradas pela chamada

história nacional e oficial .

Eucl ides, const ituindo o que vir ia a se conformar história oficia l,

desdenhava a ação pol ít ica dos canudenses ao associá- los à “rel ig ios idade

extravagante” (a expressão é de Eucl ides) de Antonio Conselheiro, ao


extraordinário, à irrac ional idade e à desorganização. Esses defe itos, para

Eucl ides, ser iam próprios de povos retardatários que deveriam ter sido

abarcados pe la modernidade e não violentamente eliminados, como, de

fato, foram. Por serem considerados pelo escritor como o “sedimento

básico da nação”, o sertanejo ex igiu, por outro lado, a compreensão da sua

existência, o que só se dar ia através de um léxico já existente. Eucl ides ,

portanto, teve que encaixar as característ icas do sertanejo dentro de um

catálogo de conhecimentos identificado com o poder –com a linguagem

científ ica do século dezenove e com o d iscurso histórico. A consequênc ia ,

alerta Chatterjee,

often unintended, of this historiographical pract ice was to

somehow fit the unruly facts of subaltern polit ics into the

rat ional ist gr id of e lite consc iousness and to make them

understandab le in terms of the latter . The autonomous history

of the subaltern classes, or to put it d ifferently, the dist inct ive

traces of subaltern act ion in history, were completely lost in

this historiography. (292)

Dessa forma, Os Sertões parece estar em conformidade com a

const ituição de uma ide ia de nação que se pretende logicamente construída,

corroborando o silêncio das camadas subalternas, no caso, dos sertanejos .

O Outro ser ia conhecido de modo a torná-lo famil iar através dos d iscursos

identif icados com o poder, e a força da história tratar ia de e l iminar esses

que formaram a nação mas que fazem parte de outro tempo na evolução de

uma raça:

O jagunço destemoroso, o tabaréu ingênuo e o caipira

simplório serão em breve t ipos re legados às tradições

evanescentes, ou ext intas. . . . A c ivi lização avançará nOs Sertões

impelida por essa implacáve l ‘força motriz da história’ que

Gumplowicz, maior do que Hobbes, lobrigou, num lance

genia l, no esmagamento inevitável das raças fracas pelas raças

fortes. (Cunha 9-10)


Gonzalez-Echeverría chama a atenção para o entrelaçamento, devido

ao poder inerente ao d iscurso c ientíf ico no século dezenove, entre a

literatura lat ino-americana dessa época e a ciência. O crít ico remonta à

importância dos cientistas via jantes com seus cadernos de anotações sobre

o continente americano e sua impl icação com a literatura. A narrat iva

derivada dessa condição assumir ia a forma do d iscurso hegemônico. Ou

seja ,

its newness and difference, are narrated through the mind of a

writer qual if ied by sc ience to search for the truth. That truth

is found in an evolut ionary conception of nature. ( . . . ) The

capacity of truth is due not so much to the cogency of the

scientif ic method, as to the ideological construct that supports

them, a construct whose source of strength lies outside the

text . (12)

Eucl ides exerceria, precisamente, a tarefa do cientista da metrópole

(europeu) de procurar pela verdade – a essência nacional – que , por sua

vez, sustentava-se num construto ideológico (“an evolut ionary concept of

nature”) que resid ir ia fora do t exto – ponto que Luiz Costa Lima, em Terra

Ignota , retoma com vigor.

Em relação à essênc ia nacional, Gonzalez-Echeverría nos lembra

que, contribuindo para o d iscurso científico das metrópoles europeias

acerca dos terr itórios a inda relat ivamente desconhecidos de outras partes

do mundo, os viajantes cientistas buscavam, nas suas expedições, não

somente exemplares de fauna e f lora mas “specimens that represented a

backward leap into the origins of evolut ion. Hence, to travel to Latin

America meant to f ind the beginning of h istory preserved – a

contemporary, liv ing origin” (110). Mais uma vez, não é preciso muita

elucubração para ver at itudes demasiadamente similares entre o cientista

europeu na América Latina e Euc lides da Cunha no sertão nordest ino.

Além disso, o próprio uso de uma teoria – o evoluc ionismo – concebida em

e para “países etnicamente estáveis” (Lima 207) e, portanto, não mestiços

como o Brasil, além de fazer surgir problemas que Euc lides terá que


resolver escapando para o mito – ou forjando uma e thnic it y bras ile ira ,

provará a sua submissão ao modo europeu de conhecimento, uma vez que

ele próprio copia os cientistas europeus na sua maneira de abordar a raça e

a nação. Euc lides desperdiça a chance de quest ionar a c iência ao passo que,

como coloca Lima, “paradoxalmente mostra seu acerto na afirmação do

parasit ismo do litora l por seu próprio comportamento parasitár io ante a

ciência européia” (207).

Ao não quest ionar a ciênc ia e , portanto, ao apl icá- la em e para

terr itório e população brasi leiros , os result ados dão numa “s inuca de bico”

que Euc lides não resolve verdade iramente, senão denega. A af irmação na

“Nota Preliminar” de que os sertanejos estar iam fadados a desaparecer e a

denúncia ao longo do texto de Os Sertões de que o que se sucedeu na guerra

de Canudos foi um massacre, um “cr ime da nacionalidade”, soam

contraditórias, mas são exp licáve is através da vontade de formação de um

discurso hegemônico sobre a nação brasi leira que determina que sua

essência (a ser superada) estava no homem do sertão.

Passado um século do ep isódio de Canudos e pouco mais de noventa

anos da publ icação da obra de Eucl ides , mais uma vez o Brasi l parece estar

às voltas, através da l iteratura e do discurso vinculado a e la , com a

confrontação entre seu imaginário de progresso e o que parec e não ter sido

incluído ne le. Refiro-me, especif icamente, à publ icação de Cidade de Deus 8,

l ivro de Paulo Lins, sobre a favela de mesmo nome na cidade do Rio de

Janeiro.

Não obstante, a situação é d ist inta: d iferentemente do que pensava

Eucl ides, os fave lados não ser iam retardatários à espera do progresso, mas

seus s inais mais vita is extremados. Eles representariam, assim, o

capita lismo, seguido por prat icamente todos os países do mundo, no seu

momento mais avançado.

Esses homens, a lém disso, estão despossuídos do que havia de mais

“humanitár io” ou de mít ico na interpretação de Eucl ides sobre o Brasi l:

8 A primeira edição do livro é de 1997.


eles não são a essência da nação. Pelo contrário, a fave la de maneira gera l é

est igmat izada no ideár io nacional como um lugar agregador de

característ icas negat ivas. Ela é resultado do desleixo estata l e seria berço

de aberrações.

Os motivos para a comparação entre as obras de Euc l ides da Cunha

e Paulo Lins , entretanto, não residem exclusivamente neste nódulo que

unir ia os dois l ivros em torno da ideia de arcaico e moderno ou atraso e

progresso. Pelo contrário, a comparação nasce da observação do

entrelaçamento de discursos que n’Os Sertões é resultado da insufic iência da

ciência (trapaceada por seu autor através da fuga para o mito) enquanto

que em Cidade de Deus a imbricação dos discursos é ressa ltada pelo ato

crít ico, que recolhe alguns f ios soltos da narrat iva que pretende abarcar um

todo, característ ica suger ida por seu próprio t ítulo.

Dessa forma, Cidade de Deus , apesar da distância temporal a que está

do livro de Eucl ides da Cunha, se configura uma obra com qualidades

próximas às da obra sobre Canudos. Ainda que aparente um estatuto

literár io mais bem e consensualmente del ineado, é comum, também, a lguma

indefin ição quanto ao caráter ficc ional de Cidade de Deus . Não por pouco, o

próprio Paulo Lins expl ica a origem da obra ao final do livro: “Este

romance baseia-se em fatos rea is. Parte do material ut il izado foi extraído

das entrevistas fe itas para o projeto ‘Crime e cr iminalidade nas c lasses

populares’ , da antropóloga Alba Zaluar, e de art igos nos jornais O Globo,

Jorna l do Bras il e O Dia” (403). Ou seja, de maneira bem parecida a Euc l ides

da Cunha, que também se baseou em matérias de jornais , a lém do trabalho

em campo, Paulo Lins não esconde estar lidando com o que aconteceu.

Soma-se a esse panorama a principal característ ica intr ínseca às narrat ivas

de Eucl ides da Cunha e Paulo Lins, qual seja, a tarefa de compreender

todos, de abarcar toda uma situação espacia l e temporal. Em Os Sertões ,

essa at itude do olhar é denotada principalmente pelas três partes do livro

que visam nada menos do que o panorama completo: “A terra”, “O

homem” e “A luta”. Cidade de Deus , por sua vez, a inda que int itule seus

capítulos com nomes de personagens, exp lica a história da fave la, do seu

surgimento até o poss íve l ápice da violência e do tráf ico de drogas, ao


longo de aproximadamente três décadas. Se a compreensão do todo é a

tarefa a qual Euc l ides se dedica em tempo integral, isto é, se Euc lides

constrói um cenário físico que just i fica a presença daquele t ipo humano,

que, por sua vez, expl ica o surgimento de Canudos, o d istanciamento

necessário para que aque la exista é a posição ele ita pelo narrador de Cidade

de Deus . Sem nenhum compromisso com o desve lamento da “essência

nacional” ou com a explicação que esta descoberta demandaria em relação a

preceitos científicos, o narrador de Cidade de Deus consegue, boa parte do

tempo, manter uma distânc ia segura da matéria narrada. Isso não quer d izer

que o ponto de vista interno primeiramente aludido por Roberto Schwarz,

grande cata lisador das le ituras de Cidade de Deus , não esteja operando. A

ideia é que a d istância é necessária quando a narrat iva pretende dar conta

de toda a favela. Ou se ja, a distância gera uma relação de igualdade entre

os personagens, onde todos importam. A narrat iva não poderia, portanto,

permit ir-se a dedicação a um único personagem ou a um grupo exclusivo, o

que just i fica tanto a prioridade conferida a certos personagens em

momentos específicos como a dedicação à personagens “sem nomes”,

componentes do quadro gera l de Cidade de Deus . Cogito que esse olhar

equal izador do narrador em relação às personagens também tenha ajudado

Schwarz a compreender a narrat iva, que, para ele, “de ixa o juízo moral sem

chão”. Este efeito ser ia resultado justamente da proximidade do narrador à

ação , derivando o “imediat ismo do recorte”, e, ass im, uma lógica causal que

não deixa espaço para julgamentos.

A aproximação entre as obras de Euc l ides e Lins, no entanto, nos

coloca um dilema: se Os Sertões pode ser entendido como “literatura do

colonizador”, ou se ja, como um exemplar do olhar da el ite sobre o Outro –

incorporado, assim, no discurso hegemônico sobre a nação – de que forma

Cidade de Deus , na sua “ânsia eucl id iana” de abarcar o todo, poderia ser uma

“resposta do colonizado”? Ou se ja , diante da distância do olhar do

narrador do livro de L ins, a lgo propriamente científico, como ver em

Cidade de Deus uma possível resposta subalterna?

Já foi mencionado que os fave lados de Cidade de Deus não dispõem

do mesmo estatuto de part ic ipante na essência da nação bras i leira que é


conferido ao sertanejo em Os Sertões . Desse modo, os homicídios cometidos

contra favelados (tanto na ficção quanto na real idade) , longe de comporem

crimes, são corriqueiros, não afetariam o discurso hegemônico sobre a

nação. A matéria da qual se encarrega o livro de Lins funcionar ia como

uma espécie de avesso do discurso hegemônico: ela é ou deveria ser

descartável, diferentemente dos sertanejos, que, cujos assass inatos

tornaram-se motivo de denúncia. Por outro lado, va le lembrar que Cidade de

Deus , se não apresentasse por suas característ icas formais a suspensão do

juízo moral, como ressa lta Schwarz, poderia se ajustar bem ao discurso

crít ico que vê o Brasi l como país em fa lta com um projeto de modernização

e com a modernidade.

Ademais, não há pretensão alguma de a judar a compor a nação

(heterogênea, mas harmônica) e nem um discurso que se quer coeso, ao

contrário do intento de Eucl ides em Os Sertões . Cidade de Deus , nesse

sentido, já foi acusado, como no importante ensaio de Tânia Pe legr ini “As

vozes da violênc ia na cultura brasi le ira contemporânea”, de deixar do lado

de fora a engrenagem maior que gerar ia o estado real de vida das pessoas

na fave la, ta l como o aspecto polít ico do narcotráfico (141). Por outro

lado, Pelegrin i também responsabi liza o romance por criar um t ipo de

diversão para seu púb lico leitor, identificado pela cr ít ica como parte da

classe média, que também se divert ir ia, supomos, com filmes, novelas e

jogos eletrônicos violentos: “o texto acaba tocando no exótico, no

pitoresco e no folclórico que, ‘para o leitor de classe média têm o atrat ivo

de qualquer outro pitoresco’” (143).

Contudo, o principal diferenc ia l entre as obras aqui abordadas está

no tratamento que Cidade de Deus dispensa aos seus personagens. O livro,

como mencionado, é divid ido em três partes, int ituladas com nomes de

personagens. Já esta d ivisão sugere que a narrat iva sobre um lugar, como o

t ítulo do livro indica, se dará através de seus moradores. Com efeito, são

muito mais comuns as descrições dos becos, v ielas, ruas e prédios através

das ações e movimentações dos personagens do que por uma pausa na ação

propriamente dita para que a descr ição pura ocorra. Esse entroncamento de

lugares e pessoas, por sua vez, dá preponderância à ação de fato. O l ivro


traz a ação do personagem fave lado ao primeiro plano. E qualquer que seja

a cur iosidade do leitor em relação ao lugar , ela somente poderá ser saciada

pela le itura das extensas movimentações e at itudes de Inferninho e seus

contemporâneos, Pardalz inho e sua gangue , Zé Miúdo e todos envolvidos

na guerra.

É dessa maneira, predominantemente através das ações dos

personagens, que a favela vai se desenhando. Assim, momentos como o que

segue são exemplares:

Inferninho largou o taco de s inuca, foi até o bue iro onde

havia entocado seu revólver, deu um confere na arma, ganhou

as ruas na escuridão da noite sem lua. Entrou numa vie la ,

passou em frente ao jard im-de-infânc ia, atravessou o Rala

Coco, entrou na rua da Escola Augusto Magne, est icou-se pela

rua do braço direito do r io; a cada esquina diminuía os passos

para não ser surpreendido. Nada de po l íc ia. Ia prov idenc iar a

mort e do alcagüe t e para ser vir de exemplo , porque senão todo mundo

poderia passar a a lcagüe tar . Essa t alvez fosse a lição mais

importante que aprendera nas rodas de bandido quando

menino no morro do São Carlos. Inferninho é do ódio e seus

passos são da rua do c lube. Foi só atravessar o Lazer, cortar

pela vie la da igreja, dobrar à dire ita, pegar a rua do Meio e

chegar ao Bonfim. (52, gr ifos meus)

Esse trecho é ilustrat ivo de um padrão do romance não só pelo

entrelaçamento dos movimentos de Inferninho à descrição do espaço, mas

pelo uso do discurso indireto l ivre (“Nada de polícia. Ia providenciar a

morte do alcaguete para servir de exemplo, porque senão todo mundo

poderia passar a alcaguetar”) que traz à tona também os pensamentos do

personagem. Lembremos que é o bandido fave lado, o subalterno, aqui,

quem age e pensa.

Alguns outros fragmentos, mais curtos, ocupam a narrat iva ,

const ituindo uma descr ição que só pode ocorrer porque o movimento das

personagens permite. Em “rumaram lá para baixo, já que Laranjinha t inha


visto Inferninho entrar na casa do Carlinhos Pret inho pela manhã. Antes

de atravessarem a praça do bloco carnavalesco Os Garimpeiros da Cidade de

Deus ( . . . )” (50) , descobrimos que os personagens estavam “lá em cima” e

que Carl inhos Pret inho morava “em baixo” e, ainda, que no caminho estava

a praça do bloco carnavalesco, provavelmente, “no meio”. Lugar, como

sugere sua geograf ia, de mediação, já que é lá que Laran jinha, Acerola e

Aluís io encontram Passist inha, velho malandro da favela respeitado por

todos, que intervém a favor dos três junto a Inferninho. De fato, a querela

foi resolvida poucas l inhas depois .

Ao contrário do que muito da crít ica argumentou ver no l ivro 9, o

narrador parece negar-se a t irar a foto, a fazer o retrato da Cidade de Deus e

entregá-lo ao le itor. O que interessa são as pessoas, os personagens, suas

ações e vozes. Inferninho, personagem que dá nome à primeira parte do

livro, numa digressão, nos conta que

o pai, aque le merda, vivia embriagado nas lade iras do morro

do São Carlos; a mãe era puta da zona, e o irmão, viado. ( . . . )

Lembrou-se também daque la safadeza do incêndio, quando

aqueles homens chegaram com saco de estopa ensopado de

querosene botando fogo nos barracos, dando t iro para todos

os lados sem quê nem pra quê. ( . . . ) Um dia após o incêndio,

Inferninho foi levado para a casa da pat roa de sua t ia. T ia

Carmen trabalhava no mesmo emprego havia anos. Inferninho

ficou morando com a irmã da mãe até o pai construir outro

barraco no morro. Ficava entre o tanque e a pia o tempo todo

e foi dal i que viu, pela porta entreaberta, o homem do

televisor d izer que o incêndio fora ac idental. Sentiu vontade

de matar toda aquela gente branca, que t inha telefone, carro,

geladeira, comia boa comida, não morava em barraco sem água

e sem privada. Além disso, nenhum dos homens daque la casa

t inha cara de viado como o Ari. Pensou em levar tudo da

brancalhada, até o televisor mentiroso e o liquid if icador

colorido. (23)

9 Para uma crítica que vê em Cidade de Deus um “quadro na parede”, ver Pelegrini.


É importante notar como Lins, ao resolver inserir a digressão sobre

a vida, amargurada, de Inferninho, se recusa a just if icar sua esco lha por ser

bandido. Quando Inferninho soma ao seu ódio pelos r icos, derivado das

carências de que é vít ima, o fato de que “nenhum dos homens daque la casa

t inha cara de viado como o Ari”, a poss ível compaixão do le itor se esmaece

frente ao preconceito e entendemos, afinal, que nem tudo pode ser

just if icado quando se trata de seres humanos (e personagens do livro) .

Os trechos mencionados const ituem uma espécie de padrão da

narrat iva, dedicada, desse modo, principalmente às ações, pensamentos e

sentimentos dos personagens. Quando é esta a ênfase do livro, não se pode

deixar de notar a diferença entre Cidade de Deus e Os Sertões . Enquanto o

últ imo não pôde delegar ao seu personagem, o sertanejo, o privilégio da

ação e do pensamento, o primeiro faz d isso seu mecanismo operacional. Os

fave lados de Lins são seres que agem e pensam, e é ass im que a narrat iva se

const itui estrutura lmente. O romance, portanto, delega agênc ia a homens e

mulheres até então invisíveis, extrapolando até mesmo os limites da própria

obra literár ia. Cidade de Deus , nesse sentido , parece incit ar a atuação numa

esfera que é real: não somente seus personagens passam a fazer parte do

imaginár io de um determinado lugar que a l iteratura constrói, como o

romance abre as portas para outros escritos desde e sobre as favelas

brasi leiras. Cidade de Deus , ao trazer ao plano literário seres cuja ex istência

era a lgo da ordem do unicamente socia lmente compreensível, gera um

espaço de legit imação da obra l iterária sobre os fave lados, escr ita por

fave lados.

Os Sertões , por outro lado, apesar da retórica da denúncia escolh ida

pelo seu escritor, não consegue conceber os sertanejos a lém de um grupo a

ser cientif icamente conhecido e classificado. O resultado torna-se algo

mais faci lmente abarcado pelo conhecimento já existente (em diversas

áreas) , e, portanto, pelo Establ ishment , v isto que ele não demanda nada além

da s impatia pela causa moderna da introdução de seres considerados “pré

modernos” aos valores associados com o poder. O que ta lvez não fosse

pouco, mas que está longe de const ituir uma postura de respeito em relação

ao Outro. A configuração da ordem socia l não se altera, a confrontação


com o Outro de fato não existe, e Os Sertões determina seu lugar

fundamental no pensamento “oficia l” e hegemônico sobre o Brasil. E é este

pensamento que pode ser reconfigurado a part ir de Cidade de Deus .


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2012.

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Print .

Valente, Luiz Fernando. “Brazi l ian Literature and Cit izenship: from

Eucl ides da Cunha do Marcos Dias.” Luso-Braz il ian Rev iew 38.2 (2001):

11-27. The University of Wisconsin Press Journals Divis ion. Web. 9

Jan. 2012.

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DIEGO SANTOS VIEIRA DE JESUS Ponti f i ca l Cathol ic Universi ty of Rio de Jane i ro

NOT THE BOY NEXT DOOR: AN ESSAY ON EXCLUSION AND BRAZILIAN FOREIGN POLICY

Brazi l’s internat ional profi le is sustained by its soft power expressed in

terms of the capacity to persuade, negotiate and mediate. As ex-foreign minister

Celso Amorim indicates, “[ i]n the present-day world , milit ary power wil l be less

and less usable in a way that these other abil it ies – the capacity to negotiate based

on sound economic policies, based on a society that is more just than it used to be

and wi l l be more just tomorrow than it is today” (“The Soft-Power Power”) . In the

last two decades, Brazi lian leaders consolidated relat ions with global powers such

as the U.S. and the European Union through careful negotiat ion in order to avo id

host ility and deve lop a sense of limited divergence (Lima and Hirst) . At the same

t ime, those leaders a imed at reduc ing power asymmetries in North-South relat ions

with the coordinat ion of posit ions with developing countries and non-tradit ional

partners (Vigevani and Cepaluni 1309-1326). Brazil ian authorit ies look forward to

reshaping internat ional inst itut ions with emphasis on equal representat ion (Hurrel l

and Narl ikar 415-433). In regional pol it ics, Brazi l’s prominent posit ion in South

America was constructed through negotiat ion aiming at the development of strong

polit ica l t ies with Argentinean authorit ies and, in the 2000s, better relat ions with

left ist leaders such as Venezue la’ s Hugo Chávez and Bol ivia ’s Evo Morales . In

mult i latera l inst itut ions, Brazi l ian negotiators used dip lomatic tools that

consolidated the legit imacy of their cla ims for the reformulat ion of dec is ion-

making structures (Lima and Hirst 25-33).

Brazi l ian foreign pol icy’s l iterature indicates that the deve lopment of a

“benign power” profile is not recent. Gelson Fonseca Jr . (356-359) indicates that

Brazi l’s preference for negotiat ion and mediat ion created some advantages

internat ionally , because a necessary condit ion for modernizat ion was a peaceful

internat ional environment. Thus consensus was not a va lue in itself, but an

understanding of mult ip le interests, necessary for the legit imacy of Brazi l’ s cla ims

for internat ional project ion. According to Amado Cervo (204-205), cordia l ity was

based on the perception of nat ional greatness, wh ich would make fee lings of

host ility superfluous for Brazi l ian leaders. Zairo Cheibub (122-124) indicates that ,

through negotiat ion and internat ional arbit rat ion, Brazil could define its terr itoria l

borders and eliminate disputes about them, trying not to be charged of imperial

expansionism. Alexandra S ilva (97-102) argues that pac if ism and rule of law

created continuity and coherence in the country’s foreign policy, wh ich

strengthened Brazil ian supremacy in South America and nat ional unity through the

consolidat ion of its sovere ignty. In the academic debates on Brazi lian foreign

policy, it is poss ible to detect the consensus on Brazi l’s “benign” internat ional

insert ion, coherent with its long-standing interests of autonomy and deve lopment,

but less attention is given on the perpetuat ion of subtle forms of exclus ion

through this soft-power identity, as we l l as its main impacts on the maintenance of

hierarchies that marginal ize d if ference in the internat ional level , though not always

in an explicit way.

I argue that Brazi l ian leaders and dip lomats maintain a “benign wonder”

based on negotiat ion and mediat ion abilit ies, but this perspect ive is not innocent

or humble, not only in the sense of sat isfac t ion of Brazil ian long-standing interests

of autonomy and deve lopment. This art ic le sustains that , in the archetype of “soft-

power power”, logocentric structures and dichotomous ways of thinking in

relat ions with deve loping countries and global powers remain act ive in Brazi lian

foreign pol icy, though there is space for mediat ion with d if ference. The apparatus

of exclus ion in relat ions between Brazi l and other countries creates obstacles for

the recognit ion of the wealth of dif ference, the development of common

experiences towards the destabi l izat ion of hierarchies and the shar ing of values

that transcend norms of coexistence. The effect of the maintenance of those

divis ions is the dif ficulty to look for common gains and to construct stronger

bases for an effect ive management of collect ive problems. Difference represented

by underdeveloped and other developing countries is sometimes understood as

“anomaly” or “backwardness” in relat ion to democrat ic or liberal models o f

development achieved by Brazi l. There is a pattern of “exclusion through

inclus ion”, which means that Brazil deve lops an apparently inclusive perspect ive

of difference in order to preserve and manage hierarch ies. Deve loped and more

powerful countries are not explicit ly labeled as trad it ional “imperia l ists” or

“dominators”, but the emphasis on their ambit ion and abi l ity to use force and

inst itut ions in their benefit updates o ld colonial d iscourses not necessari ly in order

to destabilize hierarchies, but to quest ion Brazi l’s inferior posit ions. Depreciat ive

visions of difference are updated, and hierarchies are not overcome as modern

regulatory ambit ions. These hierarchies are constantly reart iculated and reinvented.

Exclusion can be art iculated in complex ways. There is the poss ibi lity of

mediat ion with difference, but the mediat ion can provide a path for exceptionalism

when certain ways of liv ing are conceived as non-acceptable. The supposed

freedom of difference can be condit ioned to some kind of authority, for example

(Walker) . The postcolonia l perspect ive adopted in this art ic le gives emphasis to

the fact that difference can be managed not only with spat ial strategies of

segmentat ion, but also temporal mechanisms of exclusion with the applicat ion of

notions of development and modernizat ion, which consol idate difference as

“backwardness”, “barbarianism” or “dysfunction” (Blaney and Inayatullah 21-45).

Difference confers posit ive content to the “advance” of the “civi l izat ion” of the

Self. From this perspect ive , the crystall izat ion of spat ial boundar ies between ins ide

and outs ide occurs concomitantly with the permanence of different “stages of

development” in a l inear interpretat ion of t ime. Difference is located in the

inferior stages compared to the “advanced civi l izat ions” (Blaney and Inayatul lah

93-125, 161-185). Based on the work of Sakaran Krishna, I wi ll deve lop the idea

that dominant discourses that equate modernizat ion with “civil izat ion”,

development and progress can become instruments of power in the hands of once-

colonized states in the deve loping world (Krishna 4) , such as Brazil . Those

dominant discourses are more explic it in Brazil’ s relat ions with underdeveloped

and developing countries. In order to have a stronger dialogue with the literature

of postcolonial studies, I wil l apply Edward Said ’s cr it ique of notions of

civil izat ional superiority and exc lusive c la ims to rat ional ity or object ivity. Insp ired

by Homi Bhabha, I will argue that polit ics – including internat ional polit ics and

foreign pol icy – is performative. At the end of this art ic le, I wil l emphasize the

negotiat ions between identity and d ifference, as we ll as the ambiguous and spl it

selves that emerge from those negotiat ions. The mentioned ambiguity can be a

source of creat ive pol it ical engagements in Brazil’ s relat ions with other countries.

It can indicate a hybrid space where negotiat ion between the authority and its

supposed suppl icants can occur and change , according to Krishna (78-79, 96) .

In the next sect ions, I will examine how hierarchies pers ist in Brazi l’s

relat ions with underdeve loped/deve loping countries and global powers ,

respect ively . The examined d iscourses wil l be main ly the speeches, dec larat ions

and interviews of government officials – specia lly the president and/or the foreign

minister – during Brazi l’s two previous administrat ions, Fernando Henrique

Cardoso (1995-2002) and Luiz Inácio Lula da S ilva (2003-2010), as we ll as

authorit ies of other countries in response to Brazil’ s decisions 1.

Brazil’s relations with underdeveloped and developing countries

Many Brazil ian authorit ies be lieve that the Southern Cone and Latin

America are becoming what Amorim cal led a “secur ity community, in which war

becomes inconceivable” (“The Soft-Power Power”) . In Mercosul’ s 10th Socia l

Summit of December 2010, the then Brazi lian president Lula urged the members

of the economic bloc to move forward in the integrat ion process towards the

1 I do not argue that the process of hierarchization has always been defined in the same way in different moments of Brazilian foreign policy history. Second, I understand that the words “developed” and “developing” used in this article carry strategies of exclusion and marginalization and denounce the existence of a “linear” perspective of time. But it is important to highlight that I do not assume them in an uncritical manner. In this analysis, I will question them as natural concepts and will explicit the hierarchies inscribed in them. Third, I also recognize that an orthodox realist account would see the image of a “benign country” as a cover for power. However, the theoretical perspective adopted in this article focus on how discourse defines hierarchies between identity and difference and has practical effects in those relations, while a realist perspective would not develop those issues in detail. Fourth, when I refer to “Brazil”, it is important to notice that I do not see it as an unproblematic homogeneous unit of analysis. I will focus on discourses of exclusion created by Brazil’s main foreign policy decision-makers and institutions, but I will not obliterate differences among domestic actors. Those differences will be discussed whenever they affect Brazil’s international profile.

construct ion of a "Mercosul identity", a term coined by the president himself. In

his view, the leaders of the region had overcome the disputes in terms of who was

closer to U.S . interests and had important achievements, r anging from the

agreement on the nat ional benches in Parl iament – and the bloc's direct elect ion of

representat ives to this part icular inst itut ion – to the privileged economic and

polit ica l situat ion after the 2008 financ ia l cr is is. Although Lula had indicated a

higher level of convergence in the polit ica l relat ionship among the members – "we

are not here to talk about nuclear bombs, nor war" –, there are severa l

impediments to integrat ion. They range from the lack of an eff ic ient mechanism

for dispute sett lement to the diff iculty of developing the idea of integrat ion in the

collect ive imaginat ion of its members’ societ ies (Olive ira) .

Divis ions between identity and difference indicate the permanence of

dichotomous ways of thinking about the regional relat ions in the Southern Cone.

Within Mercosul, it is possib le to observe the persistence of a trad it ional pattern

of trade among the members: Brazil continues to import commodit ies and export

manufactured goods to other members. Moreover, the bloc had a limited role in

st imulat ing the competit iveness of regional exports, part icular ly manufactured

goods to markets in the developed wor ld, and fighting endogenous reasons for the

lack of competit iveness of industr ial imports (Vaz) . At the intra-regional leve l,

different views about the integrat ion process – that prevent the coordinat ion of

posit ions – and individual strategic interests remain, which take precedence over

the alliance between leaders and soc iet ies. Many of these differences ar ise from the

conception that Paraguay and Uruguay are relegated to a marginal or submissive

posit ion in the distr ibut ion of ga ins within the bloc by Brazil and Argentina, wh ich

account for most of the benefits of economic act iv ity spurred by integrat ion.

According to the Uruguayan advisor of the Chamber of Commerce Dolores

Benavente, “Mercosul is l ike a family: Brazi l is the father; Argentina, the mother;

Uruguay and Paraguay, the kids” (Gerchmann, my translat ion). The logic –

recognized even by weaker countries’ authorit ies – is that the different – seen as

"less ski lled" and " less deve loped" l ike “children” – are placed in subordinate

posit ions to the stronger and economically more vibrant members, labe led as

"advanced" and "more appropriate" to the parameters of internat ional economy.

By natural izing such categorizat ion, the marginal izat ion of the economically

weakest members is perpetuated, even though the interact ion with the strongest is

not interrupted.

Since 2006, Uruguay’s and Paraguay’s leaders have made it clear that t ime

was running out to meet their demands regarding the elimination of asymmetries in

the bloc and thus ensure their stay in Mercosul. Paraguayan authorit ies sa id that

their country would leave the bloc if Brazil and Argentina d id not interrupt their

protect ionist pract ices. In 2006, Uruguayan authorit ies argued that Mercosul

should have f lexib le rules on trade with countries outs ide the integrat ion process.

They stated that , in case of Brazil’ s non-acceptance of a free trade agreement with

the U.S., Uruguay could change its status in Mercosul to the one of associated

country. Brazi l ian leaders have not categor ica lly rejected the init iat ive of Uruguay

to seek bilateral agreements, provided that it did not compromise compliance with

the Common External Tariff (CET), which is a central axis of the bloc. Uruguayan

leaders a l leged that the fa i lures of Mercosul prevented further progress regarding

the expansion of access to other markets and that their country was damaged by

"significant costs" such as de industr ia lizat ion of less competit ive sectors and job

losses .

The creat ion of the Mercosul Structura l Convergence Fund in the second

half of the 2000s aimed at reducing economic asymmetries among Mercosul

members, seeking to meet the demands of Uruguay and Paraguay. With the

creat ion of Mercosul Parl iament in 2006, Lula urged congressmen to think of

generous polic ies for smal ler countries and saw that the most powerful countries

of Mercosul should col laborate in the deve lopment of the weakest . St i ll , even with

this apparent increased concern with the reduction of asymmetries, hierarchies

between stronger and weaker members are perpetuated, and as such they reproduce

the understanding of weaker countries as "support ing actors" in relat ion to the

other members. In the search for a more balanced part ic ipat ion of Paraguay and

Uruguay, Brazi l’s and Argentina’s decision-makers would have to confront the

issue of inst itut ional representat iveness beyond the terms in which it has been

treated so as to provide the authentic expression of mult i latera lism in Mercosul

(Bouzas, “Mercosul, dez anos depois: processo de aprendizado ou déjà-vu?”) .

The maintenance of Brazil’ s privileged posit ion in Mercosul is a lso possib le

through the disseminat ion of values and principles that inhibit the expression of

difference that represents a threat to its in terests. For example, the 1998 Ushuaia

Protocol st ipulated that democrat ic inst itut ions were a prerequis ite for the

development of the bloc and changes of the democrat ic order were barriers to

part icipat ion in the integrat ion process (Almeida, Mercosul em sua pr ime ira década

(1991-2001) : uma aval iação po l ít ica a part ir do Bras il) . Venezue la – a country in

process of accession that should incorporate the democrat ic commitments at that

t ime – was conceived by many Brazil ian polit ic ians and c ivil society groups as an

"atypica l, " "dysfunctional" or "problematic" model of state that would need to be

"tamed" under “real” democrat ic va lues. Brazi lian legislators cr it ic ized Hugo

Chávez’s dec is ion not to renew the lease of network transmission of Radio Caracas

Televis ión (RCTV), hindering the freedom of the press and wounding democrat ic

principles. Chávez responded by labe ling Brazi l ian congressmen as “parrots who

repeat U.S. orders”. Brazil ian Congress rat if ied Venezue la’ s access ion to the bloc

in 2009, but many Brazil ian senators complained about Chávez and Venezue la.

During talks with U.S . off icia ls (who suggested “intel ligence shar ing” with the

Brazi l ians in order to monitor the Venezuelans) , Amorim declared that Brazi l d id

not see Chávez as a threat (Viana) . However, in a confidentia l telegram revealed by

WikiLeaks, Defense Minister Nelson Jobim labels Venezue la as a “new threat to

regional st abi lity” and says that “Brazil ian people consider plaus ible a military

incurs ion by Chávez in a ne ighboring country because of his unpredictable

character”. This was one of the main reasons for the creat ion of a South American

Defense Counci l in order to “insert Venezuela and other countries of the region in

a common organizat ion that Brazil can control” (“Celso Amorim diz que Chávez

‘ late mais que morde’”,Veja, my translat ion).

In spite of the fact that trade libera lizat ion has proceeded re lat ive ly quickly

in Mercosul, structura l imbalances between Brazil and Argentina were not

eliminated. With r ising budget def ic its and weak attract ion of foreign investment,

the “Brazil-dependence” proved negat ive for Argentina (Almeida, Mercosul em sua

primeira década (1991-2001) : uma aval iaç ão po l ít ica a part ir do Bras il , “Problemas

conjuntura is e estrutura is da integração na América do Sul: a tra jetória do

Mercosul desde suas origens até 2006”). The negat ive image of Brazi l in Argentina

was strengthened after 1999, when the devaluat ion of the Brazil ian real and the

introduction of a f loat ing exchange rate have generated not only the react ion of

Argentina’s private sector, but a lso a polit ica l-commercial cr is is of Mercosul’ s

external credibi lity. At f irst , with the permanence of the problems linked to the

Argentina’s lack of competit iveness, Argentinean polit ic ians saw Brazil as a threat .

Some said that there was a Brazil ian plan to deliberately harm Argentina and

doubted Brazil’ s good intentions. In references to Brazi l, Argentinean Economy

minister Domingo Cavallo said that “countries that devaluate their currencies to

become more competit ive are doing the same thing as steal ing from their

neighbors” (Maia, my translat ion). Argent inean authorit ies saw such a pol icy as

harmful to their country, which updated constant cr it icisms that Brazi l tr ied to

solve its internal problems at the expense of its ne ighbors. The lack of capac ity of

Mercosul to deal with the crisis became even more obvious, especial ly regard ing

problems such as the lack of an appropriate inst itut ional framework for solving

internal disputes, the gap created by different perceptions of members about the

bloc and the weak macroeconomic policy coordinat ion (Souto-Maior 7-10) .

Although in 2002 Pres ident Lula had made promises to rebui ld Brazil’ s specia l

relat ionship with Argentina, Argentinean authorit ies began to make use of trade

defense mechanisms considered "abusive" by their Brazil ian counterparts, such as

uni latera l safeguards and antidumping measures (Almeida, “Problemas conjuntura is

e estruturais da integração na América do Sul: a tra jetória do Mercosul desde suas

origens até 2006”). If Brazi l was conceived by Argentine polit ic ians and

businessmen as "unfair and self- interested", Argentina was seen as "weak" by the

Brazi l ian s ide. Amorim’s dec larat ion in 2004 puts Brazil in a privi leged posit ion

and marginal izes Argentina as “ less dynamic”:

In the beginning of negotiat ions in Mercosul, what did Argentinean

businessmen and public sector want? They saw in Brazi l a dynamism

that Argentina didn’t have, especial ly in the industr ial sector. They

wanted to inc lude Argentina into this dynamism, to posit ively

contaminate Argentine industry, but , for various reasons, they

followed a d ifferent track. It is necessary to get back to this

dynamism. (…) This won’t be done with automatic safeguards,

tr iggers that have problems (…) Brazil is the bigger country and it

wi ll keep having a greater importance in all of this (Amorim,

“Entrevista ao Jornal Valor Econômico”, my translat ion).

In relat ion to African countries, the separat ion of modernity and

backwardness; civi l izat ion and barbar ianism was consol idated. The concept of

“civi l izat ion”, in the contemporary world, reaff irms the ideas of socioeconomic

progress, viable governments, human rights, the strengthening of democrat ic

va lues and the repudiat ion of terrorism. It lives on as a modern regulatory

ambit ion, when it discipl ines sub ject ivity and determines identity in part icular

spat iotemporal contexts. The “civi lizing” notions are conceived as an ideal of

socia l organ izat ion and adapted to the part icular it ies of each place and t ime, g iving

effect to hierarchies that marginalize dif ference and ensure the integrity of the

dominant identity. In Lula’ s dec larat ions about African countries, many of those

hierarchies pers isted and ref lected the conception of Africa as a “backward”

continent. In his visit to Namibia in 2003, Lula sa id that the country’s capital ,

Windhoek, was “so c lean, that it doesn’t even look like Afr ica” (BBC Bras il, my

translat ion). In his conception – shared by different sectors of Brazi lian

government and society –, Africa’s images are connected to poverty and dirt iness,

which reif ies a contrast between African states and the “rich” and “c lean” non-

African countries. Another example was Lula’s dec larat ion about South Africa’ s

host ing of the 2010 Wor ld Cup. Lula said that “it was necessary that the World

Cup occurred here [ in South Africa] for the world to see that Africans were as

civil ized as those who crit ic ized them before the event” (Azevedo, my translat ion).

Although Lula’s intentions to pay a compliment to South Africa and to the African

countries, his dec larat ion reif ied the central ity of the concept of civil izat ion and

the hierarchies it estab lished, according to which African countries were perceived

as backward, primit ive or not as civi l ized as non-African states.

Many would say that dec larat ions l ike those could demonstrate simply the

existence of an exclus ionary vision on Lula’s or h is government members’ part . I

recognize that statements l ike those a lone could not demonstrate the existence of

an unequivocal excluding profi le in Brazi lian foreign pol icy. However, those

individual declarat ions take a d ifferent dimension when, in re lat ions between

Brazi l and Afr ican countries , we can identify mechanisms that reveal cultural and

polit ica l postures of hierarchizat ion even in official documents and reports

produced by Itamaraty, the Brazil ian Foreign Ministry. In its foreign policy

balance from 2003 to 2010 for the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries –

composed mostly by African countries –, Brazi l ian Foreign Min istry indicates that :

For Brazi l, the natural benef its of shared language and common

cultura l-historica l heritage, as we ll as the fact that the country has

recognized expert ise in strategic sectors for economic and socia l

development of African Portuguese-speaking countries and East

Timor, such as the case of tropical agr iculture and the fight against

HIV-AIDS, make these countries s ingular partners for the

consolidat ion, either in bilatera l or communitarian bases, of the

South-South cooperat ion paradigm. Almost half of the resources

dest ined by Brazi l to technica l cooperat ion are dest ined for African

Portuguese-speaking countries and East T imor (“Balanço de Polít ica

Externa 2003/2010”, my translat ion).

In the officia l discourse, Brazil is portrayed as the owner of something that

its partners do not have: expert ise in strategic sectors for socioeconomic

development. It inserts Brazil in a privileged socioeconomic and cultura l posit ion

in relat ion to its partners, creates the logic of superiority of its pol icies, and

reinforces the dependence of other countries on Brazil ian support in the area of

technical cooperat ion. The discourse consolidates exclus ionary pract ices in which

the “more civil ized” and “developed” actor helps its “less civi l ized” and

“backward” partners. Though this cooperat ion avoids imposit ions and

condit ional it ies on aid, those “comparat ive advantages” that the Foreign Ministry

tr ies to highl ight a l low the faci l itat ion of the act ion of Brazi lian inst itut ions and

companies in those countries.

In other occasions, Brazil ian authorit ies try to posit Brazil as a “model” to

inspire “ less civil ized”, “less democrat ic” or “ less deve loped” countries ,

conceiving their solut ions for specif ic problems as “natura l” or “the best way” to

solve impasses. In February 2011, when the Egyptian Parl iament was d issolved

after President Hosni Mubarak’s resignat ion, the Brazilian ambassador for Egypt

Cesário Melantonio Neto said that “this is the natural way to democracy in Egypt.

We can even compare with Brazi l’s history. In our transit ion to democracy, after

the military regime, we needed a new Parl iament and formed a National

Constitut ional Assembly to elaborate a new Constitut ion for the country, based on

democrat ic values” (“Embaixador do Brasi l no Egito apoia dissolução do

Parlamento”, my translat ion). This model image of Brazil – and a lso its leaders – is

also accepted by those who have more common historical roots with Brazil ians ,

such as the Portuguese-speaking countries in Africa. When Guinea-Bissau’s

president Malam Bacai Sanhá won national elect ions in 2009, he sa id that he would

like to be “the Lula of Guinea-Bissau. We share a very similar culture, we speak

the same language, we share the same history. (…) I would l ike to sit and talk to

president Lula. I ’d l ike to share some points of view on deve lopment (…). There

are a lot of good things in Brazi l” (“Pres idente diz que quer 'ser o Lula da Guiné-

Bissau' .”) . Although Brazil ian authorit ies might manipulate and emphasize the

common aspects of identity with African countries for polit ica l and economic

convenience, they put Brazil, again, in a privi leged posit ion that reifies hierarchies.

Similar patterns are visible in Brazil ’s re lat ions with Iran, part icular ly when

Brazi l tr ied to mediate between Iran and Western powers – special ly the U.S. –

regarding the controversia l Iranian nuclear program in May 2010. Brazi l ian

authorit ies brokered, a long with their Turkish counterparts, an agreement in which

Iran agreed to exchange low-enriched uranium for 19,75% enriched fue l for the

Tehran Research Reactor. During the talks, Brazi lian negotiators tr ied to show that

Brazi l shared with Iran the identity of a developing country that wanted to

preserve its autonomy and the inalienable r ights to develop peaceful nuclear

act iv it ies. However, in the eyes of most of the internat ional community, Iran seeks

to develop its nuc lear program for the possible product ion of nuclear weapons.

While Iran looks distant from the Western model of society, Brazil ian leaders

reinforced that Brazil ian foreign policy was based on “un iversa l va lues” such as

the defense of human rights, the crit icism to the proliferat ion of weapons of mass

destruct ion and the condemnation of terrorism. The reiterat ion of this image and

its embedded values perpetuated – even unconsciously – the idea that countries

and societ ies that were not totally adapted or conformed to this standard were

"dysfunctional" and "anomalous" in relat ion to "civil ized" actors. Through the

adoption of a diplomatic vocabulary and the enhancement of communicat ion

channels, Brazi l ian authorit ies tr ied to broker the fue l swap, but the U.S. and

European leaders cr it ic ized the Tehran Declarat ion for not el iminating the

continued production of 19,75% enriched uranium ins ide Iran ian terr itory.

Brazi l ian authorit ies tr ied to increase their relevance in wor ld affa irs by

disc ipl ining Iran in modern structures of authority through mediat ion and trying to

bui ld trust . However, the U.S. and European leaders considered that Iran wanted

to break internat ional unity regarding its nuclear intentions. They rejected l inks

between the Tehran Declarat ion and sanctions against Iran. Though Brazil ian

negotiators and the global powers’ leaders opted for different methods, it is

possible to identify in both init iat ives attempts to “disc ipl ine” and “domesticate”

difference, as wel l as its ass imilat ion into structures of authority where the threat

it symbolized could be eliminated in the name of stability and well-being of the

internat ional community.

The mult iple attempts to “civi l ize rogue states” show the permanence of a

modern regulat ive ambit ion that locates difference spat iotemporally in order to

preserve peace. As Amorim puts:

We think that when we are in the Security Council, whether

permanent or not, we have to contribute to peace and secur ity in the

world and not just deal with our own interests. I have fo llowed this

subject for a long t ime, and it was a problem that I always thought

had no solut ion unti l I heard about the swap agreement. (…) And I

thought maybe a country like Brazil , which has this capacity for

dia logue with severa l countries, could somehow help. And so I

discussed this sub ject with the Iranians. President Ahmadine jad came

here. And I made tr ips to Iran, and I real ly found that it was in

principle possible to pursue that role (“The Soft-Power Power”) .

Amorim’s declarat ion shows that Brazi l sees itself as d if ferent from the

“problem” that Iran brings and, instead, it conceives itse lf as part of the

“solut ion” in l ight of its abil ity to negotiate. Brazil was as a "student" of g lobal

powers in the "pedagogy of the competit ion" (Blaney and Inayatullah) when it

adopted democrat ic and libera l orientat ions deve loped by such powers, which was

fundamental in winning support from those states and key internat ional

inst itut ions. As it became more adept and embedded in the “teacher’s” intel lectual

world, this relat ionship changed: Brazi lian decis ion-makers tr ied to prove that they

can not only “teach” Iran on how to act , but also thought that global powers could

learn a lot from Brazil ian lessons of deal ing, in a more open and trustful way, with

countries tradit ionally labeled as “rogue states”.

Brazil’s relations with global powers

Although Brazi l shares the Western identit y with global powers, other types

of hierarchies operated simultaneously in their relat ions. I recognize there is a lot

of space for mediat ion with difference and sharing of values between Brazil and

the U.S. or the European Union, but many logocentric structures remain act ive.

Brazi l ian dec is ion-makers wanted to ensure that regime type and economic

orthodoxy, for example, were not used as tools of subtle control by leaders of

dominant states. Domination can be implemented in more subtle ways, spec ia lly by

the preservat ion of asymmetries in internat ional inst itut ions, which Brazil ian

authorit ies cr it icize very intensely . Amorim said that :

Until recently a ll global decisions were made by a handful of

tradit ional powers. The permanent members of the Security Council

— Brita in, China, France, Russ ia and the U.S., who are incidenta lly

the five nuclear powers recognized as such by the Nuclear Non-

Proliferat ion Treaty — had (and st il l have) the privilege of dealing the

cards on matters of internat ional peace and secur ity. The G-8 was in

charge of important decisions affect ing the global economy. In

quest ions related to internat ional trade, the ‘Quad’ — the U.S., the

European Union, Japan and Canada — dominated the scene (Amorim,

“Let’s Hear From the New Kids on the Bloc”) .

Amorim recognized that developing countries had more part icipat ion in

world polit ics, but asymmetries were preserved:

On April 15, Bras il ia was host to two consecutive meetings at the

highest polit ical leve l: the second BRIC (Brazi l, Russ ia , India and

China) summit and the fourth IBSA Dialogue Forum (India, Brazi l

and South Africa) . Such groups, different as they are, show a

wi ll ingness and a commitment from emerging powers to redefine

world governance. Many commentators singled out these twin

meetings as more relevant than recent G-7 or G-8 gatherings.(…)

Paradoxica lly, issues related to internat ional peace and security —

some might say the “hard core” of g lobal pol it ics — remain the

exclusive terr itory of a smal l group of countries (“Let’s Hear From

the New Kids on the Bloc”) .

When talking about the Tehran Declarat ion, Amorim (“Let’s Hear From the

New Kids on the Bloc”) saw that emerging powers such as Brazi l could “disturb

the status quo” when dealing with subjects “that would be typica lly handled by the

P5+1 (the five permanent members of the Security Counci l plus Germany)”, but he

also recognized that “the tradit ional centers of power wi ll not share glad ly their

privi leged status”. Brazil ian dec is ion-makers recognized the obsolescence of old

types of domination by global powers, such as open conquest or co lonizat ion, but

indicated the existence of more subtle forms of crysta ll izat ion of hierarchies that

revived old myths of submiss ion of weaker or less deve loped countries. Most of

those myths were revived by the growing unilateral ism of g lobal powers, which

contrast to what Amorim (“The Soft-Power Power”) cal led Brazil’ s “unique

characterist ic wh ich is very useful in internat ional negotiat ions: to be able to put

itself in someone else's shoes, wh ich is essential if you are looking for a solut ion”.

The supposed arrogance of global powers deal ing with some internat ional issues

were constantly condemned by Brazi lian leaders and off icers. As Amorim puts ,

“[t ]here are things we [Brazi lians] are able to say (…) that we would not be able if

I just go to the world podium and say, ‘Here I am; I 'm a great guy. I 'm a se lf-

r ighteous guy. And you have to do what I say’ . (…) They [g lobal powers] may

think they have the moral authority, but they won't be heard” (“The Soft-Power

Power”) .

The maintenance of hierarchies between “us” and “them”, identity and

difference is more expl ic it in Brazi l’ s relat ions with the U.S. . According to Andrew

Hurrel l, both countries have a consensual posit ion over substantive values that

coexist with a deep disagreement over the procedural values. This means that they

agree on the importance of democracy and libera l values , but they disagree on

which values from the libera l basket should be given priority. Part icular ly after

September 11th 2001, those Western l iberal va lues were emphasized in Brazi lian

foreign pol icy, but that was not a synonym for full-scope adherence to policies

adopted by the U.S. For example, wh ile the U.S. authorit ies defended a more

interventionist perspect ive on the defense of democracy and the des ign of

inst itut ions in s imilar models to its own society, Brazil ians adopted a minimal and

less interventionist def init ion of the term that encompassed free e lect ions and

inst itut ions and the rule of law. I agree with Hurrel l about the consensus on

substantive values, but I think the real clashes of interest , a long with deep and

persistent divergences between Brazi l and the U.S. in the way they view the

internat ional context have deeper motivat ions. The common frustrat ion in

relat ions between those countries and the absence of close engagement has to do,

in my opinion, with the reiterat ion of h ierarchies in the bi latera l relat ions that

updates o ld d iscourses of domination and imperia lism, even in a context of close

commercial and polit ica l relat ions between both states. The U.S. represented a

threat to Brazilian interests of preserving leadership in South America and among

developing countries.

Brazi l’s init iat ive toward a lead ing role in South America is v is ible in the

creat ion of the Union of South American Nations in 2008 and the strengthening of

the 1978 Amazon Pact . Nevertheless, fears that Brazi l could assemble South

America into a single bloc in order to destabi lize U.S. presence in the Americas

grew strong after Brazil ian reluctance to follow the American init iat ive to

revita lize its inter-American leadership. Brazil ian authorit ies have a lso shown their

resistance to U.S. interventionist init iat ives in Latin America, which would open

precedents that threaten sovereignty. Brazil ian leaders showed their condemnation,

through bilatera l and mult i latera l channe ls, to the U.S. supported coup d’état

against Hugo Chávez (Santiso) . They also crit icized U.S. support for Colombia’s

war against drug trafficking and guerri lla forces – that could be used as a pretext

for U.S. presence in the Amazon region – and showed strong reservat ions

regarding U.S. concern with intel ligence and police control in the Triple Border

between the cit ies of Puerto Iguazu, Ciudad del Este and Foz do Iguaçu,

supposedly a sanctuary for Islamic terrorism (Hirst) .

In economic affa irs, Brazil ian authorit ies defended that the FTAA (Free

Trade Area of the Americas) structure should l ie upon the exist ing blocs in order

to consolidate exist ing sub-regional in it iat ives and their bargaining power towards

the U.S. and Nafta. In 1997, Brazil assumed a more affirmative stance based on the

indivisib le nature of the negotiat ing package, the coexistence between FTAA and

the exist ing agreements and non-exclusion of any sector in negotiat ions related to

access to markets or the eliminat ion of barriers. In the beginning of last decade ,

the Brazil ian government’s perception was that the U.S. administrat ion wanted to

consolidate the implementat ion of liberal reforms and force the unilateral opening

of Latin American economies, creat ing commercial advantages with the reduction

of barriers to its exports. Furthermore, the U.S. Congress was not wil l ing to make

concessions, such as the elimination of agriculture subsidies and the revis ion of

antidumping legislat ion (Bouzas, “El ‘nuevo regionalismo’ y el Área de Libre

Comercio de las Américas: un enfoque menos indulgente”; Cortes) . Brazil ian

authorit ies started to develop the image of the U.S. as a threat connected to

intentions of creat ing a hemispheric inst itut ional and legal architecture for its

hegemonic interests. Brazi l feared the dismantling of its industr ies and nat ional

services because of the high level of competit iveness of American companies and

the possible negat ive impacts on its trade balance.

Before the interruption of FTAA negotiat ions in 2005, Lula’ s government

indicated that , even if the FTAA were created, Brazi l would not become an

uncondit ional a lly of the U.S. . S imilar posit ions were defended by Brazi l in

mult i latera l forums where it was an act ive player regarding the def init ion of rules.

In mult ilateral trade negotiat ions, Brazi lian negotiators cr it icized the subsidizat ion

of agr iculture and excess ive U.S . demands regarding new issues such as the

enforcement of intellectual property r ights. One of the major issues during the

WTO Doha Development Round – which started in 2001 – was the debate on

pharmaceutica l licens ing and publ ic health programs, especia l ly concerning the use

of non-licensed pharmaceut ica ls in Brazi lian anti-HIV/AIDS programs (Hirst) .

The Brazil ian government and NGOs consider the U.S. posit ion as a threat not

only to the industry of generic pharmaceuticals, but also to health care programs

for Brazil ian society. Divergences that expose persistent hierarchies and the

diff iculty in dealing with the U.S. were also visib le in Brazi l’ s mult i lateral posit ion

towards nuc lear non-proliferat ion and nuclear d isarmament issues . In spite of

constant U.S. pressures, the Brazil ian government refused to s ign the IAEA

Addit ional Protocol, part ial ly because the reinforced safeguards system could

create obstacles for the safety of nat ional ultracentrifuge technology. Nevertheless ,

Brazi l ian authorit ies also saw that reinforced safeguards were not susta inable

without para l lel deve lopments by the nuclear-weapon states regard ing nuclear

disarmament (Rublee 54) . Brazil st il l saw nuclear-weapon states such as the U.S. as

threats because they did not live up to the commitments of NPT’s Art icle VI to

eliminate nuclear ar senals. Lula declared that “[t ]he existence of weapons of mass

destruct ion is what makes the wor ld more dangerous, not agreements with Iran”

(Lula, “Nuclear Weapons Make the World More Dangerous, Not Agreements with

Iran”).

Brazi l’s relat ions with the European Union were also characterized by the

preservat ion of hierarchies, though in a more subtle way. The European Union

developed a strategy of engagement with Latin American countries based on the

promotion of economic development and global project ion of European values and

interests. The change in those relat ions was connected to the liberal izat ion of

European economies, the attempt to highlight the European Union in the new

global economic polit ics and the competit ion with the U.S. for new markets. The

model of cooperat ion developed by the European Union is based on partnership,

inspired by notions of equal ity and cooperat ion that transcend power inequalit ies

and supposedly challenge the notion of hierarchies. Inter-regional ism might

encompass polit ical and inst itut ional reforms, as we ll as soc ia l inclus ion and the

overcoming of power imbalances between Europe and Latin America. The

European Union tr ies to show that it is more concerned with a type of cooperat ion

in which the North assumes responsib il i t ies for the South’s deve lopment and

encourages transformations re lated to socia l responsib il ity and part ic ipat ion of

civil society (Gruge l) . It was a way to minimize dominat ion and submiss ion

stereotypes created by colonialism. However, new hierarchies emerge and

reart iculate o ld myths of dominat ion of European powers and dependency of

Southern countries in contemporary t imes. In this context , Brazil ian authorit ies

see, behind the benevolent image of European strategy of partnership, the

persistence of hierarchies that translate into protect ionist barr iers by the European

Union against the access of Brazi lian and Latin American export to its markets.

Those barriers consol idate exclus ion and represent a threat to Brazi lian

development, relegat ing the country to an inferior posit ion in light of its necess ity

to export agricultural products for economic growth. Brazi lian polit ic ians and

businessmen understood the maintenance of str ict rules that damage free trade as a

threat to the development of the Brazil ian economy and to the preservat ion of the

country’s identity as an emerging country.

Final considerat ions

Although there is space for mediat ion and interact ion with dif ference in

Brazi l’s relat ions with other countries, mechanisms of exc lus ion persist and create

obstacles to the development of common experiences towards the destab il izat ion

of hierarchies and the sharing of values that transcend coexistence. Difference

represented by underdeveloped and other developing countries was conceived as

“backwardness” in relat ion to libera l and democrat ic models of development

achieved by Brazi l. Global powers were seen as “ambit ious” through the revival

and adaptat ion of old colonial d iscourses. Negative visions of dif ference persist

and are constantly updated, reinvented and reart iculated. It would be very

simpl ist ic to say that this argumentat ion constructs the idea that , if Brazi l

recognizes that it has a more dynamic economy than his South American neighbors

or his African partners, it would be evidence of Brazi l’ s prepotency. It would a lso

be limited to affirm that , if in the commercia l and economic trade disputes with

stronger powers (the U.S., European Union, etc.) Brazi l moves towards protect ing

its nat ional interest , it would be considered instantaneously a subtle indicat ion of a

dichotomist suspic ious and resentful posture. What is being defended here is that

Brazi l ian foreign policy might reflect deeply internalized notions of the

depreciat ion of difference, wh ich create obstacles to better polit ica l solut ions for

many problems in the relat ions with other countries.

I do not suggest in this art ic le that the appreciat ion for dialogue and

negotiat ion would require Brazi l ian authorit ies to del iberately ignore the existence

of r ich and poor countries, weak and strong states or even the anarchic

characterist ic of the internat ional system. Instead, Brazi l ian leaders and society

should consider those categories, but not take them for granted or as immutable

elements of the internat ional context . The destabi lizat ion of the pre-given

polarizat ion between "advanced" and "backward" countries, societ ies that are "fit

for development" and "unf it for deve lopment", opens the possibil ity for a cr it ica l

reflect ion of Brazil’ s act ions and the ways it internal ized libera l proposals . It may

also highl ight ways to redefine policies aimed at reducing inequality with a denser

and more precise knowledge of suffering of other societ ies, the recognit ion of

common aspects between these experiences and the intensificat ion of dia logue in

new terms in order to overcome oppression. When it is possible to identify

elements of exclus ion similar to other societ ies in its own pol it ica l, socioeconomic

and cultura l experience – the "Other within" –, Brazi lians may re inforce dialogue

with other societ ies and have more comprehension of their own society. This

dia logue would be implemented through the analys is of domestic and foreign

mechanisms that reproduce oppression and marginal izat ion of peripheral societ ies

in the internat ional system and the development of better responses to such

problems. Such efforts – wh ich would be taken not only in relat ions with

developing, but also developed countries – can be carr ied out through different

ways. One first step could be the increased interact ion of Itamaraty with other

ministr ies to develop programs with foreign counterparts, aimed at strengthening

technical cooperat ion in t ackling problems related to issues such as health care ,

educat ion and public safety, for example . Brazi lian authorit ies can learn from

mistakes and successes of its partners in implementing these programs

domestical ly. Paradiplomacy and the invo lvement of subnational actors such as

municipal it ies and federal state’s governments may be important, given that many

of these policies are put in pract ice at leve ls below the nat ional leve l.

I do not assume the immutabil ity of the internat ional system as an arena of

conflict in wh ich foreign polic ies are determined with the considerat ion of

relat ions between severa l se lf- interested states. So it is possib le, according to the

main argument developed in this art ic le, to develop mult ip le ways to recognize

pract ices of exclus ion and share experiences of suffering and oppression in order

to replace them with new proposals that cr it ica lly re invent internat ional relat ions

as intercultura l relat ions of sharing and understanding.

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