Brazilian Postcolonialities

POSTCOLONIALITIES
BRAZILIAN
Adriana Varejo. Mapa de Lopo Homem II, 2004
Guest Editors: Emanuelle Santos Patricia Schor
EDITORIAL NOTE
This thematic issue of P: Portuguese Cu ltural Studies focuses on the interactions between critiques of co lonialism and coloniality, and Brazilian studies. We have aimed at producing analyzes of Brazilian c ult ure and society that address power inbalances and ideo logie s related to colonial expansion at current times of neo-liberal globalization. Our initial call for papers sought to ellicit theoretical perspectives across disc ip lines we ll suited for an evaluation of Brazilian contemporaneity dedicated to its (re)thinking and (re)interpreting through fruitful (d is)encounters between Postcolonial theory and other critical traditions, namely from the South. By proposing an issue on Bra zilian Post colonialities it has also been our aim to addre ss a long lasting disp ute in the Humanities around the value of the postcolonial in/to Brazil. To wh ich e xtent do the bodies of theories and modes of read ing offered by what h as com e to be known as Postcolonial St udies can and cannot be useful to understand the historical and cultural processes that frame contemporary Brazil? That is certainly one of the questions we belie ve the article s 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 of h uman suffering printed on the canvas of Brazilian history. This point of departure offers possible travel route s to exploring tentatively de fined Brazilian postcolonialit ies as way s into the wound inflicted on the body of the subaltern. A critical reflect ion around the term Postcolonial, its emergence and condensation on the Postcolonial St udies field as we ll as its modes o f employment across de Atlantic is offered by Ella Shohat and Robert Stam in the interview Bra zil is Not Traveling Enough: On Postcolonial Theory and its Analogous C ounter-Currents. S hohat and Stam reflect further on the loci of production and consumption of knowledge within the fie ld, as they
P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 4 Fall 2012 ISSN: 1874-6969
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 F eminis mo e Tradu o Cultural: Sobre a Colonialidade do Gn ero e a Descolonizao do Saber. In her article, C laudia de L ima Cost a que stions the locus of en unciat ion of theory through the articulat ion of Postcolonial cr itic ism and Latin American Feminist theories as she showcases the citation practices in Brazilian Femin ist scholarship. She proposes the trope of translation, foreground ing subalter n female voice s that deco lonize Eurocentric knowled ge, and ge ars attention to epistemologies emerging from the South: Brazilian/Latin Americans own Postcolonial Fem inism. Alterity is addre ssed by Kam ila Kr akowska on O Turista Aprendiz e o Outro: a(s) Identidade(s) Brasileira(s) em Trnsito where postcolonial lenses are applied to analyze the late 1920s trave l chronicle s of the Modernist Mrio de Andrade. Krakowska explores Andrades satir ical dislocat ion from the Brazilian center to its margins in the Amazonian and Northeastern regions. Such transit is argued as a way out of an impoverished ver sion of the nation. Hereby Andrade foregrounds Brazilian Modernisms force to recover Other agents to complete the mosaic of an heterogeneous Brazilian identity. Further exploring indigenous emergenc ies, Letcia Mar ia Cost a da
Nbrega argues for a historic ally sit uated p ostcolonialism to take account of the particular ities of the Latin Amer ican and Brazilian experiences, foregrounding the requirement of ethnographic embeddedness for shapin g such interpretative grid. In Bra zilian Postcol oniality and Emerging South-South Relations: a View from on Anthropology Brazil, she addre sses th e authoritative c urrency nation of the building mult iple literat ure problematizing high
modernities parad igm against postcolonialism. The author focuse s on the place of Africa in Brazilian nat ional imagination, which feeds the advertisement of the Brazilian suitability to play the role of development provider to the African continent. This analy sis prompts reflection on the pitfalls and potentials o f South-South cooperation.
Agency and subalternity in Brazilian prose fiction is the theme of Carolina Correia do s Santos analyze s in "Sobre o Olhar do Narrador e s eus Efeitos em Os S e rt e s e C i d a d e d e De u s . She compares fundamental literary texts of the beginning and the end of the XX century that think and enact marginalization in Brazil. Usin g the instrumental made available by Subaltern Studie s, she scrut inize s the act ual realization of the possibility the subaltern subject may have to speak bac k to the nation at times of war. Finally, Die go Santos Vieira de Jesus set s forth reflection on Brazils position in the new cartography in Not the Boy Next Door: An Essa y on Exclusion and Bra zilian Foreign Policy. The author traver ses cr itic al moments and texts of Fernando Henrique Cardosos and L ulas Ministry of Foreign Re lat ions toward s North and South, pointing out to the ambiguous aspects of Brazilian international pr otagonism. The depreciation and domestication of d ifference as well as c olonial and imperial mechanisms of assertin g hegemony are shown in their continuous renewal through the performative practice of politics. The collection of essays in this volume is symptomatic of the disciplin ary diver sity of the Postcolonial field coverin g Cultural Anthropology, Literature, Social Sc iences and International Re lat ions. Their crit ical postcolonial stance forwards contributions not only to Brazilian Studies, b ut also to Portugue se Studie s in its wide Lusophone span, and to Postcolonial St udie s. We thank Paulo de Medeiros for the invit ation to edit this issue and for the inspiration to make it into a thought-provoking endeavor. To the contributors, thank you for accepting the challen ge. To the readers: boa viagem.
Emanuelle Santos and Patric ia Schor.
INTRODUCTION 1
Mapping Mapa de Lopo Homem II, kindly made available by the artist Adr iana Varejo, inc ites an excavat ion of Brazilian contemporaneity, in se arch for the roots and present mechanisms causing profound inequalities and injustice s scarring its tissue, and for new disruptive and libertarian emergencies. The nautic al chart -here evoking the work of the XVI century cartographer of the Portugue se Court - supported the imperial enterprise of territorial conquer and exploitation of peoples and natur al resources in the Mundus No vus, neatly categorize d accordin g to a system of representation that codified world regions outside the European center in terms of naturalized subject ion to it. V arejo appropriates this imaginary and disrupt s its ascetic t idiness, giving it a scatological 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 sufferin g is a rec urrent figure in some criticism to colonialism, which deser ves ce nter stage in postcolonial scholarship. In the writing of the Afro-Brazilian Beatriz 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 location and its resilient sores, to find a house in the sendas (alleys) (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 feel and reveal the usurped bodies of its sub alterns. They affiliate with Franz Fanons exposure of t he gangrene e ver present at the heart of the colonial domination ( 103); with Eduardo Galeanos denouncement of Latin Americas venas abiert as (open veins) a region pray to colonial and
1 2
I am grateful to Emanuelle Santos and Flavia Dzodans careful reading and am indebted to their comments. For further analysis of Mapa de Lopo Homem elucidating the relationship between the artists Barroc aesthetic and criticism to colonial historiography and iconography, see the essays by Silviano Santiago, Lilia Moritz Schwarcz and Karl Erik Schllhammer, in Isabel Diegues collection.
imperial exploitat ion - which resonates into Gloria Anzaldas herida abierta (open wound) that is the US-Mexic an border where the Third World grates against the first and b leeds (25) but is also [t]he [w]ounding of the indiaMestiza ( 44); and with the recalc itrant figure of the colonial fr acture in the memorializat ion disputes in contemporary France, cr itically st udied by M ireille Rosello (7). They enact the biopolitics of colonial life under Portuguese rule, unrave led by Roberto Vecchi, in its intimat e assoc iat ion to the exceptionality of Portugue se colonialism packed in a Luso-tropical rhetoric of imperial benevolence. Vecchi enters this fissura (fissure) in order to reveal the workings of the colonial sy stem on the flesh. This is to say that the subaltern was denie d belonging to the body political citizenship - and concurrently her corpo vital (vital body) became the object of colonial politics (Vecchi 188). Altogether these tropes act the eruption of a painful lesion on the gendered and racialized bodies of the subaltern. Further the map supports gazing at Brazil in search for its new position in the reconfigur ation of global power taking place today. Yet, simultaneously to observing this dep arture from peripherality , 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 Anzaldas borderland and Nascimentos senda. Postcoloniality attends to the conservative and boldly emancipatory acts takin g place at such locat ions vio lently subjecte d to hegemony, where struggles for self-representation and fair engagement with the body of humanity erupt in the face of the nation. Here the image and it s assoc iated metaph ors affirm their pertinence to (re)think Brazilian cult ure and society in light of its colonial past represented as a suture, for the actual violence was argued to occur in locations other than the world the Portuguese created. On the flesh of those other (Anglophone) colonial subjects, injuries were apparently not cared for. On the Brazilian subaltern, despite sutured, they remain sor e, half-open. This le sion offers itse lf to us as a window. We invited elaborations on the postcolonial other than the straight import of foreign intellectual thought to pack aspects of Br azilian contemporaneity taken as rese arch object, a trend recurrently criticized in Brazil. Lar a Allen and 6 P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 4 Fall 2012 ISSN: 1874-6969
Achille Mbembe have already argued for a polit ics and ethics of mutuality inscribed in the postcolonial terrain as critique to E urocentrism (3). This involves listenin g to the voices of the South as a producer of theory, revealin g the Southern genealogie s of theory with high currency in the North and, above all, departing from the entanglement between theories and social conditions, enveloping North and South, however with radically different effects at each end. It draws other routes than the overly p ursue d ones in the map of traveling/trafficking theories, and it uncover s a ve iled direction 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 see ks to make use of cr itical theory that dislodge s hegemony (colonialism and imperialism) - which is local and simultaneously inscribed in lar ger global processes - to reveal traumatic ally silen ced, obscured or erased aspects of Brazilian (cult ural) history haunting the present, for its transformation. On the other hand it aims to expose processes in the periphery, however in transition from such a loc ation and imagination, which can be seen as forebodes of intellect ual, aesthetic al and polit ical processes in the North. This associates with Jean Comaroffs focus on ex-centric visio ns of, about and from those who are in the vanguard of the future. Naming We borrowed the term postcoloniality from Achille Mbembe for his foregrounding of the aspects of displ acement and e ntanglement. This term is manifest ly dissociated from the temporal mark of the post-. The postcolony calls for a perspective unarguab ly anti-esse ntialist for its enmeshed gaze to local sensibilities for they have been historically shaped - taking into account global dynamics of (colonial) enlacement. It follo ws that its geography is expanded, for the condition of postcoloniality is not exclusively experienced in former colonies, but also continues to affect (former) metropolitan countries (Allen and Mbembe 2). Displacement is a p aramoun t dynamics of postcolonial critiques that depart from forced exile as an episte mological and bodily distancin g from ones home. This movement implies what Boaventura S antos called defamiliarizat ion with the canonical tradit ions of the imperial North, in order to 7 P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 4 Fall 2012 ISSN: 1874-6969
build 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 crit icism has re-centered the colonial metropolis and elected master narrative s 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 else where, reproducing the very order of things denounced by Galeano. With a measure of realism concerning our minute dimension, we m ust remain aware of our very position in this cartography. We also fo llowe d Lus M ad ureira borrowing from Gayatri Spivak a sense of postcoloniality as politic al agency (Madureira, "Nation, Identity and Loss of Footing" 206), e vident in his foregrounding of Southern resistance an d criticism. This move entails decanonizing the master narrative of progress and dethroning its agents, and therefore provincializing the West. A critique of the Brazilian national im aginary shaped by the hegemonic national narrat ive t argets both Eurocentrism and internal colonialism (Stavenhagen), with which it is enlaced, through the scrut iny of a powerful apparat us of mar gin alization. Subaltern voices and epistemologies m ust be invited to shape the terms of their engagement in an inclusive conversation born out of a productive complicity regardin g an envisioned fut ure (Spivak xiii) . The line of continuity between colonialism and c urrent structures of domination and exp loitation is the core aspect of Latin Amer ican co unterdiscour se on the coloniality of power (Quijano), which we aimed at incorporating in this issue. From Dependencia Theory to the Coloniality o f Knowledge, Lat in America has been offering critical thought associated with indigenous movements that depart from its colonial difference (Mignolo) to put forward a decolonial project. This project however has its own absences and occlusions, which must be unrave led. The concatenation of African and L atin Americ an critic ism to
Eurocentrism and imperialism to shape what we are here tentative ly callin g Brazilian Postcolonialitie s, is informed by the common denominator between colonialism in A fric a (and Asia) and neo-colonialism in L atin Americ a, at the end of the XIX century, that is modern imperialism and its motor, namely 8 P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 4 Fall 2012 ISSN: 1874-6969
capitalist expansion (Pratt 464). This framing of postcoloniality ac knowledge s the historical difference between suc h experiences, despite of strong imbrications between Brazil and the African continent in terms of shaping history and imaginat ion (Almeida; Thomaz). Ho wever it seeks explic itly to benefit from (less explored) convergences, which might contribute to a momentous critical endeavor protagonized by regions and agents historically exclude d from the production of knowledge. Postcolonialitie s in the plural sign to the myriad of contemporary experiences and expressions of the way s fo und to deal with and surpass coloniality in Brazil. Inviting Our intention is to contribute to a historicized, contextual and highly politic ized postcolonial. In this sense we are concurring with E lla Shohats c all for a postcolonial artic ulated in conjunction with que stions of hegemony and neo-colonial power relations for not running the risk of sanctify ing the fait accompli of colonial violence (Shohat 109). It is in fact a crit ical perspective that attends to the continuing machinery of hegemony put at work with imperial conquest. The linkage s between postcolonial cr itic ism produced at the European center and its engagement with subaltern enunciations from Southeast Asia, with the political rad ic alism of the coloniality of power - with high currency in North and Latin America - are to be explo red, as much as the articulations with feminist, subaltern and anti-colonial struggles and critic ism, the latter noticeably absent in the Portuguese postcolonial fie ld (Madure ira, "Nation, Identity and Loss of Footing"). Brazil has a marke d protagonism with avant la lettre postcolonial critique emergent with Modernism (Shohat; Gomes; Madureira, Cannibal Modernities), and with social movements countering cultural exclusion and resist ing socio-economic exploitative practice. This history of counterhegemonic projects invites exploring the approximations between these and postcolonial critic ism and agency. C oncurring with Gustavo Ribeiro, colonialism cannot become an interpretative p anacea (290) given to the critical d ifferences between colonial exp eriences and st ate deve lopment; we must then foreground difference and insist on artic ulation with other interpretative roads and progressive co smopolitics (287). We are hereby advancing an invitat ion for a polylogue between such modes of critique which
is fo und fruitful to the mammoth task of decolonizing c ult ure, polit ics and scholarship (Stam and Shohat 19). The post- is here a utopia for surpassing coloniality through the explicit evocation and scrut iny of colonialism with the knowledge that imperialism and racism are very we ll alive in forceful and pervasive ways. At a time when Brazil becomes a bola da vez (the next big thing) gainin g global protagonism and, at instances painstakin gly, at others cosmetically, attempting to recover Fourth World peoples (Shohat 105) into the body of the nation, scholar ship has the task to gather the varied sibling cr itical pr actices to rip the wound open, enter the alley and stic k its nails into the fissure.
Patric ia Schor.
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Works Cited Allen, Lara, and Achille Mbembe. "Editorial: Arguing for a Southern Salon." The Johannesburg Salo n 1 (2009): 1-3. Pr int. Almeid a, Migue l Vale de. Um Mar da Cor da Terra: Ra a, Cult ura e Poltica de Identidade. Oeiras: Celta Ed itora, 2000. Prin t. Anzald a, Gloria. Borderl ands: The New Mestiza = La Frontera. 3rd ed. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 2007. Print. Comaroff, Jean. "The Uses of 'Ex-Centricity': Cool Reflections from Hot Place s." The Johannesburg S alon 3 (2010): 32- 35. Pr int. Diegues, Isabe l, ed. Adriana Varejo: Entre Carnes e Mares = Between Flesh and Oceans. Rio de Janeiro, RJ: Cobog: BTG Pactual, 2009. Pr int. Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967. Pr int. Galeano, Eduardo H. Las Venas Abiert as de Amrica Lat ina. [Montevideo]: Univer sid ad Nac ional de la Repblica, 1971. Print. Gomes, Heloisa Toller. "Quando os Outros Somos Ns: O Lugar da Crtic a PsColonial na Un iversid ade Brasile ira. " Acta Sci. Human Soc. Sci. 29.2 (2007): 99- 105. Print. Madure ira, Lus. Cannibal Mo dernities: Postcoloniality and the Avant-Garde in Caribbean and Braz il ian Literature. New World Studies. Charlottesville: Univer sity of Virginia Press, 2005. Print. ---. "Nation, Identity and Loss of Footing: Mia Couto's O Outro P Da Sereia and the Question of Lusophone Postcolonialism." Novel: A Forum on Fiction 41. 2/ 3 Spring/S ummer (2008): 200-28. Pr int. Mbembe, Achille. On the Postcolony. Studies on the History of Society and Cult ure. Eds. Victoria E. Bonnell and Lynn Hunt. Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univer sity of California Press, 2001. Pr int. Mignolo, Walter. "Diferencia Colonial y Razn Postoccidental." La Reestructuracin de las Cienc ias Sociales en Am rica Latina. Ed. Santiago CastroGmez. Bogot: Universidad Javeliana, 2000. 3-28. Print. Pratt, Mary Louise. "In the Neocolony: Destiny, Destination, and the Traffic of Meaning." Colo nial ity at Large: Latin America and the Postcolonial De bate. Eds. Mabel Moraa, Enrique D. Dussel and Car los A. Juregui. Lat in America Otherwise. Durham: Duke University Press, 2008. 459-75. Print.
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Quijano, Anbal. "Co lonialidad y Modernidad/Racionalidad. " Per Indgena 13. 29 (1992): 11-20. Print. Ratts, Alex. Eu Sou Atlntica: So bre a Trajetria de Vida de Beatriz Nascimento. So Paulo: Imprensa Oficial do Estado de So Paulo: Instituto Kuan za, 2007. Print. Ribeiro, Gust avo Lins. "Why (Post)Colonialism and (De)Coloniality are not Enough: A Post-Imperialist Perspective." P ostcolonial Studies 14. 3 (2011): 285-97. Print. Rosello, Mireille. The Reparative in Narrative s. Works of Mourning in Progress. Contemporary French and Francophone Studie s. Liverpool: Liverpool Univer sity Press, 2010. Print. Santos, Boaventura de Sousa. A Crtica da Razo Indolente: Contra o Desperdc io da Experincia. Para um Novo Senso Comum: A Cincia, o Dire ito e a Poltica na Transio Paradigmtica. Vol. 1. So Paulo: Cortez Editora, 2000. Pr int. Shohat, Ella. "Notes on the 'Post-Colonial'. " Social Text. 31/32, Third World and Post-Colonial Issues ( 1992): 99-113. Print. Spivak, Gayatr i Chakravorty. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present. Cambridge, Mass.: Har vard Un iversity Press, 1999. Print. Stam, Robert, and Ella Shohat. "The Culture Wars in Translation." Europe in Black and Wh ite: Interdiscipl inary Perspectives on Immigratio n, Race and Ide ntity in the "Old Continent". Eds. Man uela Ribe iro Sanches, et al. Chicago: Intellect, 2011. 17- 35. Pr int. Stavenhagen, Rodolfo. "Classe s, Colonialism, and Acculturat ion." Studies in Comparat ive Internatio nal De velopment 1. 6 (1965): 53- 77. Pr int. Thomaz, Omar Ribeiro. "Tigres de Papel: Gilberto Freyre, Portugal e os Pases Africanos de Lngua Portugue sa. " Trnsitos Coloniais: Dilogos Crticos LusoBrasile iros. 2002 Lisbon: Imprensa do ICS. Eds. Cristiana Bastos, M iguel Vale de Alme ida and Bela Feldm an-Bianco. Campinas, 2007. 45-70. Print. Vecchi, Roberto. "Imprio Portugus e Bio poltica: Uma Modernidade Precoce?" Postcolonial Theory and Lusopho ne Literatures. Ed. Paulo de Medeiros. Vol. 1. Utrecht Portuguese Stud ies Ser ies. Utrecht: Portuguese St udie s Center Univer site it Utrecht, 2007. 177- 91. Pr int.
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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 Professor s Ella Shohat and Robert Stam from New York University dur ing their visit to the Netherlands to join two events hosted by the Postcolonial Initiative and the Centre for the Humanit ies of Utrecht University. In this interview they touch on points of critical importance to reflect on the themes developed throughout the current issue o f P: Portuguese Cultural Studies. ES/PS: One of the points of departure in the Postcolonial field in Portuguese has been eith er we want to get out of or we want to offer something different from the Anglo- Postcolonial th eory. What do you sa y about that? Shohat: We will be happy to d isc uss this terminology, because I think we find it problematic. First of all, we think Lusophone and Brazilian Studies should offer something different from Anglophone Postcolonial theory! Our crit ique of certain
1
aspects
of
Postcolonial
St udies
is
part
of
our
new
book
, and I think it is important because we believe that some of the occasional
rejection of Postcolonial Stud ies in France and Brazil has to do with the projection of Postcolonial Stud ies as Anglo-Saxon as opposed to Latin. So var ious intellectual projects which are actually quite transnational, such as Postcolonial theory, Critical Race Studies, Multic ult ural Studie s, and e ven Feminist Studie s get caught up in that old regional dichotomy ultimate ly a kind of construct, e ven a phantasm that sees ide as as ethnically m arked as Latin or Anglo-Saxon. We ar gue 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.
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misnomers, that Lat in Americ a is also in digenous and Afric an 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 defined nation-states to a relational, transnational vie w of nations as palimpse stic and multiple. Stam: For us, all the Americas, de spite imperial hegemonies, also have much in common, in both negative ways (c onquest, indigenous disposse ssion, transAtlantic slavery) and positive ways ( artistic syncretism, social pluralism) and so forth. In his memoir, Verdade Tro pical 2, Caetano Veloso say s that like Brazil, the US is f atalme nte mestio inevitably mestizo but chooses, out of racism, not to admit it. The right-wings vir ulent hatred of Obama, in this sense , betrays a fear of this mestizo character of the American nation. Shohat: It is no coincidence that the relationship between Afric an Americ an and other Afro-diasporas around the Americas has been quite strong. Such collaborations make no sense within an Anglo-Saxon versus Lat in dichotomy. We propose in the book that the word Anglo-Saxon which designates t wo extinct German tribes th at moved to England more than a millennium ago be retired in favor of the word Anglo-Saxonist as a synonym for racism. Almost all the writers who prattled about Anglo-Saxon values Mitt Romney is the latest to trumpet this heritage were white supremacists and exterminationist rac ists. We see the L atin versus Anglo dichotomy as a symptom of what we call intercolonial 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 E uropean superiority, Anglo-Saxonism and a Latinit that originated, as [Walter] Mignolo and others have pointed out, in French interventions in Mexico. Although the Southern European version was subse quently subalternized, in the beginning the British and North Americans actually envie d Portugal and Spain for their empires, because they were rich thanks to South American m ineral wealth, which North America did not have. It is interesting about Hiplito da Costa, who was a Portuguese/Brazilian diplomat who went to Washington around the time of the American Revolution and
2
Veloso, Caetano. Verdade Tropical. So Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1997. Print.
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reported that: the people are so poor, and they marry indians, all traits that are usually assoc iated more with Brazil. Of course, much of the resistance to these academic currents comes from legitimate re sentment about the inordinate power of the Anglophone academe. This power, and the privile gin g of the English language , is h istorically rooted in the power of the British Empire (Pax Brit anica), and of the US as the heir of that Empire (Pax Americana). As Mrio de Andrade pointed out long ago, the cult ural power of a nation is in some ways correlated with the power of its armies and its c urrency. One of the points of our new book is to question the international division of intellectual labor, the system which exalts the thinkers of the Global North over the thinkers of the Global South, that sees Henry James as naturally more important than Machado de Assis, Fredr ic Jameson as more important than Roberto Schwarz, Jac que s Ranc ire as more important than Marilen a Chaui or Ismail Xavier, and Sin atra as more important than Jobim. Another instance of this hier archy is that concepts like hybridity are attributed to Har vard professor Homi Bhabha, when Latin Americ an intellect uals were talking about hybridity what was Anthropophagy all about? at least a half century earlier. I n any case, we are less interested in gur us and matres penser than in the transnational c ircuitries of discourse . That is why we sugge st that postcolonial theorists look beyond the British and French empires look at Latin America, look at Afro-America, look at the Francophone thinkers, look at indigenous peoples in E urope, African Amer icans in France, all the criss-crossin g diasporic in tellectuals. Shohat: Latin American intellect uals have been in the forefront of doing mestiage, mtissage, Anthropophagy. Wh ile we certainly consider ourse lve s as part of Postcolonial theory, we have also critiqued certain of it s aspects, for example the ahistorical, uncritic al ce lebration of hybridity discourse. We were asking: What are the genealo gie s of such disco urses? We prefer to emphasize the que stion of lin ked analogies between and across national borders. So for us, cross-border analysis becomes really cruc ial. It is not reduc ible to nat ion-state formations. 15 P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 4 Fall 2012 ISSN: 1874-6969
Stam: On the contrary, we argue in the new book that the nation-state can be seen as highly problematic if we adapt an indigenous perspective, since native nations were not state s, were victim ized by Europeanized nat ion-states, an d were sometimes philosophically opposed, as Pierre Clastres points out, to the very concept of nation-states and societ ie s based on coercion. That was what the Brazilian modernists praised about them, that they had no police, armie s, or puritanism. Shohat: We also have a cr itique of Postc olonial theory, going bac k to my old essay 3 that entails posing the quest ion When does the postcolonial begin? from an indigenous perspective. Indigenous thinkers often see their situation as colonial rather than postcolonial, or as bo th at the same time. While a certain Postcolonial theory celebrates cosmopolitanism, indigenous discourse often valorize s a rooted existence rather than a cosmopolitan one. While Postcolonial and Cultural St udie s reve ls in the blurr ing of borders, indigenous communities often seek to affirm borders by demarcating land, as we see in the Amazon, against encroaching squatters, miners, nation-states, and transnat ional corporations. Stam: While the poststructur alism t hat helped shape postcolonialism
emphasizes the inventedness of nations and denatur alize s the natural, indigenous thinkers have insisted on love of a land regarded as sacred, another word hardly valued in the post- discour ses. While Postcolonial theory, in a Derridean vein, milit ants against originary thinking , threatened native groups want to recover an original culture partially destroyed by conquest and colonialism. What Eduardo Viveiro s de Castro calls indigenous multinatur alism challenges not only the rhetorical antinatur alism of the posts but also what might be called the primordial Orientalism, that which separated nature from culture, an imals from human beings. Shohat: While the beginnings of Postcolon ial Studies are usually trace d back to Edward S aid 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
Shohat, Ella. "Notes on the "Post-Colonial"." Social Text. 31/32: Third World and Post-Colonial Issues (1992): 99113. Print. 4 Edward W. Said, Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978. Print.
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century, we prefer to forward the Americ an imperialism, b ut also go b ack to 1492, which is why our early book Unth inking Eurocentrism 5 in 1992, had a whole chapter on 1492. A lready in Unth inking we were arguing for looking into the lin ks between the vario us 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, first of indians an d then of Africans. The discourse s about Jews and Muslims, such as the limpieza de sangre, wh ich was a part of the Reconquista discourse, actually trave led to the Americas and then were deployed already with Columbus about the indige nous people, where the anti-Semitic blood libel d isco urse was transformed into an anti-cannibalist discourse . Just as Jews and M uslim s were d iabolize d in Europe, in the Americas the Afric an Exu was diabolized, as was the indigenous Tupi figure Tup. Shohat: The point is that we can no longer segregate all the issues of antiSemitism, Islamophobia, anti-blac k rac ism, the massacres of indigenous people. Conventionally, the Inquisition against Jews is seen as le ading to the Holocaust. But the Inquisit ion and the expulsion of the Moors, the conquest, also lead to the repression of African and indigenous re ligions. Stam: A wonderful sequence in Glauber Rochas Terra em Transe 6 dramatize s what Ella just said. The scene satiric ally restages C abral s Primeira Missa with the Porfirio Diaz char acter as a right-wing golpista. Cabral/D iaz raises the chalice , we hear the music of candombl. This is very profound and suggest ive . In a return of the repressed, Rocha superimposes an image of the Catholic Mass over African religious music. We are all aware of the Spanish Inquisit ion, but we often forget that European conque st and c olonialism also c arried o ut a kind of Inquisit ion against Afric an and indigenous religions. It is also interesting that the famous skeleton of Luzia discovere d in Brazil was descr ibed as h aving Negroid fe atures. Glauber Rocha felt all this intuit ive ly. By putting candombl music as Cabral/D iaz is raisin g the clice we are reminded of Chico [Buarque]s af aste de mim este clice 7- Rocha evokes all these historic al/cultur al contradictions. We call this trance-Brechtianism. He use s candombl trance
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. "Clice." Feijoada Completa. Philips, 1978. LP.
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music possession to go beyond Bertold Br echt. It is not just c lass against class, but culture against culture. It is Afr ica, Europe, indigenous, all at the same time. One of the things we stress in the book is the immense aesthetic contribution of Latin American artists, with their endless invention: Anthopophagy, Magic Re alism, ae sthetic s of hunger, Tropicl ia, the AfroBrazilian manife sto Dogma Feijoada. Many of the alternative ae sthetics from Latin America are based on anti-colonial inver sions. Tro pic lia turns upside down the hostility to the Tropics as primitive. Antro pofagia valorize d the rebellio us cannibal. M agic Realism exalted magic over western sc ience. We thin k Postcolonial theory could le arn from t his kind of audacity and profound rethinking of cultural values. Shohat: Because I think that what we wo uld be worried about is precisely any kind of meta-diffusionist narrative that sees Postcolonial Study as exclusive ly Anglo-Saxon, or even an Anglophone thing that travels to, let us say, Br azil. Just to take another perspective, 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 multiple site s and perspective s. Our key argument about the multidirectionalitie s of ide as is that the Postcolonial project and similar projects emerge out of many, m any contexts. There are so m any antecedents alongside the usual postcolonial triad of Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, and Gayatr i Spivak. Important as they are, we have to remember figure s like Frantz Fanon, Aim Csaire. In our book, we speak about the seismic shift that attempted to decolonize instit utional and ac ademic cult ure. Wor ld War II, Nazism, fasc ism, the Holocaust, decolonization, minority m ovements, all that triggered a cr isis in the western faith in the promises of modernity and progress. All that conver ged to make the West do ubt itse lf. The self-im age of the West and the white world was being que stioned. As a result you find radic al challenge s within the academic disc iplines: Dependency Theory in economics, where Latin American thinkers playe d a key role; Third Worldist and later Postcolonial theory in 18 P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 4 Fall 2012 ISSN: 1874-6969
Literature; Shared and Dialogic al Anthropology; Critic al Race theory in Law and the Social Sciences and so forth. We tend to forget precursors such as the Cubano Roberto Fernndez Retamar writin g in the early 1970s. It is not to diminish Said s immense contribution to point out that even before Said s Oriental ism, Anouar Abde l-Malek, an E gyptian Marx ist, in the ear ly 1960s, wrote a crit ique of Orientalism, ver y much Fanonian in its voice, which was p ublished in French 8. And you have Ab dul L atif T ibawi, another writer who spoke of Orientalism in a critic al way. Before Postcolonial Studies emerged in the mid, late 1980s, as a term, as a rubric, that kind of thinking was calle d AntiColonial Studie s or Third World Studies. Stam: What postcolonialism brought was the influence of poststructuralism, whence the influence of Fouc ault (alongside 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 transition from Third-worldist Marxism toward the postcolonial trend, while still remainin g more or less post-Marxist, interested in minority liberat ion movements, and thoroughly anti-imperialist in relat ion to the war in Vietnam, and Americ an interventions in Latin America. So it is not as if we move directly from Fanons Black Skin, White Masks 9 in 1952 to Oriental ism in 1978. Also, postcolonialism emerged in the context of English Studies and Comparative Literature, so 1978 mar ks the moment that these issue s took on major importance in those fields, where as before such work was done in History, Anthropology, Ethnic Studies, Native Amer ican St udie s, B lac k St udies, Latino Studies and so forth. ES/PS: This question dialogu es with t he issues you just rais ed and your influential Notes on the Post-Colonial. The Postcolonial label rema ins contested, and your t ext is a continuous reference for this contestation and criticism. Despit e the fa ct that postcolonial canonic authors (e.g. Bhabha and Spivak) are frequ ently quoted, the term post colonial is oft en rej ect ed. For this end your text is inv oked, as well as Anne M cClintocks
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Abdel-Malek, Anouar. LOrientalisme en Crise. Diogne. 44 (1963): 109-142. Print. 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].
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Th e Angel of Progress: P itfalls of th e Term Post-Colonialis m" 10 as they are articulated by Stuart Halls When is the Post-Colonial? Thinking at the Limit. 11 Our question to both of you is then how do you re-ev aluat e the field, in light of the comments of Shohats text, twenty yea rs lat er? After a ll you said on Notes on the Post-Colonial how do you see th e field? Shohat: Postcolonialism was par alle led by a post-nationalism that probed some of the aporias of Third-world ist, nationalist discourse. Postcolonial, in the wake of Fanons The Pitfalls of National Consciousness chapter in The Wretched of the Earth 12, examined the blind spots of nationalism in terms of gender and ethnicity, questionin g the notion that the nation is a single 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 positive aspect of Postcolonial Studie s. My old essay Notes on the Post-colonial was really about unpac kin g the term. Are we really after the colonial, when we think of Pale stine or of indigenous peoples? I was making the point that the postcolonial move is a disc ursive r ather than a historic al shift, it is what comes after anti-colonial discour se, after nationalist and Third-wor ldist and tricontinental disco urse. Nor is it only after, it is also actually crit iquing those discourses. At its best, the critique exposed blind spots, at its wo rst it caricat ured Third-worldist as dichotomous, Manichean and so forth, when we would ar gue that although Fanon was b lind to gender, ethnic ity, and sexuality, he was not Manichean. The colonial situation was Man ichean but he himself was not. He also spoke of psychic ambivalence. Stam: And on Blackness, Fanon was never essentialist. Au contraire. Rather, he stressed the relational, conjunctural, disc ursive and constantly shiftin g character of race. He would say In France, the better your French, the whiter you are, that one and this will make a lot of sense to Brazilians in the land of money
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.
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whitens and brancos de Bah ia could be blac k in one place and not blac k in another. He constantly stressed that blac kness and whiteness ex isted in relat ion. Shohat: In fact he called for sit uat ional diagnosis. In our different public ations, we c ite Fanon speaking ( in a footnote for Black Skin, White Masks) about the reception of Tarzan films in Martinique, where the Martinic ans identified with the whites against the Afr ic ans, yet disco vered that in Fr ance the hostile or patronizing looks of the French white spectators made them aware of their own to-be-looked-at-ness in the m ovie theatre, re alizing that they were seen as allied with the very Afric ans that t hey had seen as enemie s wh ile see ing the film in Martinique. There was a phase at the very be ginning in which anything that was see n as anti-colonial, all was b inarie s, essentialism. It is more complicated. Ye s, some were, some were not. The other element, that we were addressing 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 fetish istic n ostalgia, or going back to the origins and thus naive ly essentialist. So we we re questionin g the unproblematized celebration of hybridity and the dismissal o f any search into the precolonial past as a nave se arch for a prelapsarian origin. Stam: We also cited the example of Video nas Alde ias and the Kayapo in Brazil using c ameras to record and reconstit ute their so-called van ishin g culture. Are these efforts essentialist? Are we suppose d to reject them in the name of our postmodern sophisticat ion? That would be obscene, even racist on the part of those who do not have to worry about the preservation or resuscitation of their cult ure. Shohat: I think the critique made in my essay as we ll as in our Unth inking Eurocentrism still applie s. But that does not mean that we should not use the term. That was my conclusion to the essay that I thought Stuart Hall misunderstood, in my opinion, when he tried to say that I was act ually making a Third-wordlist argument. I was not exactly makin g a Third-wordlist argument; it
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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.
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was more about the ide a that we h ave t o be precise about how to use this terminology. We cannot simply eclipse the term Third Worldism even now, if we speak about a partic ular era when that term was used. It is still rele vant to use it to reflect a certain terminology of the tim e. If we speak about the postcolonial as a term, yes it too is st ill highly proble matic because it all 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 ex actly as for India or Iraq or Lebanon. Is colonialism over? Not really, as we know, look at what is happening over the last ten years in relation to the Middle East, etc. Stam: I think an important concept is palimpsestic temporalities which means that the same nat ional/transnat ional place /site c an be sim ultaneously colonial, postcolonial and par acolonial. The relat ion to indigenous people in most of the Americas and in colonial settler states like Australia is still 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 similar dams in C anada and even India, where national 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 Brazil gives money to the IMF and An gola helps Portugal! As Lula said, cest tres chic! That kind of economic shift remolds hegemony. And then we find the paraco lonial in phenomena that exist apart from and alongside the colonial. The postcolonial theme of hybridity is often thought to have emerge d historically in the post-war per iod of colo nial karma and the migration of the formerly colonized to the metropole. But hybridity has alway s existed, and was only intensified by the Columbian Exc hange init iated by the voy age s of discovery. A lready in 1504, the Car ij indian Essmoricq le ft Vera Cr uz (Brazil) for France to study munitions technology in Normandy; he thus represented, avant la lettre, Oswald de Andrade s ndio tecnizado or high-tech indian. So, when you really think in a longer durat ion and think mult i-locat ionally, you see these issues in a new way.
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So it is all about the excess see ing (Bakhtin), the complementarity of perspectives whereby we mutually correct and supplement each others provincialisms. And here the intellectuals of the Global South are in some ways less provinc ial than those from the Global North, because they are obliged, to invoke [W.E .B.] DuBois, to have a double or even triple consciousness, oblige d to be aware of North and South, center and periphery. They are also more like ly to be multilingual. Shohat: In terms of the terminology, I still belie ve we should use the term postcolonial in a flex ible and contingent m anner. It might be better to downplay the term Postcolonial theory which implies a kind of prerequisite cultur e capital in the form of knowledge of poststructuralism to join the postcolonial club, and speak, r ather more democratically, of Postcolonial Studies. At this point of history, we feel comfortable using the term as a convenient designation for a partic ular fie ld and especially with Post-str ucturalist-inflected methodologies of reading. Stam: In fact, we just published an essay 14, a response to essays by Robert Young and Dipesh Chakrab arty 15 in New Literary History about the state of Postcolonial Stud ies. In that essay, we praised the capac ity of Postcolonial Studie s for self-crit icism and its chameleonic gift for absorbing critiques that become part of the field itse lf. So some critics point out the critique yo u do not talk about politic al economy but then people start to do it, in that sense it becomes part of the field. But we ar gue with any matre penser model that produces a kind of star-sy stem that obscures the work of hundreds of scholar s around the world. Shohat: And that affects how we think about the position of Brazilian intellect uals. Because e ven if some of this work has not been produced under the rubric of Postcolonial Stud ies, it is st ill, of course, very relevant to the field. It could be talked about and recuperated within that framework calle d
Stam, Robert and Ella Shohat. Whence and Whither Postcolonial Theory?. New Literary History 43.2 (2012): 371390. 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.
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Postcolonial Studie s. So it is not about inventing the wheel, it is not about going bac k to zero, as if there were no Brazilian antecedents for such work think of Mrio de Andrade, or Oswald de Andrade, or Abdias do Nascimento and Roberto Schwarz and countle ss others. If we think from the Global South, we think in a polyperspectival way, whe re the center is disp laced to form multip le centers whence polycentrism and with a stress on multip le diasporas and transc ult ural connectivitie s. So we really belie ve in intellect ual plurilogue and decentered interlocution across borders. Stam: And that also means that Postcolonial St udie s must be multilin gual. So one of the points in our book is let s talk about the work in Portuguese and French and not just English as is too often the case in Postcolonial Studie s and Cult ural Stud ies. We have long sect ions on the debates about race and coloniality in Br azil, the debate on affirmative action, and a long section on Tropiclia. Whatever the positions of Caetano Velo so and Gilberto Gil on loc al politics, their work in songs like A Mo de Limpeza, Manhat , and Haiti 16 is absolutely cosmopolitan and brilliant. And you can dance to it! It would be hard to say what I value more one of the books by a matre penser or those songs, which forge ideas, but do it musically, lyric ally, performatically. A s Caetano says in Lngua, 17 in an allusion to Heidegger, some say that one can only philosophize in German, but if yo u h ave a brilliant idea, put it in a song! Haiti say s so much about the Black Atlantic, class and race and what Stuart Hall said about r ace as the modality wit hin which class is lived. Manhat, similar ly, addresses what we call the Red Atlantic by p lac ing cunh Tup i for young woman in a canoe in the Hudson. It connects indigenous Brazil to indigenous North America, in a brilliant transoceanic gest ure. When I play the song for my students (as we did here in Utr echt) I superimpose digital images of Manahatta the ind igenous name, as C aetano notes in Verdade Tropical, for Manhattan.
Gil, Gilberto. Mo de Limpeza. Raa Humana. WEA, 1984. LP. Veloso, Caetano. Manhat. Livro. Universal, 1997. CD. Gil, Gilberto and Caetano Veloso. Haiti. Tropiclica 2. Universal, 1993. CD. 17 Veloso, Caetano. "Lngua." Noites do Norte. Universal, 2001. CD.
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ES/PS: You have been discussing the traveling of theories. Given to th e new position of hegemony that Bra zil is gaining internationally, do you expect or hop e for changes in the dyn amics of the s ystem of p roduction and reception of theory? Stam: I think it is partly happening just through economics. The so-called r ise of the Rest means that Brazil Mr io de Andrade talked about that. He said Our literature is gre at but no one knows it because to have a great literat ure is easier if you also have a great currency, if you have a great army. So, partly economics affects that, while the US is cle arly in decline, as is Europe in the age of the crisis of the Euro. This is c lear ly, finally, to touch on a note of subaltern nationalism, Brazils moment. Shohat: Of course English still remains the dominant lingua fr anca in ac ademic exchanges aro und the world. That is a re sidue of colonialism and something not so easy to change. Stam: At the same t ime, even that slowly c hanges, for instance, LASA, i.e. Lat in American Stud ies Associat ion, and B RAS A (Brazilian St udies A ssociation) are by now almost completely bilingual. Participants go easily back and forth between Spanish and English or Portugue se and English, which used not to be the case. ES/PS: How do you s ee Bra zils current position vis--vis South America and Africa within what you termed cult ural wars ? Shohat: Maybe I can start to answer t he que stion by speakin g of Afr ican Americans and the Afro-diaspora. Our project began with the response of Pierre Bourdieu and Loic Wac quant to a book (Orpheus and Power 18) by Michael Hanchard, an Afric an Americ an polit ical scientist who studied the Black Power movement in Brazil. In two reviews, 19 Bourdieu and Wacquant attac ked the book
Hanchard, Michael George. Orpheus and Power: The Movimento Negro of Rio de Janeiro and So Paulo, Brazil, 19451988. Princenton: Princenton University Press, 1994. Print. 19 Bourdieu, Pierre and Loc Wacquant, On the Cunning of Imperial Reason, Theory, Culture, and Society 16, no. I (1999) 51. Print. And Bourdieu, Pierre and Loc Wacquant, La Nouvelle Vulgate Plantaire, Le Monde Diplomatique. May 2000. 6-7. Print.
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as a case of North American exportation of ethnocentric poison into a Brazilian society completely free of racism. Stam: Needless to say , this was a very o ne-sided, provinc ial and un informed interpretation that returned to the idealizin g nostrums of Gilberto Freyre in the 1930s. In Brazil, a special issue of Revista Afro-As itica 20 was dedicated to the Bourdieu/Wacquant crit ique of Hanchard s book, which we summarize in our book. They generally lamented the lack of cultur al knowledge of Brazil behind the attacks and noted that although B ourdie u/Wacquant denounce North American scholarsh ip as ethnocentric, they cite, in their refutation of Hanchards book, only North American sc holars, hardly acknowledging the long tradition of Brazilian scholarsh ip on these issue s. Shohat: Bourdieu/Wacquant implied that the critique of racism in Brazil could only come from outside Brazil, when our bookshelves contained countle ss Brazilian books on racism and discrim ination by authors like Abdias do Nascimento (Genocdio do Negro Brasileiro 21), Llia Gonzale s, Clvis Mour a, Srgio Costa, Antonio Guimare s, Nei Lopes, and countless others. Stam: So, it becomes an issue of cover tly nationalist wh ite narcissism that projects racism onto a single site, forgetting slavery and conquest existed all around the Blac k Atlantic and that as a consequence rac ism and discrimin ation too can be found all around the Black Atlantic. Shohat: We speak in our new book of intercolonial narc issism, the ide a that all the colonial powers, and too often their intellectuals, want to see their colonialism, or their slavery, or their discr imination, as better than that of the others. Stam: So the American form of narcissism is to say: we are not colonialists like the others. Apart from the obvious colonialism of conquering the indigenous we st of the country, apart from the imperial binge of the 1890s, the US practice s and imperialism of milit ary bases, it c an invade country after country and always say: We do not want one inch of Korean land, Vietnamese
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Special issue on On the Cunning of Imperial Reason essay, Estudos Afro-Asiticos January-April 2002. Print. Nascimento, Abdias do. O genocdio do negro Brasileiro: Processo de um Racismo Mascarado. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1978. Print.
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land, Laotian land, Cambodian land, Grenadian land, Iraqi land, Afghan land, etc.. But it keeps invading and m ain taining base s. So that is the US exceptionalist narcissism. And then you have the French mission civilisatrice narcissism we only c are about c ulture and educat ion the Brit ish its just about free trade narcissism, and then the Luso-Tropicalist Portuguese we are all mixed and love mul atas narcissism, so every country has its exceptionalism. We make the point that the intellectuals of empowered countries love other peoples vict ims, thus the Germans historic ally adored indians (Native Americans) but were not so fond of the Jews. So they wo uld supposedly ne ver have d isposse ssed the Native Americans, but they kille d 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 le ss rac ist than those other racists. Shohat: It is in this sense that we quest ion Ali Kamels pop book No So mos Racistas. 22 He is a Global, i.e. literally one of the important figures at Globoand a Syrian immigr ant. Its a superfic ial, jo urnalist ic book but its thesis is ultimately the same as that of Bo urdie u/Wac quant. And then, of course, the resistance to multic ulturalism and postcolonialism was connected to the idea that it only applies to places where you have race issues, and therefore it applies to the US, but it cannot be applicable to France or to Brazil. ES/PS: On the topic of ot h e r p e op l e s ot h e rs and blindness to ra cis m, do you find th e association between the repres entation of the J ew and the representation of the black a fruitful wa y to decolonize Eurocentric bodies of theory? Shohat: Definitely, it is key and it is one of the discussions in our new book. We already brought up that issue in U nthinking Eurocentrism and bring it up again in Race in Transl ation. In both books, we lament the segregation of the Jewish que stion from the colonial race quest ion. For us it always has been important to connect the Jew, the Muslim, the diasporic black/Afric an, to these debates. A ll of the issue s can be traced back to the var ious 1492s
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the Inquisition, the
Ali Kamel, No Somos Racistas: Uma Reao aos que quere nos Transformar numa Nao Bicolor. Rio de Janeiro: Nova fronteira, 2006. Print.
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expulsion of the Moors, the d isco very i. e. the conquest of the Americas, and the beginnings of TransAtlantic slavery, first of indians and then of Africans. All those issue s were related then, and they are still related now. In terms of Jews and blacks and of co urse it is not a simple opposition since many Je ws are blac k Yeminis, Ethiopians, converts etc. and many blacks are Jews. It is not an accident that the activist movement about Arab Jews in Israel called themselves the Blac k Panthers. But this disc ussion goes way back. Just in the post-war period, Fanon in Bl ack Skin, White Mask begins to think about the racialization of the black vis-- vis that of the Jew. In Race in Translat ion, we have a disc ussion of his comparative study of the Jew and the black, and in Taboo Memories 23 an essay foc uses on that issue in detail. But in our most recent book, we lin k the Jewish que stion to the Muslim/Arab quest ion, because Fanon also speaks about the Arab, and he did not idealize any group. He say s: The Arab is racist toward the blac k, the Jew is rac ist toward the black. He noted that in France it was e asier to be blac k than Ar ab, and c ites instances where police would harass h im and then apologize whe n they discovered that he was not an Arab but a West Ind ian. What complic ates the relation, as we saw yesterday in Forget 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 Isr aeli cinema, where the casting often favors blond and blue-eye d actors, the musc ular Jew, culminat ing in Exodus 25, where you have Paul Newman being cast as the new kind of Jew, the polar opposite of the diaspora, shtetl, ghetto, victimized Jew. In a sense, Jews internalized anti-Semit ic disco urses. ES/PS: Is this the problem of the nation getting into what could be a potentially lib erating field of the postcolonial? Shohat: Although one could ar gue that most nation-states are anomalous, Israe l is perhaps more anomalous than others. It is a mixed formation, on the one hand it represents a nationalist project an d thus analogous to Third World and minority struggle s but from the Palest inian point of view, it is also a colonial
Shohat, Ella. Taboo Memories, Diasporic Voices. Next Wave. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006. Print 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.
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settler project, which is why Palest inians see themselves as indigenous, comparable to native Americans, a point made in Godards film Notre Musique 26, which makes this analo gy directly. Indeed, the film links the various issues anti-Semitism, native Americans, Jews, Pale stinians etc. by having native American characters artic ulate the analogy. It is also set in Sar aje vo, a multic ultural partially Muslim and distantly Jewish soc iety under sie ge by nationalist orthodox Serbs. (There is e ve n a story about M uslims in Bosn ia protecting the Torah even after the Jews had left.) Palest inian s in the film c ite the poem The Red Indian 27 by Mahmoud Darwish. Stam: At the same time, Native Americans identify with Jews as being the vict ims of the Holocaust. Some native Am ericans such as Ward Church ill, who wrote a blurb for our book, c laimed provocative ly that Co lumbus was o ur Hitler, at wh ich point Churchill was attacked by Jewish organizations in the US: How co uld he compare Hitler to Columbus, there was no genocide it was unintentional, they just caught disease s etc.. B ut in fact there was a megagenocide, some cause d by d isease but also by the massacres already reported by [Bartolom] de las C asas in the XVI century and continuing up through the XX century (e.g. in Guatemala and Salvador). Shohat: Churchill was also acc use d, as we re many writers like Edward S aid, of narrative envy toward the Jewish victim ization narrative. Stam: And in France this debate has been very lively, in volving many wr iters of diver se bac kground s, and t aking a wide r ange of posit ions. You h ave Je wish thinkers like Alain Fin kie lkraut associate d vague ly with the sixties Left who subse quently bec ame anti-blac k, anti-Third World, anti-Palestin ian. On the other hand, you have very progressive Jewish thinkers such as Edgar Morin and Esther Benbassa who say: No, we have been symbiotically connected to Muslims historic ally. We note what we call the rightward turn of many Zionist Jews in the US and Fr ance and in many other countries. It is noteworthy
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Notre Musique. Dir. Godard, Jean-Luc. Wild Bunch, 2004. Film. 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.
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that Claude Lan zsmann, the author of Shoah 28 but also of militantly pro-Israeli documentaries, was not alway s so ardently Zionist or anti-Pale stinian. On October 17, 1961, when the French police following the orders of Police Chief Maurice Papon and here again we see the link between antiMuslim and anti-Semitic att itude s 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 Lanzm ann wrote a p ublic statement sayin g: We as members of the Jewish community understand wh at you are going through. We know wh at it means to be harassed and murdered on the basis of your identity. We know what it means. So at that t ime, you h ad so lidarity. It is only after 1967 that you fin d radic al, generalized Jewish-Arab polarizat ion (and of course some Jews are Arabs). Fanon, similar ly, had warned his fellow blacks when people are speakin g 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-Semitism. The Holocaust took place, what led to it? Thus you get analyse s of the authoritarian personality and so forth. It is only later that the discussion moves to race. Shohat: The black-Jewish alliance becam e lar gely undone in the wake of the Israeli victory and in the US in the wake of struggles o ver the autonomy of schools, Pale stine and other issues. With Jean Paul Sartre writ ing in France about the anti-Semite and the Jew 29 but later also publishes in LExpress Une Victoire 30, which is about Henri Alleg, a Jewish communist who joined the Alger ian anti-colonial struggle against the French and became a prisoner, and was tortured, le ad ing to his censored book about torture c alled L a Question. 31 Sartre, who had also written the introduction to Fanons The Wretched of the Earth saw the issue of torture as part of the same continuum of struggle. B ut this changed after 1967, as Josi, Fanons wife who still live d in A lger ia,
Shoah. Dir. Lanzmann, Claude. New Yorker Films, 1985. Film. 9 hours documentary on the Holocaust. 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 No-Colonialisme. 1958 [L'Express]. Paris: Gallimard, 1978. Print. 31 The Question was first published in the UK. Soon after Sartres Une Victoire a new edition was published in French by Les ditions de Minuit.
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explained, she d id not want Jean Paul S artres introduction to be included in the new edition of The Wretched of the Earth because he took a pro-Israel position and thus showed that he supported colonialism. Jean Genet, in contrast, supported not only the Black Panthers in the US but also the Palestin ians. 1967 marks a d ivision, where some Jews made what we c all a rightwar d turn, splitt ing off from the Third-worldist (later multic ultural) coalition, struggle, e ven though many Jews continued to be allied with Third-worldist and minoritarian 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 Worldism and later mult icultur alism with antiIsrael and even anti-Semitic posit ions. ES/PS: Further within geopolitics, and back to Brazil, how do you see the countrys position towa rds other (formally) subaltern regions, as it emerges as a potentiall y hegemonic power? For example, Bra zil has been investing in African countries and gearing its attention to the African countries that hav e Portugues e as th eir official language through the CPLP 33. Shohat: Well, certainly Brazil, as a huge country and the worlds sixth economy, has a le gitim ate desire to be recognized as a global power. That was alread y clear with Brazils desire to be a member of the Security Council in the UN. The very fact that Srgio de Mello 34 was se lected as the Brazilian representative to Iraq with tragic conse quences he also represented something very positive for Iraq. But Brazil has at times played an ambiguo us convoluted role in the Middle East, as when it sold, not unlike the US, airplanes to Iraq durin g the Saddam H ussein er a. Husse in was a fasc ist dictator, not so different from the Brazil 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 dictator. But overall, we think that Brazil, unlike the perpetually warring arms-se lling US, has been a pacifying force in the world.
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 Pases Africanos de Lngua Portuguesa. 34 Brazilian employee of the United Nations killed during an attack to Canal Hotel in Bagdad in 2003.
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Stam: We also have the que stion, of course, of Blackness and black identity vis-vis Afric a and the Afro-diaspora. On the one hand, you have the Brazilian economic outreach to Africa. You also find more and more African students coming from Angola and Mozambique to Brazilian universities, a phenomenon we also find in the US with what are called the neo-Africans from Senegal, Nigeria, Kenya and so forth. In both Brazil and the US, yo u have the problem of Eurocentric educ ational sy stems that tend to treat Africa, when they dont ignore it completely, as a victim continent, a slave s continent, without any autonomous history. These ideas have been challenged by many scholars in both countries, for example people like [Luiz Felipe de] A lencastro who studies the South Atlantic in such a way as to emphasize African agency. ES: Recently, affirmative-action policie s have been gain ing ground in Brazil, in a way, to come to terms with the subalte rn state of A fric an descendants; but there is no real public recollection towards the violence deployed against blac k individ uals dur ing and after colonization. Shohat: The question is: within which kind of metanarrative ? Is it about the narrative of bringing modernity to Africa? Is it the same kind of resc ue trope narrative ? Is Brazil now to be seen as almost the Western country vis-- vis backward Afr ica? Lula s surprised reaction to African modernity nem parece frica! 35 is in this sense symptomatic. Apart from candombl and capoeir a and the Afro-blocos which are also very imp ortant how does Africa figure in contemporary Brazilian polit ical discourse ? These would be cruc ial 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 English comes from Portugue se. Some of the first blacks in Manhattan were Afro-Brazilians of Bantu background, whose names Simon Congo, Paulo dAngola betray their origins. The Dutch, in their fight against the Native Americans and the British, decided to have some blac ks with them from the Portuguese areas and give them freedom and land in exchan ge for them fighting against the British. For example
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.
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the land on which exists SOBs (Sounds of Brazil), the nightclub where Brazilian music ian s like G ilberto Gil, M artinho da Vila, and Djavan often play, belonged, in a remarkable continuity, to Simon Congo. Shohat: The New York/Brazil [connection] also in volves 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 Inquisition continued in the Americas, includin g in Brazil. A [Luso-]Brazilian film, 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 Portugue se Jews came here [to the Netherlands] Sp inoza, etc.. So in the North of Brazil 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 retreating from Pernambuco, they kept to New Amsterdam that is New York, which is why the first synagogue in New York is a Portugue se synago gue : 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 Portugue se language. There is another expression in English, by the way, that is pickaninny to refer to a little black c hild, which comes from Portuguese pequininho. So through language you see a certain cultural interconnectedness, despite myths of separateness. Shohat: That is why translation was also a key issue for us. Not just literal translat ion but also as a trope to evoke all the fluidit ies and transformat ions and indigenizations that occur when ide as fora de lugar 37 cross borders and travel from one place to another. In intellectual life also, navegar preciso. ES/PS: Race, however, is not usually an issue, a qu estion in Cultural Translation Studies, which became an important field of s chola rship. Is this absence the reas on wh y you chos e the title Ra ce in Translation t o your new book? Is it a provocation? Stam: Not really. We tried so many tit les so it is almost an accident that race ended up so foregrounded.
O Judeu. Dir. Azulay, Jom Tob. Tatu Filmes, Metrofilme Actividades Cinematogrficas, A&B Produes, 1996. Film. 37 Schwartz, Roberto. Idias fora do lugar, Estudos Cebrap, 3 (1973). Print.
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Shohat: We actually had C ult ural Wars in Translat ion originally but the publisher did not like it, finding it too heavy, so we ended up with Race in Translatio n. Actually r ace has been a co mmon theme in Cult ural Studies includin g in figures like Stuart Hall usually as part of the mantra (class, race, gender, se xuality etc.). In the fie ld of Postcult ural Studie s, you find r ace as a theme via the references to Fanon, but it is sometimes downplayed as bein g too tied to identity politics supposedly deconstructed by poststruct uralist theory. Postcolonial Studie s, in our vie w, is sometimes rather patronizin g toward the various forms of Ethnic Studie s and Are a St udie s (Native Amer ican Studie s, Afro-diasporic Stud ies, Latino Studies, Lat in American Studie s, Pac ific Studie s, Asian Stud ies etc.), ignoring their contribution, includin g in the ways that Ethnic Studies opened up the acade me for Postcolonial Studie s to have such an important space. Stam: Postcolonialism sometimes presents itself as theoretically sophist icated , while Ethnic Studie s is unfair ly presented as lac king in theoretical aur a and prestige. Afric an American writ ing is also theoretical; it is not as if it is only one side that is theoretical. In the US , these issues also get caught up in the tensions between immigrants, including African immigrants, who do very well, while Afr ican Americ ans still remain oppressed and mar gin alized, e ven desp ite Obamas victory. You have immigrants fro m India, who are very prosperous and sometimes quite conservative, and then you have blac k Americans who have been in the US for centurie s and are not doing so well. One e ven finds tensions between African Americans and Afric ans, and between US born blacks and Caribbean blacks, because Car ibbeans are sometimes portrayed as the good minority like Asians. (One finds these sam e 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, partially because France, despite the key role of Francophone writers in all these movements, besides having a re lative ly c losed ac ademic system, was refractory to Cultur al Stud ies, Ethnic Studies, Postcolonial Studies. But we also point out that there has been a huge explo sion of writ ing on these issue s dur ing 34 P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 4 Fall 2012 ISSN: 1874-6969
the XXI century, especially after the 2005 banl ieue rebellions. Now we find B lac k Studie s la Franaise in the form of Pap Ndiaye s La Conditio n Noire 38. Shohat: But the resistance to Postcolonial and M ult icultur al Studies sometimes come from leftist Leninist radicals like [Slavo j] ie k, who attacks multic ulturalism and identity politics in a very uninformed way. (He obviously hasnt read the kind of work we talk about). One has to wonder why the Right (Bush, Cheney, Cameron, Sarkosy, Merkel) and some leftists all oppose identity politics today, although not, obviously, fro m the same angle. Stam: And in some way s it has to do with class-over-race and economics-overcult ure arguments. Because the real struggle is with global c apitalism, let us not be distracted by feminist issue s, police har assment, marginalized b lac k people, Latinos in the US, the descendants of Arab/Muslims in France, blacks and indigenous people in Brazil, etc.. Shohat: An issue where Postcolonial St udies is very valuable is in the critique of the assumptions undergird ing Area Studies, wh ich unlike Cultur al Studies h ad a very top-down origin in US foreign policy, and which often separate s Latin America (over there) and Latinos (bac k here), the Middle East (over there) and the Middle Easterners (spread throughout the Americas, includin g in Brazil where it is often said that there are more Lebanese than in Lebanon itself). An anthology I co-edited, due out soon, treats this topic. So what we are arguin g for is to bring those things together, because Area Studies problematic ally segregates this global flow of people, of ideas, of c ult ures; 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 revolution and the age of revo lut ion, never talk about Haiti, wh ich was the most radical of the revolut ions, because it was nat ional, social, anti-slavery, etc.. And we remind our readers that the first postcolony and neo-colony was newly independent Haiti. In 1804 France punished them for defeating the French army, by giving them huge debts. So the
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Ndi ay e , P ap. L a Condit i on N oir e. P ari s: C al mann-L v y , 2 0 08 . P ri nt.
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IMF of its time was France. Later, the US invaded Hait i, and France and the US collaborated in deposing Aristide. 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 Latin Americans have this reserve: And what about Latin America? B ut in a sense we should just do our work, and not just complain about Postcolonial Stud ies not doing it. We are part of Postcolonial Studies, after all. ES/PS: In your chapter in E u r op e i n B l a c k a n d Wh i t e 39 you have warn ed against the master narrativ es of comparison in Postcolonial criticism, which impose trav el routes wit hin rigidly imagined cultura l geographies. In your opinion, which id eas, concepts and theories are not traveling enough? Shohat: I think this whole que stion of making links, the method of making lin ks and what we emphasize as linked analo gie s are missin g for us in certain geographies of trave ling theory. We have always been against a certain kind of isolationist and nation-state base d approach, much more in favor of a broad , multid irectional, more relational approach. Stam: But in our recent book we were lim ited to what we knewwhich is France, Brazil, and the US (and for Ella, the Middle E ast, although I know a b it about that from having lived in North Africa and now in Abu Dhabi). One could ar gue for South-South Studies, for example embracing India and Brazil as multi-ethnic, multi-religious countries fro m the Global South. It always occur s to us that Brazilian theories of film wo uld be highly rele vant to Indian cinema. In India you have this binar ism, for the intellectuals, of the bad Bollywood and the good art film, while Brazilians were questionin g this hierarchy already
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.
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in the 1970s by looking posit ive ly at the Chanchadas. Tro pic lia, Carmen Miranda, da-da So I think a lot of places could le arn from Brazil, which is why people argue that Brazil was post-modern avant la letre. Tropicl ia was quest ioning high and low c ult ure, incorporating global mass-media c ulture, promoting syncretisms. In terms of syncretism, you look at a 1928 novel, Mac unama, 40 who was himse lf rac ially multiple, and who cre ated a character sem nenh um c arter. The character constantly mutates like a c hameleon. If that is not postcolonial hybridity, I dont know what it is. Shohat: The problem is that this type of knowledge and analysis tends to be lim ited to Brazilian Stud ies, when it is relevant to the whole world. So its Brazil, and Brazilian c ult ure and C ultural Studie s, that is not trave ling enough. Every country has rebelle d against co lonialism, produced it s quantum of thought and art, includin g the Arab world, Asia, and the indigenous wor ld. Stam: Every country should be part of the postcolonial debate. Now its time for countries like Brazil to be the source of ideas fora de lugar! So, even though Brazil is emerging as a kind of global economic power, it remains peripheralized as a cultur al/philosophical power when it is still too often seen as irrelevant to Postcolonial St udie s and Cultural Studies. Shohat: So, for us it is not only about m ult iply ing geo graphies b ut also about multip lying the rubric s and theories and gr ids in order to see the relationalit ies and linked analo gie s. You c an take any place on the planet; to speak of Vietnam is to speak of French and American imperialism, to see it as ex ist ing in relation to Senegal and T unisia as fe llow French colonies, or in relation to France and the US as colonial/ imperial powers. B ut it does not have to pass via a center, which is why we argued early on in Unthinking Eurocentrism for polycentrism and multiperspectivalism with a cyber-like openness of points of entry and departure, while also recognizin g geopolitic al asymmetries and uneven-ness. Stam: Part of the point of our new book is to defend Brazilian intellectuals, sugge sting that Roberto Schwarz, Ismail Xavier, Haroldo de Campos, Srgio Costa, Abdias do Nasc imento are just as interesting as Fredric Jameson or
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Andrade, Mrio de. Macunama, O Heri Sem Nenhum Carter. So Paulo: Oficinas Grficas de Eugenio Cupolo, 1928. Print
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Pierre Bourdie u. It is not a hierarchy. They should all be translated. So we talk about the fact that Brazilian intellectuals tend to know the French and the Americans, but how many French and Americans know the Brazilian writers? Brazilian popular culture is a different case, but it too should be better known, since Brazilian music, for example, is so amazingly erudite and sophisticated, and popular, at the very same time. Caetano Veloso, for instance, dialogues with Roberto Schwarz essay on Tropiclia by answerin g: Bras il absurdo mas no surdo. 41 How many places in the world have popular music ian s who talk about Heide gger in their songs, or write a lyrical history of a film movement, as Caetano does in Cinema Novo 42? or literary intellectuals like Z Miguel Wisnik who compose erudite sambas and p lay Scott Joplin compositions backwards! To us, music and art can often say as much as academ ic writ ing. ES/PS: The Atlantic is a recurrent trope in the common analogies and frequent routes taken in the travelin g of ideas. Do you consid er the Atlantic, as mu ch as L u s ofon i a for insta nce, one such a mast er narrative of comparison that dominates the Post colonial field? Is it possible to appropriate them and use them productively or should we a im to get rid of them in due course? Shohat: Perhaps Lusofonia h as been visib le in Postcolonial Studies because of the question of the Black Atlantic and slavery but in fact, if we think of the Lusophone world, then we will have to connect it to India, Goa, the Indian Ocean, Macao, e ven the remnants of Portuguese settlements 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 B lac k Atlantic (we speak of a Red Atlantic), circ um-Atlantic performance (Roach), tidalectic s (Kam au Brathwaite), liquid modernity (Bauman) as a way to find a more fluid lan guage that goes beyond the rigidit ies of n ation-state borders. Its not a matter of getting r id of but of expanding to see the currents of the Atlantic feeding into the Pacific.
41 42
Veloso, Caetano. "Love, Love, Love." Muito (Dentro da Estrela Azulada). Universal, 2007. CD. Veloso, Caetano. "Cinema Novo." Tropiclia 2. WEA, 1993. LP.
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Shohat: You have Pac ific Stud ies, you h ave Indian Oce an Studies, you have Mediterranean Stud ies, and even Delt a St udie s, and Island Studies. A recent paper stressed Ob ama as an islander Hawai, Indonesia, Manhattan! It is also a que stion of modesty. We cannot know everything the Blac k and Red an d White Atlantic s are already huge subjects. So it is more about connecting other currents. Franoise Ver gs, who was born in Re union, but went to Alger ia to join the Revolution and subse quently st udied in the US and France, but teache s in England thus incarnating this transnational approach -- always makes this point that slavery penetrated Reunion; colonialism was everywhere so, wherever travelers trave led and left their marks. A ctually wh at is use ful here is Jame s Cliffords metaphor of routes. Routes are also oceanic of co urse, so they are important. But this is not to substitute land. It is not an either-or question; it is a matter of focus and openness to new knowledges, languages, and grids. ES/PS: You spoke of the R ed Atlantic, and about the trav eling of indigenous epistemologies bet ween Europe and the indigenous Americas. Could you elaborat e? Stam: Yes, we point out that there have been five centuries of
philosophical/literary/anthropological interlocution between French writers and Brazilian ind ians, between French protestants like Jean de Lry, between three Tupinamb in France and Montaigne, all the way up to Lvi-Strauss who worked with the Nambiquara and Pierre Clastres ( Society against the State 43) and Ren Gir ard (who talks about Tupin amb cannibalism), and rever sing the current, Eduardo Viveiros de C astro, who sees the Amazonian indians through a Deleuzian gr id. We start to find a more equal dialogue between western intellect uals and native thinkers. For example, Sandy Grande is a Quechua from Peru who teaches in an American Unive rsity. She wrote a book called Red Pedago gy 44, which is a cr itical d ialogue with the most radical M arxist, femin ist, revolut ionary, multic ult ural advoc ates of a Freire-style r adical pedagogy, but she speaks as an equal and even a cr itic who says they have a lot to learn from indigenous
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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.
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internationally . Kay apo filmmakers who could not travel with passports until the 1988 Brazilian constitution meet aboriginal Australian and indigenous Alaskan filmmakers in fest ivals in New York and Toronto. Davi Yanomami relates the massacre of the Yanomami o utside of Brazil. Raoni and Stin g meet with Franois Mitterrand in the 1980s. A lready in the XVI century, Paragua u met French royalty. In the XVII century, Pocahontas met Brit ish royalty and playwr iters like Ben Jonson. We forget that, in the early centuries of contact, Native leader s like C unhambebe (portrayed in Como Era Gostoso meu Francs 45) were received as royalty by the French. We forget that the Tupin amba 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 h ave an Aymara president in Bolivia, Evo Morales, who has appeared to wild applause on the Jon Stewart Daily Show. Some Andean countries have inscribed in their constitutions the right of nature not to be harmed. So without being e uphoric, as we know th ings are not going exact ly we ll for indigenous peoples, there are nevertheless very important counter-currents.
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Como Era Gostoso meu Francs. Dir. Nelson Pereira dos Santos. Regina Films, New York Films, 1971. Film.
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CLAUDIA DE LIMA COSTA

U ni v e rsi dade Fe de ral de Santa C atari na
FEMINISMO E TRADUO CULTURAL: SOBRE A COLONIALIDADE DO GNERO E A DESCOLONIZAO DO SABER 1
Introduo As teorias ps-coloniais vm exercendo uma influncia significat iv a na reconfigura o da crt ica cultural. Pr ovocando um de slocamento de abordagens d icotmicas dos conflitos scio-polticos a favor de um pensamento do interstcio o qual enfat iza redes de re lac ionalidades entre foras hegemnicas e subalternas, e a pr olifer ao de temporalidades e histrias e ssas teorias constituem hoje um campo transdisciplinar ub quo e profuso. Nas pginas que se se guem, analiso as relaes entre a crt ic a ps-colonial e as teorias fem inist as da dife rena (latino-americ ana) a part ir do processo de tradu o c ult ural. A s teorias femin istas latino-americ anas, articuladas por sujeitos subalternos/racializados, operam dentro de uma referncia epistemolgica d ist inta do modelo que estrut ura as relaes entre centro e periferia, tradio e modernidade. Produto da transcult ura o e da d iasporizao que c riam disjuntur as entre tempo e espao, o cronotopo desses feminismos o interstcio e sua prtica, a traduo busc ando abertura para outras formas de conhecimento e humanidade. De que forma as teorias femin istas no contexto latino-americano traduzem e de scolonizam a crt ica ps-colonial? Q ue tipos de media o so necessr ios nessas trad ues fem inist as e latino-american as do pscolonial? Quais so se us limites? Estas so algumas indagaes a respeito
1
Gostaria de agradecer as recomendaes de reviso dos/as pareceristas annimos/as, bem como as inmeras leituras e sugestes generosas de Sonia E. Alvarez.
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das
tendncias
tericas
contemporneas
dentro
do
feminismo
que
explorarei a se guir na tentativa de mape ar necessar iamente de forma abreviada possve is rumos par a os e studos de gnero e feminismo no contexto latino-americano/brasile iro. O uso que fao do termo traduo o mesmo da acepo dada por Niranjan a (47- 86), isto , ele no se refe re exclusivamente s disc usses sobre estratgias dos processos semiticos na rea dos est udos da tradu o, mas tambm aos debates sobre traduo cultural. A noo de traduo cult ural (esboada, em um prime iro momento, nas discusses sobre teoria e prtica etnogrficas 2 e, posteriormente, exploradas pelas teorias pscoloniais) 3 se baseia na viso de que qualquer processo de descr io, interpretao e dissemina o de ide ias e vise s de mundo est sempre preso a relaes de poder e assimetrias en tre linguagens, regies e povos. No de se e stranhar, ento, que a teoria e prtic a da traduo hegemnicas tenham surgido da necessidade de disseminao do Evange lho, quando um dos sentidos de traduzir significou converter. Traduo cultural na virada ps-colonial 4 Diante das profundas mudanas ocasionadas pelos processos cada vez mais intensific ados d a globalizao, as c ategorias tradicionais de anlise da modernidade (inc luindo as marxistas) 5 j no conseguem mais dar conta das transformaes identitrias, espaciais, econmicas, cult urais e polticas de nossa contemporaneidade. Como nos mostrou Appadurai, os fluxos tecnolgico s, financeiros, imagticos, ideol gicos e diaspricos, entre outros, que caracter izam o mundo globalizado estabelecem interconexes e fratur as t o complexas e em nve is t o diversos entre o local e o global que tornam obsoletos os protocolos discip linare s convencionais ut ilizados na descri o do mundo sociocultural. A crtic a ps-colonial sur ge, ento, como uma tentativa terica e metodolgic a de
Veja, por exemplo, as discusses na antologia organizada por Clifford e Marcus. Fao referncia aqui aos escritos de Spivak (Critique of Postcolonial Reason) e de Bhabha (The Location of Culture). 4 Para as acirradas disputas sobre a adequao do termo ps-colonial no contexto da Amrica Latina, veja a antologia recente editada por Moraa, Dussel e Juregui. 5 Refiro-me s categorias tais como classe, naco, racionalidade, etc., principalmente quando abordadas fora do marco da interseccionalidade do gnero, raa, etnia e sexualidade, entre outras.
2 3
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preencher
vcuo
analtico
causado
pela
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de
novas O
temporalidade s d isjuntivas e in stabilidades do cap italismo contemporneo, bem como pela complexifica o das rela es e assimetrias de poder. ps-colonial busc a visibilizar os mecanism os constitutivos de ssa realidade global (produto da convergncia entre capitalismo, modernidade e uropeia e colonialismo) e, em seu projeto maior de t ransformao radical, iluminar o caminho para alm do moderno e do ocidental. N as palavras de Venn, ecoando Young, postcolonial critique therefore cannot but connect with a history of emancipatory struggle s, encompassing anti-colonial struggle s as well as the struggles that contest economic, religio us, ethnic, and gender forms of oppression [], on the principle that it is possib le and imperative to create more equal, convivial and just soc ieties. It follows that the construction of an analyt ical appar atus that enables the necessary interdisc iplinary work to be done is a central part of the task. (35) luz do remapeamento de todos os tipos de fronteiras e em um contexto de viagens, migraes e deslocamentos sempre interconectados, incluindo o trnsito transnacional de teorias e conceitos, a quest o da traduo se torna premente, constituindo, de um lado, um e spao nico para a anlise dos pontos de interseco (ou transcult ura o) entre o local/global na produo de cosmopolitismos vernaculare s (Hall, Thinking the Diaspora 11) e, de outro, um a perspectiva privilegiada para a anlise d a representao, do poder e das assimetrias entre linguagens na formao de imaginr ios soc iais. Na cr tica ps-colonial, a lgica da traduo c ult ural se refere ao processo de deslocamento da noo de diferena par a o conceito derridiano de diff rance que, segundo Hall, aponta para um processo que nunca se completa, mas que permanece em sua indecibilidade (Quando foi o Ps-colonial? 74). Trata-se da noo de traduo como relac ionamento com a diferena radical, inassimilvel, do/a outro/a. Nas palavras de Venn, agora ressoando as ideias de Bhabha (Th e Location of Culture), 43 P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 4 Fall 2012 ISSN: 1874-6969
translat ions across heterolingual and c ult urally heterogeneous and polyglot borders allow for the feints, the camouflages, the displacements, ambivalences, mimicrie s, the appropriations, that is to say, the complex stratagems of disidentificat ion that leave the subaltern and the subjugated with the space for resistance. (115) A partir do reconhecimento da incompletude e incomensurabilidade de qualquer perspectiva analtic a ou experiencial, Santos prope para a crtica ps-colonial uma teoria da tradu o como negociao dial gic a, articuladora de uma inteligib ilidade mt ua e no h ierrquica do mundo. A vir ada trad utria, por assim dizer, mostra que a traduo excede o processo lingustico de transferncias de sign ificado s de uma linguagem para outra e busca ab arcar o prprio ato de enunciao quando falamos estamos sempre j engajadas na trad uo, t anto para ns mesmas/os quanto para a/o outra/o. Se falar j implic a traduzir e se a traduo um processo de abertura / ao outra/o, nele a identidade e a alteridade se mist uram, tornando o ato tradutrio um processo de des-locamento. Na traduo, h a obrigao moral e poltic a de nos desenraizarmos, de vivermos, mesmo que temporariamente, sem teto para que a/o outra/o possa habitar , tambm provisoriamente, nossos lugares. T raduzir significa ir e vir (worldtraveling para L ugones [Play fulness, World-Trave ling]), estar no entrelugar (Santiago), na zona de contato (Pratt), ou na fronteira (Anzalda Borderlands/L a Frontera). Signific a, enfim, existir sempre des-locada/o. aqui no tropo da traduo que gost aria de traar uma estreita relao entre femin ismos e ps-colonialismos, rela o essa que tem sido historicamente silenc iad a e, portanto, invisib ilizada nos debates latinoamericanos (provenientes do norte e do sul das Amricas) sobre a crt ic a ps-colonial. Quando mencionadas, tan to feministas quanto teorias feminist as so apropriadas apenas como significantes de resistncia e no como produtoras de conhecimentos outros. Elas figuram, par a lembrar Richard (Feminismo, experiencia 738), como um espao vazio (corpo concreto) para ser preenchido com o conhecimento (mente abstrata) daque les intelectuais situados em instit ui es ac admic as de elite. Contudo, 44 P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 4 Fall 2012 ISSN: 1874-6969
como saliento acima, se o conceito de traduo est alojado no cerne da crtica ps-colonial, e tendo em vist a que o fem inismo uma prt ic a terica e poltica invariave lmente tradutria, engajada em um constante ir e vir (world-travel ing), ento urge trazer as contribuies feministas para a mesa da ce ia ps-colonial e, num ge sto de traio (presente em todo ato de traduo), subverter sua gastronomia patriarcal e descoloniz- la. A invisibilid ade, no somente da crtica fe minista, mas de outros suje itos indgenas e afro-lat ino-americanos na c onfigur ao de novos sabere s subalternos j se tornou bus isness as usual nas antologias sobre o pscolonial pub lic adas em univer sidades de elite nas Amricas. Cabe, ento, perguntar: qual o lugar das teorias feministas nos debates sobre o ps-colonialismo latino-americano? Quais as implicaes dessas questes para geopolt icas do conhecimento e estratgias de traduo cultur al? Par a melhor entender como a teorizao feminista sobre o ps-colonial representa uma forma de descolonizao do saber, aludire i ao conceito de colonialid ade do poder, abordando uma contenda significat iva entre dois intelectuais: o pe ruano Anibal Quijano, quem (a partir do sul) cunhou o conceito de colonialidade do poder, e a crtica deste a partir da noo de colonialidade do gnero articulada pela emigr argentina Maria Lugones. Feminismo e ps-col onialis mo: as colonialidades do poder e do gnero Colonialid ade do poder, na acepo de Quijano, um conceito que d conta de um dos e le mentos fundantes do atual padro de poder, a c lassific ao social bsic a e universal da populao do planeta em torno da ideia de ra a. Essa ideia e a classifica o social baseada nela ( ou racista) foram originadas h 500 anos junto com Amrica, Europa e o capitalismo. So a mais profunda e perdurvel expresso da dominao colonial e foram impostas sobre toda a popula o do planeta no curso da expanso do colonialismo europeu. Desde ento, no atual p adro mundial de poder, impregnam 45 P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 4 Fall 2012 ISSN: 1874-6969
todas e cad a uma das reas de existncia social e constit uem a mais profund a e eficaz forma de dominao social, material e intersubjet iva, e so, por isso mesmo, a base intersubjet iva mais un iversal de dominao poltic a dent ro do atual padro de poder. (Colonialidade, poder 4) Na Amrica, a ide ia de ra a, Quijano (Colonialidad de l poder, eurocentrismo) continua, foi uma forma de dar legitimidade s relaes de dominao impostas pela conquista. O estabe lecime nto subsequente da Europa como uma nova id-entidade dep ois da Amric a e a expanso do colonialismo europeu pelo resto do mundo conduzir am ao de senvolvimento da perspectiva eurocntric a do conhecimento ... Desde ento [a ideia de raa] provou ser o instrumento mais eficaz, dur adouro e universal de domin ao social, dependendo inclusive de outro, igualmente universal porm mais antigo, o interssex ual ou de gnero. (203, minha traduo) Vale re ssaltar dois pontos sobre as cita es acim a. Pr imeiro, par a Quijano (Colonialidad de l poder, eurocentrismo), colonialidade e colonialismo se referem a fenmenos diferentes, porm interrelacionados. Colonialismo representa a domina o poltico-econmica de alguns povo s sobre outros e (analit icamente falando) anterior colonialidade que, por sua ve z, se refere ao sistema de c lassific a o universal existente no mundo h mais de 500 anos. Colonialidade do p oder, portanto, no pode existir sem o evento do colonialismo. Segundo, e mais signific ativo para o propsito deste ensaio, a colonialidade do gnero ficou subordinada colonialid ade do poder quando, no sculo XVI, o princpio da classific ao racial se tornou uma forma de domina o social. De acordo com Quijano (Colonialid ad de l poder, eurocentrismo), a domina o do gnero se subordina, ento, hierarquia superior-infe rior da classific ao rac ial. A produtividade do conceito de colonialidade do poder est na articula o da ideia de raa como o elemento sine qua non do colonialismo e 46 P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 4 Fall 2012 ISSN: 1874-6969
de suas man ifest aes neocoloniais. Quando trazemos a cate goria de gnero para o centro do projeto colonial, podemos ento traar um a genealo gia de sua formao e ut iliza o como um mecanismo fundamental pelo qual o capitalismo colonial global est ruturou as assimetrias de poder no mundo contemporneo. Ver o gnero como categoria colonial tambm nos permite historicizar o patriarcado, salientando as maneiras pelas quais a heteronormativid ade, o cap italismo e a classific ao rac ial se encontram sempre j imbricados. Se gundo Lugones (Heterosexualisms), Intersectionality re veals what is not seen when categories such as gender and race are conceptualized as separate from each other. The move to intersect the categories has been motivated by the difficultie s in making visible those who are dominated and victimized in terms of both categories. Though everyone in capitalist Eurocentered modernity is both raced and gendered, not everyone is dominate d or victimized in terms of their race or gender. Kimberl Crenshaw and other women of color femin ists have ar gue d that the categories have been understood as homogenous and as pickin g out the dominant in the group as the norm; thus women black p icks out picks out white bourgeois women, men picks out white bourgeois men, black heterosexual men, and so on. It becomes logically c lear then that the logic of categoric al separation d istorts what ex ists at the intersection, such as vio lence against women of color. Given the construction of the categories, the intersection misconstrues women of color. So, once intersectionality shows us wh at is missing, we have ahead of us the task of reconceptualizin g the logic of the intersection so as to avoid separability. It is only when we perceive gender and r ace as intermeshed or fused that we actually see women of color. (192- 3) Para est a autora, o conceito de colonialidade do poder, introduzido por Quijano (Colonialidad del poder, e urocentrismo), ainda se apoia em uma 47 noo biol gic a (e binr ia) de sexo e em uma concepo
heterossexual/patriarc al do poder para explic ar a forma pela qual o gnero figura nas disputas de poder par a o co ntrol of sex, its reso urces, and products (190). No colonialismo e no capitalismo global e urocntrico, the naturalizing of sexual differences is another product of the modern use of science that Quijano points out in the case of race . ( 195). Portanto, delimitar o conceito de gnero ao controle do sexo, seus recursos e produtos constitui a prpria colonialidade do gnero. Ou seja e esta uma crt ica fundamental viso que Quijano tem do gnero a imposio de um sistema de gnero binrio fo i to constitutiva da colonialidade do poder quanto esta ltima foi constitutiva de um sistema moderno de gnero. Assim sendo, tanto a raa quanto o gnero so fices poderosas e interdependentes. Ao trazer a colonialidade do gnero como elemento recalc itrante na teorizao sobre a colonialidade do poder, abre-se um importante espao para a articulao entre feminismo e ps-colonialismo cujas metas so, entre outras, lutar por um projeto de descoloniza o do saber eurocntrico-colonial atravs do p oder interpretativo das teorias feminist as, visando o que Walsh ir chamar de pensamiento pr pio lat inoamericano. Segundo a autora, [i]n this sense pensamiento propio is sugge stive of a different critic al thought, one that seeks to mark a diver gence with dominant universal thought (includin g in it s critical, progressive, and left ist formation s). Such divergence is not meant to simplify indigenous or blac k thought or to relegate it to the category or status of loc alized, situated, and cult urally specific and concrete thinking; that is to say, as nothing more than local knowle dge understood as mere experience. Rather it is to put forwar d its politic al and decolonial ch aracter, permitting a connection then among var ious pensamientos propios as part of a broader project of other critical thought and knowledge. ( 231) Apesar de Walsh no fazer nenhuma meno em seu art igo s teorias feminist as que sur gem na Amrica Latina como parte integrante do movimento de descolonizao do saber, de construo de oppositional 48 P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 4 Fall 2012 ISSN: 1874-6969
politics of knowledge in terms of the gendered bodies who suffer r acism, discr imination, re jection and violence (Pr ada), gostar ia aqui de apropriar sua d isc usso sobre a geopoltic a do co nhecimento e a necessidade de construo de novas cosmolo gias e epistemologias a partir de outros lugare s de enuncia o para inc luir a in terveno poltica fem inist a de traduo transloc al dentre esses outros esp aos de teoriza o, interpretao e interveno na Amrica Latina. Feminismo e traduo: ru mo descoloniza o do saber No cenrio contemporneo que marca o desaparecimento de vias de mo nic a e o sur gimento de zonas (cada vez m ais volte is) de tradu o, 6 e epistemologias de fronteira, cabe c rtica feminista exam inar com ateno o processo de traduo cultural das teorias e dos conceitos feminist as de modo a desenvolver um a habilidade transnac ional para ler e escrever (Spivak, Po litic s of Translation 187- 95). Est a tarefa re quer o mapeamento dos deslocamentos e da traduo contnua das teorias e dos conceitos feministas, d as d inmic as de le itura, bem como das lim itaes impostas por mecanismos de mediao e tecnologias de controle sobre o trfego das teorias. Corajosamente trafic ando teorias fem inistas pelas zonas de contato, feminist as latino-american as e latinas residindo nos Estados Unidos, por exemplo, desenvolvem uma poltic a de tradu o que se utiliza de conhecimentos produzido s pelos femin ism os latinos, de cor, ps-coloniais no norte das Amricas para iluminar an lises de teorias, prticas, culturas e polticas no sul e vice-versa. A prtic a do world-travel ing evidencia como a traduo indispensvel, em termos polt icos e tericos, para a formao de alianas feministas ps-coloniais/ps-ocidentais, j que, conforme argumenta Alvarez, a Amric a Latina entendida enquanto formao cult ural transfronteiri a e n o territorialme nte delimit ada (744) de ve ser vista como translocal. A noo de translocalidade possibilita, por sua ve z, a
Tomo emprestado de Emily Apter (On Translation in a Global Market 10) esta expresso. Zona de traduo uma apropriao do conceito de zona de contato, cunhado por Pratt (7) significa um lugar intersectado por vrias fronteiras lingusticas em constante confronto e disputa. Qualquer zona de contato sempre j uma zona de traduo (Apter, The Translation Zone).
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articula o da colonialidade do poder/g nero em vrias esc alas ( locais, nacionais, regionais, globais) a posies de suje ito (gnero/sexual, tnicoracial, classe etc.) que constituem o self (La-Montes 122, m inha traduo). Em um artigo introdutrio a um debate so bre mestiagem, p ublic ado na Revista Estudos Feministas, Costa e vila discorrem sobre a importncia dos escritos de Anzald a (Borderlands/L a Frontera) em relao nova mestia como exemplo do que seria um suje ito ps-colonial feminino no espao lat ino-americano. Marcado por uma subjet ividade nomdic a moldada a partir de exc luses materiais e histricas, o suje ito ps-colonial de Anzalda art icula uma identidade mestia que j antecipava a crtic a descolonial ao pensamento binrio e a modelos de hibridismo cult ural ancorados em noes de assimila o e cooptao. Enfatizando que os terrenos da diferena so mais que nun ca espaos de poder, a autora complica rad icalmente o discurso fem inista da diferena, inclusive da diferena colonial. M igr ando pelos entrelugares da diferena, mostra como esta constitud a na histria e adquire forma a partir das interseces sempre locais suas mesti agens mlt iplas reve lam simultaneamente mecanismos de sujei o e ocasies para o exerccio da liberdade. Em um dos trechos cannicos e de grande fora retrica de La conciencia de la mestiza, Anzald a conclama: Como mestiza, eu no tenho pas, min ha terra natal me despejou; no entanto, todos os pases so meus porque eu sou a irm ou a amante em potencial de todas as mulheres. (Como lsbic a no tenho raa, meu prprio povo me rejeita; mas so u de todas as raas porque a queer em m im existe em todas as raas.). Sou sem cultura porque, como uma femin ista, desafio as crenas cult urais/religiosas co letivas de origem masculin a dos indo-hispn icos e anglos; entretanto, tenho cultura porque estou participando da cria o de uma o utra cultura, uma nova histria para exp lic ar o mundo e a nossa p articipa o nele, um novo sistema de valores com imagens e smbolos que nos conectam um/a ao/ o utro/a e ao planeta. Soy um amasamiento, 50 P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 4 Fall 2012 ISSN: 1874-6969
sou um ato de juntar e unir que no apenas produz uma criatur a tanto da luz como da e scur ido, mas tambm um a criatur a que quest iona as definies de luz e de escuro e dlhes novos significado s. (707-8) A mediao tradutria que Anzalda aborda neste artigo, cruzando mundo e identid ades, tem sido vist a como uma prtic a de questionamento de nossas certezas epistemolgicas em busca de abertura para outras formas de conhecimento e de humanidade. Como enfatiza B utler, Anzalda nos mostra que it is only through exist ing in the mode of translat ion, constant translation, that we stand a chance of producing a multic ult ural understandin g of women or, indeed, of society (Undoing Ge nder 228). Outros subalternos lugares femininos no e contexto latino-americano podem ser desse s sujeito s nos
ps-coloniais
encontrados
testemunhos da guatemalteca Rigoberta Mench (Me llamo Rigoberta Mench) e da bolivian a Domitila B arrios de Chungara (Let me Speak!), nos dirios da catadora de lixo brasile ira Caro lina M aria de Jesus (Quarto de despejo), nos escritos da femin ista afro-brasileir a Llia Gonzalez (Lugar de negro), nas poesias, gr afite e performances de rua do grupo boliviano anarco-feminista Mujeres Cre ando (La Virgen de los Deseos), e nos romances autobiogrficos da escritora afro-brasile ira Conceio Evar ist o (Ponci Vicncio), entre tantas outras, bem como nos escritos e relatos que jam ais chegaro aos cnones homogeneizadores da ac ademia, 7 principalmente na fase atual de cur ioso desencanto, por parte dos intelectuais latino-americ anos e latinoamericanistas, com as promessas do teste munho como gnero literrio excntrico dos anos de lutas pela democracia na Amrica Latina. 8 Lembrando a famosa cr tic a de N ancy Miller (103- 7) aos tericos estrut uralistas e psestruturalistas ao dizer que a morte do autor declarada por Foucault (101-20) e Barthes (142- 8) coincidiu ironicamente com a ascenso da mulher de objeto condio de autora /sujeito acredito tambm no ser acaso que, por exemplo, quando mulh eres rac ializadas e subalternas
Walsh faz referncia a vrios intelectuais indgenas (infelizmente, seus exemplos so todos masculinos) que esto redesenhando um pensamento crtico descolonizado a partir da prpria Amrica Latina. 8 Ver, por exemplo, os ensaios nos livros organizados por Gugelberger e por Arias.
7
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reivindic am no testemunho um lugar de enuncia o contra hegemnico, este imediat amente perde sua aura, como diria Benjam in (19-57). 9 Norma Klahn, em lc ida anlise sobre o lugar da e scrita das mulheres na poca do latino americanismo 10 e da globalizao, mostra como o testemunho (bem como fices autobio grficas, romances, ensaios e poesias) de autoria femin ina e ligados a lutas e mobilizaes poltic as e sociais foram fundamentais na construo de uma prtica feminista sui generis. A autora argumenta que, a partir da traduo cultur al, Latin American and L atina feminists readapted femin ist liberat ion disco urses from the West, resignify ing them in relation to self- generated practices an d theorizations of gender empowerment that have emerge d from their lived experiences, particular historie s and contestatory politic s (Klahn). Tomando o exemplo do testemunho, Klahn mostra como esse gnero literr io foi mobilizado por sujeitos sub alt ernos como Mench e Chungara para, a partir d a interseo entre gnero, etnia e classe social, de sestabilizar um feminismo ocidental aind a centrado na noo de mulher essencializada. Ao desconstruir o d isc urso fem inist a dominante, os testemunhos no apenas configuram outros lugares de e nuncia o e se apropriam da representao, mas rompem tambm com o paradigma surrealista lat inoamericano (realismo mgico) a favor de uma esttic a realist a que traz o referente de volta ao centro das lut as simblicas e polt icas, documentando as violncias d a representao e da opresso: a vida no fio. Esse s textos, traduzindo/translocando teorias e prticas, im aginam formas de descolonizao d a colonialidade do poder. Leio Mench e Chungara
Gostaria de relatar uma anedota pessoal. Quando comecei a lecionar na Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina uma disciplina de teoria literria na graduao (cujo objetivo era o de introduzir o cnone literrio ocidental), optei por uma abordagem no ortodoxa. Lamos escritores cannicos ao lado de testemunhos como o de Mench (Burgos and Mench Me llamo Rigoberta Mench) e Chungara, mostrando aos/as alunos/as que esses textos ex-cntricos solicitavam outras formas de ler. Em reunio departamental sobre mudanas do currculo, um colega, professor titular, expressou sem qualquer tipo de embarao que textos de mulheres, indgenas, negros e paraplgicos deveriam ser ensinados em disciplinas optativas, no nas obrigatrias. Aps essa nefasta reunio, continuei desafiando o currculo disciplinar em minhas prticas docentes. 10 Latinoamericanismo se refere produo de conhecimentos sobre a Amrica Latina, por latino-americanos ou no, a partir das universidades e centros de pesquisa situados no Norte global (Europa e Amrica do Norte).
9
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atrav s de K lahn como tradues fem inistas e latino-americanas do pscolonial que oferecem novas propostas epistemolgicas a partir do sul. Ana Rebeca Prad a, d iscorrendo sobre a circula o de escritos de Anzald a no contexto plurinac ional boliviano, explica que qualquer traduo, sem uma adequad a mediao, c orre o risco de se tornar uma dupla traio: primeiro, traio que qualquer traduo j necessar iamente implic a em re lao ao d ito original e , segundo, traio diante da apropriao do texto trad uzido como parte de um sofistic ado apar ato terico proveniente do norte. O trabalho de mediao se faz necessr io para que a trad uo desses textos, provenientes de outras latit udes no norte, possam dialo gar com textos e prticas locais, assim contestando as formas pelas quais o sul consumido e conformado pelo norte integrando a crtic a ps-colonial em dilogos no apenas norte-sul, mas tambm sul-sul. Pr ada an alisa de forma instigante como o grupo de feminist as anar quistas bolivianas, Mujeres Creando que se autodescre vem como cholas, chotas e birlochas (termos racist as usados em refernc ia a mulheres ind genas imigrantes nas c idade s) e que tambm adotam outras designaes de subjetividade s abjet as (tais como puta, rechazada, desclasada, extranjera) , d ialogar am com Anzalda ao transportar Borderlands/L a Frontera para um contexto de poltica feminist a alm dos m uros da academia (onde esta autora havia sido inicialmente lida), estabelecendo afin idade s entre os dois projetos polt icos. Assim sendo, a linguagem de Anzald a, enunciada ao sul do norte, foi apropriada pe lo sul do sul e incorporated de facto in a transnational fe minism which (as Mujeres Creando since its beginnings st ipulated) has no frontiers but the ones which patriarchy, rac ism and homophobia insist on (Prada). 11 Conforme explica Prada Translat ing, then, becomes much more complex. It has to do with linguistic translation, yes, b ut also with making a work
11
Mujeres Creando um movimento feminista autnomo criado em 1992, em La Paz, Bolvia, e formado por mulheres de diferentes origens culturais e sociais. Enfoca a criatividade como instrumento de luta e participao social.
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availab le (with all the consequence s this might have, all the betrayals and erasures it might include ) to other audience s and letting it trave l. It also has to do with opening scenarios of conversation and proposing new horizons for dialogue. It also means opening yo ur choices, your tastes, your affinit ie s to others which in politics (as in Mujeres Creandos) can compromise (or strengthen) your principles. Translation in those terms becomes rigorously strategic and selective . Entretanto, segundo Prada, sabemos que nas viagens das teorias feminist as e pelas Amricas, ac admic as) principalmente e mediadores em suas rotas contra ativistas, hegemnicas, ex istem vr ios postos de controle (por exemplo, public aes instit uies (intelectuais, acadmicos/as) que re gulamentam se us movimentos atravs das fronteiras, facilitando ou d ific ultando acesso a text os, autoras e a debate s. Para exemplificar como este controle opera, go staria de c itar aqui um e xemplo que a terica ps-colonial aymara S ilvia Rivera Cusic anqui nos d a respeito de tais barreiras e que nos remete particularmente questo da descolonizao do saber. Falando em prol de uma economia poltica ao inv s de um a geopoltic a do conhecimento, Cusican qui (60-6) exam ina os mecanismos materiais que operam atrs dos disc ursos, argumentando que o disc urso ps-colonial do norte no apenas uma e conomia de ide ias, m as tambm de salrios, comodidade s, privil gios e valores. Universidades no norte se aliam com centros de estudos no sul, atrav s de redes de trocas intelectuais, e se tornam verdadeiros imprios de conhecimentos apropriados dos sujeitos subalternos e resignific ados sob o signo da Teoria. Cria-se um c none que invisibiliza cert os temas e fontes, ocultando outros. 12 As ide ias fluem, tais como os rios, de sul para norte e tornamse afluentes do grande s fluxos de pensame nto. Mas, como no
12
Cusicanqui se refere aqui ao livro de Javier Sanjins (El espejismo del mestizaje), discpulo de Mignolo, quem realizou um estudo sobre mestiagem na Bolvia sem fazer qualquer meno ao debate boliviano, inclusive entre os indgenas, sobre o tema.
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mercado mundial de bens materiais, as ideias tambm saem do pas convertidas em m atria prima, que r etorna misturada e regurgitad a na forma de produto acabado. Assim se constitui o cnone de uma nova rea do discur so cientfico social: o pensamento ps-colonial. (68, minha traduo) A meno que Cusican qui faz ac ima a sua discusso sobre colonialismo interno, formulada nos anos 1980 a partir da obra pioneira de Fausto Reinaga dos anos 1960 e que, nos anos 1990 foi (re)formulada por Quijano (Colonialid ad de l poder, euroce ntrismo 201- 246) na ideia de colonialidade do poder e, subse quente mente, por Mignolo (3-28) na noo (com novos matizes) de diferena c olonial. Cusic anqui explica, Minhas ide ias sobre colonialismo interno no plano do saberpoder sobre surgiram de uma trajetria a de t otalmente prpria, sobre a iluminada por outras le ituras - como a de Maurice Halb wach s a memria coletiva, Fran z Fanon internaliza o do inimigo e a de Franco Ferraroti sobre as histrias de vida e, sobretudo, a partir da experincia de ter vivido e part icipado da reorganiza o do movimento aymara e da revolta ind gena nos anos setenta e oitenta. (67, minha traduo) Com grande fora retrica, a terica aym ara nos mostra que para a descolonizao do saber no basta articular um discurso descolonial, mas preciso, sobretudo, desenvolver prtic as de scolonizadoras. Dando seguimento ao gesto dessa terica aymara, gostaria de argumentar que o feminismo brasile iro, em sua artic ula o ps-colonial, precisa trazer par a o centro de suas tradu es figuras tradutoras e tr aidoras de qualquer noo de original, de tradio, de pureza, de unicidade e de binarismos. Porm, para tal ser ia necessr io tambm confrontarmos radic almente as prtic as rac istas, sex istas e homofbicas que insistem em emudecer nossas mest ias, ndias, negras, lsbic as e queers nos seus vrios lugare s de enunc iao, porm particular mente na academia. 55 Um do s
espaos cr uciais par a tais intervenes/mediaes , obviamente, o das public aes feministas, que abordarei a se guir. Publicaes feministas e media es cult urais: des/locando o signo da teoria Como evadir as economias epistemolgic as que inst ituc ionalizaram os centros acadmicos anglfonos como grades de inteligibilidade para as teorias e, mais espec ificamente, para as teorias fem inist as? Rosi Braidotti (715- 28), falando sobre a importao-exportao de ideias ao longo da d ivisa transatlntica, argumenta, de forma deleuziana, que uma percepo crtica de como nossos conceitos esto histrica e empiricamente encrustados, re quer tanto alianas transver sais entre diferentes intelect uais, bem como um exerccio constante de tornarmo-nos poliglotas, transdiscip linr ias, enfim, nmadas. Como podemos, nos vr ios espaos feministas, de senvolver uma prtica de tradu o que responda, simultaneamente, s contingncias locais e aos fluxos globais dos disc ursos sobre gnero e feminismo? Ou, colocado de outra forma, como expor as lgic as perversas da hegemonia? No papel de coeditoras de uma sesso de debates numa das principais revistas femin istas acadm ic as brasile iras, Revista Estudos Feministas, eu e minhas colegas temos traduzido e public ado artigos tericos de vanguard a e convidado contribuies de feministas brasileir as e de outros pases latino-americanos na t entativa de proporcionar uma recepo crtica destes textos. No entanto, infelizmente as respostas no viajam de volta aos se us lugares de partida devido falta de rec ursos p ara sua ver so lngua franc a ac admic a (o ingls), re velando, portanto, um dos muitos fatores ocultos que interferem nas prtic as de tradu o c ult ural e na articulao de femin ismos transnacio nais, ps-coloniais. Como Emily Apter (On Translation 10) salienta com acerto, essas camadas de intervenes invisveis so, de forma muito bvia, cruc iais para que o texto tenha acesso traduo. nesse terreno que devemos lutar contnua e incansave lmente para deslocar teoricamen te o signo do ocidente rumo a novas linguagens e geografias ps-coloniais (Chow 303-4). Um outro fator 56 P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 4 Fall 2012 ISSN: 1874-6969
mais evidentemente oculto da colonialidade do poder que impede o deslocamento do signo terico, aludido po r Chow, se re fere s prt icas de citao dos peridicos n a construo de um mercado transnac ional de citaes. sabido que as prtic as de c itao so em grande parte responsvei s no s pela formao de cnones acadmic os, mas so tambm vistas como a medida m ais objetiva do mrito acad mico (Lutz 261-2). Como nos lembra Cusicanqui, Atravs do jogo de quem cita quem, as hie rarquias so estruturadas e acabamos tendo que comer, regurgitado, o pensamento descolonizador que os povos e intelec tuais indgenas de Bolvia, Peru e Equador haviam produzido de forma independente. (66, minha traduo) H um nmero significat ivo de estudos, na sua maioria provenientes das reas de lingustic a aplic ada /an lise do disc urso e da bib liometria, sobre os usos de citaes como uma atividade central na produo do conhecimento (Lillis et al. 110-35). Quem citado, aonde e por quem, o u seja, a geolingustic a das citaes expe as rotas atravs das quais as teorias viajam e as maneiras pelas quais linhage ns intelectuais (masc ulinas) so construdas no contexto global. Temos aqui um a ligao nem to tnue entre essas microprticas e prticas sociais m ais amplas de produo e circula o do conhecimento. Uma d as concluses rele vantes e no surpreendentes do estudo de Lillis par a a m inha discusso (cuja pesquisa abrange u 240 artigos da re a de psicologia publicados em revistas em ingls), que the global stat us of English is impactin g not only on the linguistic med ium of publicat ions but on the linguist ic medium of works that are considered citable and hence on which/whose knowledge is being allowe d to circulate. (121)
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luz dessa d isc usso, quais so as prt icas de cita o na Revist a Estudos Feministas? Tendo em vista que se trata de um a pub lic ao em portugus, um levantamento que realize i dos artigo s que foram ve iculado s no peridico em um perodo de 10 anos (1992-2002) e videnc ia um equilbrio razove l de cit aes de autoras brasileir as e estrange iras. Entre as autoras estrange iras, h uma c lar a predominncia de referncias a textos em ingl s, se guido pelos franceses. Cita es de autoras que e screvem em espanhol so m uito e scassas no pero do estudado, ganhando maior visib ilidade nas e dies mais recentes da revist a. Esse aumento coincidiu com maior publica o de artigos em espanhol por autoras residentes na Amrica Latina, conse qunc ia de uma clara interveno editorial da Revist a Estudos Feministas buscando intensific ar o dilogo com feministas congneres latino-americanas. No entanto, interessante observar que em um nmero especial do perid ico sobre raa (1994), nenhum dos textos n a rea de epistemologias e/ou metodologias feminist as tinha se quer qualquer citao a artigos em portugus ou espanhol. Algumas concluses prelim inares podem ser extradas dessa an lise inic ial. Primeiro, razo ve l esperar que para uma publica o acadm ic a brasileir a com foco no desenvolvimento e fortalecimento do campo dos estudos femin istas e de gnero a nvel nacional, a referncia a autoras brasileir as nos artigos esteja diretamente ligada s espec ific idade s contextuais. Entretanto, em uma tentativa de legitimar e consolidar o feminismo como campo disciplinar na ac ademia, nota-se uma tendncia muito clara das autoras na Revista Es tudos Feministas de c itar mais frequentemente pensadores eurocntricos (como Foucault, G iddens, Bourdieu e Lyotard, entre outros) sempre que que stes tericas so abordadas. Este ach ado corrobora apenas um ponto que j havia sido fe ito por Christian (51-63) e Lutz (249- 66), as quais e loquentemente destacaram o colonialismo dos paradigmas tericos na supresso de voze s sub alternas. De acordo com Lutz, [t]heory has ac quired a gender insofar as it is more frequently assoc iated with male writ ing, with womens writin g more often
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seen as descr iption, data, case, personal, or, in the case of feminism, merely setting the record straight. (251) 13 Em segundo lugar, sempre que a balana se inclin ava para citae s de trabalhos em ingls, o tema dos artigos tinha um foco mais transnacional, principalmente aque les c ujas discusses eram sobre teorias e metodologias na constru o de um saber feminist a, bem como sobre a interseco de gnero e raa. Em terceiro lugar, com a chegada e crescente influncia do ps-estruturalismo e da teoria queer no feminismo brasile iro na dcada de 2000 (particularmente por meio da traduo para o portugu s de Gender Tro uble, de B utler), e diante do lento declnio das abordagen s estruturalistas, at ento predominantes na soc iologia e antropologia feminist as, a tr adu o ao portugu s de te xtos em ingls em grande parte suplantou a tradu o daque les em francs, fazendo com que o ingl s se tornasse a lingua franca terica nas pginas do peridico. 14 Curiosamente, tais mud anas tericas ssmicas coincidiram, por um lado, com a proliferao na revista de artigos de outros campos disc iplinares (tais como histria, literat ura, educa o, filosofia, est udos cult urais, est udos de cinema, para c itar alguns) e com a diminuio no nmero de artigos a partir de perspectivas antropolgicas e sociol gic as, as quais haviam sido at ento o locus prevalecente de en uncia o para o feminismo brasileiro. Por outro lado, e ssa diversifica o das anlise s feminist as, que se abrir am para abordagens mais trans ou ps-discip linares, tambm pode ser interpretada, entre outros fatores, como uma resposta mudana da casa instit ucional do peridico de uma un iver sidade central (Universid ade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, o bero original da revista) par a outra (Universidade Federal de Santa C atarina), sit uada fora do eixo (So Paulo-Rio de Janeiro) do poder acadmico. Por ltimo, a presena d as teorias ps-coloniais ainda exgua no s debates feminist as brasile iros, exceto nos estudos literrios. Anlise s
Christian (51-63) traz para esta discusso a importncia do elemento racial, ou seja, como a teoria ganha no apenas um gnero, mas tambm sempre j racializada. 14 Para uma reflexo sobre os primeiros 15 anos da Revista Estudos Feministas na Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, veja seo especial da revista organizada por Minella e Maluf.
13
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interseccionais articulando gnero a outros vetores da identidade (apesar de suas crticas recentes na academia anglfona) 15 surgem aos pouco s na medida em que a ra a e o rac ismo tm ocupado o centro das atenes nos debates pblicos e nas poltic as govername ntais para corrigir desigualdade s sociais e econmicas duradouras. guisa de concluso, gostar ia de argume ntar, seguindo o conselho de Nelly Richard ( Globalizac in 4- 5), que, ao ex aminar o papel que as revist as fem inistas desempenham como mediadoras crtic as e tradutoras/traidoras no trfe go das teorias, torna-se imperativo a cr ia o de um espao par a textualidade s heterogneas. Isto implica n o s n a coexistncia de uma d iversid ade de filia es intelectuais, disciplinares e antidiscip linare s, mas tambm de uma variedade de tons e formas disc ursivas text uais autorizando vrio s lugares de enunciao e re gistros de representao (Richard, G lobalizacin heterogeneidade possib ilita uma frtil 7-8, minha traduo). Tal interao entre as re flexes
acadmic as e o utros tipos de prticas enun ciatrias e tradutrias no projeto feminist a da de scolonizao do saber. Outrossim, mostra que os saberes excedem os limites estreitos da academia e abarcam o utros topoi disc ursivos, como ONGs e os espaos da militnc ia feminista. Somente assim poderemos construir uma tradio de pensamiento prpio feminist a do ps-colonial (ou descolonial) latino-americ ano/brasileiro.
15
Para exemplos dessas crticas, ver Jasbir Puar e Kathy Davis.
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Obras Citadas Alvarez, Sonia E. Constituindo uma p oltic a femin ista tran slocal da traduo. Revista Estudos Feministas 17. 3 (2009): 743-53. Pr int. Anzald a, Gloria. La concienc ia de la mestiza/ Rumo a uma nova consciencia. Revista Estudos Feministas 13.3 (2005): 704-19. Pr int. ---. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Franc isco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987. Print. Appadurai, Arjun. Mo dernity at Large: Cul tural Dimens ions of Globaliz ation. Minneapolis: Univer sity of Minnesota Press, 1998. Pr int. Apter, Emily. The Translat ion Zo ne: A New Comparat ive Literat ure. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. Print. ---. On Translat ion in a Global M arket. Public Culture 13.1 (2001): 1-12. Print. Arias, Arturo, ed. The Rigoberta Mench Controversy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001. Print. Barthes, Roland. The Death of the Author. Image, Music, Text. Ed. Stephen Heath. New York: Hill and Wang, 1977. 142-8. Pr int. Benjamim, Walter. The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility. The Work of Art in t he Age of Its Technological Reproducibil ity and Other Writings on Media. Ed. Michael William s Jennings and Brigid Doherty. Cambridge: Harvard Un iversity Press, 2008. 19- 57. Pr int. Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culture. New York: Routledge, 2004. Print. Braidotti, Rosi. The Way We Were: Some Post-Structuralist Memoirs. Womens Studies International Forum 23. 6 (2000): 715-28. Print. Burgos, Elisabeth and Rigoberta Mench. Me llamo Rigo berta Me nch y asi me naci la conc iencia. Barcelona: Editorial Ar gos Vergara, 1983. Print. Butler, Jud ith. Undo ing Gender. New York: Routledge, 2004 Print. ---. Gender Trouble: Feminis m and the Subversio n of Identity. New York: Routled ge, 1990. Print. Guge lberger, Georg M, ed. The Real Th ing: Testimonial Discourse and Lat in America. Durham: Duke University Press, 1996. Print. Chow, Rey. Re sponse: Flee ing Ob jects. Postcolonial Studies 13.3 ( 2010) : 303-4. Pr int. 61 P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 4 Fall 2012 ISSN: 1874-6969
Christian, Barbar a. The Race for Theory. Cultural Critique 6 (1987): 5163. Pr int. Chungara, Domitila de Barrios. Let me Speak!: Testimony of Do mit ila, a Woman of the Bolivian Mines. Ed. Moema Viezzer. New York: Monthly Revie w Press, 1978. Pr int. Clifford, James and George E. Marcus (eds.). Writing Cult ure: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berke ley: Un iversity of California Press, 1986. Costa, Claudia de Lima and E liana vila. Gloria Anzalda, a conscincia mestia e o feminismo da diferena. Re vista Estudos Feministas 13.3 (2005): 691- 703. Pr int. Cusicanqui, Silvia Rivera. Chixinakax utxiwa: Una refleccin sobre prcticas y discursos descolonizadores. Buenos Aires: Tint a Limn, 2010. 53-76. Print. Davis, Kathy. Intersectionality as Buzzword. Feminist Theory 9.1 (2008): 67- 85. Pr int. Evar isto, Conceio. Ponci Vicnc io. Belo Horizonte: Mazza Edies, 2003. Print. Foucault, Miche l. What is an Author? The Foucault Reader. Ed. Paul Rabinow. New York: Pantheon, 1984. 101- 20. Pr int. Gonzalez, L lia. Lugar de negro. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Marco Zero, 1982. Print. Hall, Stuart. Quando foi o Ps-colonial? Pensando no limite. Da dispo ra: Identidades e mediaes culturais (ed. Liv Sovik). Belo Horizonte: Editora UFMG, 2003. 95-120. Pr int. ---. Thinkin g the Diaspora: Home-Thoughts from Abroad. Small Axe 6 (1999): 1- 18. Pr int. Jesus, Caro lina Mar ia de. Quarto de despejo: Dirio de uma favelada. 5th ed.. So Paulo: Editora tica, 1998. Print. Klahn, Norma. Locat ing Womens Wr iting and Translation in the Americas in the Age of Lat inoamericanismo and Globalization. Translocalit ies/Translocalidades: The Politics of Feminist Translat ion in the Latin/ a A mericas. Ed. Sonia E. A lvarez et al. D urham: Duke University Press, forthcoming. La-Montes, Agust n. A fro-Latinidade s: Bridging B lac kness and Latinid ad. Technof uturos: Crit ical Interve ntions in Lat ino/a St udies. Ed. 62 P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 4 Fall 2012 ISSN: 1874-6969
Nancy R. Mirabal and Agustn La-Montes, New York: Lexington Books, 2007. 117-40. Print. Lillis, Theresa et al. The Geolinguistics of English as an Academ ic Lingua Franca: Citat ion Practices Across English-medium National and English-medium International Journals. Internatio nal Journal of Appl ied Linguistics 20. 1 (2010): 110-35. Print. Lugones, Mara. Heterosex ualims and t he Colonial / Modern Gender System. Hypatia 22. 1 (2007): 186-209. Print. --- Play fulness, World-Trave lin g and L oving Perception. Hypatia 2. 2 (1987): 3- 19. Pr int. Lutz, Catherine. The gender of theory. Women Writ ing Culture. Ed. Ruth Behar and Deborah Gordon. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. 249-66. Print. Mignolo, Walter. Diferencia colonial y razn postoccidental. La reestructuracin de las cienc ias sociales en Amrica L atina. Ed. S antiago Castro-Gmez. Bogot: Universidad Javeliana, 2000. 3-28. Print. Miller, Nancy. Subject to Change: Reading Feminist Writing. New York: Columbia Univer sity Press, 1990. Print. Minella, L uzinete and Maluf, Sonia W. (ed.). Seo E special: Revist a Estudos Feministas 15 anos. Revista Estudos Feministas 16.1 (2008): 77127. Print. Moraa, Mabel, Enrique D usse l, and Car los A. Juregui, eds. Colonial ity at Large: Lat in America and the Postcolonial De bate. Durham: D uke Univer sity Press, 2008. Print. Mujeres Creando. La Virgen de los Deseos. Buenos Aire s: Tinta Limn, 2005. Print. Niranjan a, Tejaswini. Siting Translatio n: History, Post-Structuralism, and the Colonial Context. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. Print. Prada, Ana Rebeca. Is Anzalda Tr anslatable in Bolivia? Translocalities / Translocalidades: The Politics of Feminist Trans lation in the Latin/a Americas. Ed. Sonia E. A lvarez et al. D urham: Duke Un iver sity Press, forthcoming. Pratt, Mary L. Imperial Eyes: Studies in Travel Writ ing and Transculturatio n. New York: Routledge , 1992. Print. 63 P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 4 Fall 2012 ISSN: 1874-6969
Puar, J asbir. Id r ather be a Cyborg than a Goddess. Intersectionality, Assemblage, and Affective Politics. E ipcp: European Institute for Progressive Cultur al Po lic ies. Jan 2011. We b. 30 May 2012. Quijano, Anbal. Colonialidade, poder, globaliza o e democracia. Novos Rumos 37 (2002): 4-28. Print. ---. Colonialidad del poder, eurocentrismo y Amrica Latina. La colonial idad del saber: eurocentrismo y ciencias socialies. Perspectivas latino americanas. Ed. Ed gardo Lander. B ue nos Aires: CLACSO, 2000. 201-46. Print. Reinaga, Fausto. L a revol uci n india. 5th e d.. La Paz: Fundac in Amut ica Fausto Reinaga, 2011. Pr int. Richard, Ne lly. Femin ismo, experiencia y representacin. Revist a Iberoamericana 62. 176-177 (1996): 733- 44. Print. ---. Globalizac in/traducc in/disem inaci n. Paper presented at the Seminar Intellectual Agend as and the Localit ies of Knowledge, Social Science Research Council, Mexico City, 3 October 2001. Sanjin s, Javier. El espejismo del mestiz aje . La Paz: IFEA, Embajada de Francia y PIEB, 2005. Print. Santiago, S ilviano. O entre-lugar do discurso lat ino-americano. U ma literatura nos trpicos. So Paulo: Editora Per spectiva, 1978. 11-28. Print. Santos, Boaventur a de Sousa. Para uma sociologia das ausncias e um a sociologia das emergncias. Revista Crtica de Cincias Sociais 63(2002): 237-80. Print. Spivak, Gayatri C. Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present. Cambridge: Har vard Un iversity Press, 1999. Pr int. ---.. The politics of Translation. Destabil izing Theory: Contemporary Feminist Debates. Ed. Michele Barrett and Anne Phillips. Cambridge: Polity Press. 177- 200. Pr int. Venn, Couze. The Postcolonial Challenge: Towards Alternative Worlds. London: Sage, 2006. Pr int. Young, Robert J. C. Postcolonial ism: An Historical Introduction. Ox ford: Blac kwe ll, 2001. Print.
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Walsh, Catherine. Sh ifting the Geopolitics of Knowledge: Decolonial Thought and Cultural Studies Others in the Andes. Cultural Studies 21. 2-3 (2007): 224- 39. Pr int.
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KAMILA KRAKOWSKA
Univer sidade de Coimbra
O TURISTA APRENDIZ E O OUTRO: A(S) IDENTIDADE(S) BRASILEIRA(S) EM TRNSITO
O homem um "ser ambivalente que une em si um eu e um no-eu, ele prprio e o Outro, o seu Outro e o estranho" (Kapuciski 65). Com estas palavr as Ryszard K apuc iski descre ve a complexa condio humana no mundo contemporneo, onde se de smoronam as tradicionalmente estabelecidas fronteiras entre as c ult uras, naes, e identidades. N a era ps-colonial, as representaes identitrias que at agora de fin iam de maneira unvoca e exclusiva o lugar do homem dentro da sua comun idade deixar am de ser vlid as quando confrontadas com o "novo mapa-mundo, multico lor, rico e extremamente complexo" (Kapuci ski 62). O processo da criao de ste novo mapa, que gradualm ente revogou as antigas relaes de poder, comeou muito tempo antes do surgimento das teorias pscoloniais, que permitiram compreender mais profundamente os fenmenos sociais e culturais em curso. A urgnc ia de repensar e reconfigurar as identidades, tanto ao nvel individual como colectivo, de retrabalhar e readaptar a herana colonial como uma parte significat iva da c ult ura nacional pode ser observad a, entre outros, em vr ias obras brasileir as da poca modernista. No cabe nos objectivos deste ensaio disc utir se a produo artstic a modernista no Brasil, vista como um sistema integral, pode ser considerada como sendo ps-colonial. Ne ste trabalho limitaremonos a analisar apenas as configuraes ide ntitrias presentes no dir io de viagem de Mr io de Andrade, O Turista Aprendiz, a partir da perspectiva ps-colonial. Est a abordagem, na nossa opinio, permitir desconstruir a viso do Eu e do Outro proposta por Mrio de Andrade no dirio e determinar o seu papel na construo da identidade nacional.
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A aplic ao de ferr amentas tericas forjadas no mbito de estudo s ps-coloniais pode parecer surpreendente, visto que estes conceitos e categorias so alheios ao horizonte epistemolgico do escritor em causa. No entanto, nossa convic o que e sta a abordagem ade quada par a compreender plenamente a viso da c ultura brasileira que Mr io de Andrade projeta nas suas obras, em ge ral, e no Turista Apre ndiz, em particular. O e scritor, como demonstraremos ao longo da anlise do dirio, acredita que a identid ade cultural brasile ira composta por vrias e muito dist intas expresses tnicas e re gionais, fr equentemente menosprezadas o u at desconhecidas pelas e lites intelectuais do seu tempo. Na sua busca da identidade brasileir a, o turista aprendiz r ecupera as voze s silenciosas, e silenciadas, dos cantadores nordestinos que improvisam os cocos, dos ndios que recontam os seus mitos, dos me stres do candombl que invocam os seus santos com dan as dr amtic as. Neste processo, o autor no apenas inverte as hierar quias tradic ionalmente estabelecidas entre o centro e a periferia, entre o nacional e o local, entre a arte erudita e popular, mas de facto constri uma nova viso da cultura brasile ira onde procura redefinir o processo simblico atravs do qual o imaginr io soc ial [...] se torna o sujeito do disc urso e o objeto da identidade psquic a (Bhabha 2005a 217). De acordo com Joo Lus Lafet, as primeiras produes do s modernistas brasile iros e, entre elas, o livro de poesia o Cl do Jabut i do prprio Mrio, foram profundamente marcadas pela exalta o da cultur a popular e pela busca de ser brasileiro que levava o poeta a exagerar a linguagem, que assim perdia, de novo, a naturalidade e a sutileza (Lafet 105). No entanto, como comentam Lafet e mais t arde Maria Aparecida Silva Ribe iro (20-21), Mr io de Andrade rapidamente se apercebe que o imperativo fo lclorizante lim itador e empobrecedor. Assim, na abertura do Ensaio sobre a Ms ica Bras ileira, publicado apenas uns meses depois do Cl do Jabuti, o artista (e musiclogo) redime-se parante os seus le itores: Ns, modernos, manifestamos dois defe itos grandes: bastante ignorancia e le viandade sistematizada. comum entre ns a rasteira derrubando da jangada nac ional no s as obras e autores passados como at os que atualmente empregam a 67 P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 4 Fall 2012 ISSN: 1874-6969
tematica brasile ira numa orque stra europea ou no quarteto de cordas. No bras ileiro se fala. [...] Um dos conselhos europeus que tenho escutado bem que a gente si quiser fazer msic a nacional tem que campear e lementos entre os aborigenes pois que s mesmo stes que so legitimamente brasile iros. Isso uma puerilidade que inclui ignorancia dos problemas sociologicos, etnicos, psicolo gicos e esteticos. Uma arte nacional no se faz com esclha discrec ionaria e dilet ante de elementos: uma arte nacional j est fe ita na inconscincia do povo. [Grafia original da p ublic ao de 1928] (Andrade 1928 3-4) O Turista A prendiz, que conhecemos na ve rso organ izada e edit ada recentemente por Tel Ancona Lopez, relata as impresses de M rio de Andrade de d uas viagens pe las regies do Amazonas e do Nordeste no Brasil, empreendidas no final da dcada de 20. Em 1927, o escritor parte para o Amazonas como membro da expedio organizada por Dona Olvia Guedes Penteado, famosa dama paulist a e mecenas dos modernistas, e anota livremente as sensae s, ide ias e im agens desta experincia, com uma vaga inteno de transformar e ste dirio pe ssoal num livro de viagem. Este projecto, retomado de facto em 1943, n o chegou a ser finalizado. Em 1928, Mr io de Andrade viaja par a o Nordeste como jornalista do Dirio Nacional e desta ve z public a as suas impresses como crnicas re gulare s intitulad as O Tur ista Aprendiz. A obra apresentada por Tel Ancona Lopez rene os textos relat ivos s duas viagens etnogrficas: o dir io de 1927, reescrito pelo autor em 1943 sob o ttulo longo e parodiante O Turista Aprendiz: Viagens pelo Amazonas at o Peru, pelo Madeira at a Bol via e por Maraj at dizer chega, e a sr ie de crnic as de car cter mais object ivo, de 1928. As d uas viagens, como destaca fortemente Tel Ancona Lopez n a introduo ao dirio, foram a re alizao de um sonho de Mrio de Andrade, que considerava a Amaznia co mo uma sede de uma vivncia tropical, marcada pelo cio criador (2002 17) e o Norte e o Nordeste como ricos repositrios de tradio e cultura popular (2002 16). A ideia 68 P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 4 Fall 2012 ISSN: 1874-6969
de que preciso conhecer o Norte o Outro, bem distinto da realidade do sul metropolitano do Brasil para conseguir criar uma ric a e independente cult ura brasileira e st entretecida dentro de vr ias obser vaes do escr itor, que de screve as paisagens, os cost umes, a c omida e as festas, como se fosse um verdade iro aprendiz de etngrafo. A insistncia na necessidade de reconhecimento do valor cult ural do norte brasileiro preconiza a ide ia de que para se aprender a p artir do S ul, de ve mos, antes de mais, de ixar falar o Sul, pois o que melhor identifica o S ul o facto de ter sido silenc iado, proposta por Boaventura de Sousa S antos (344), resguardada a diferena de referencial a partir do qual traado o azimute: no caso de BSS o Norte o Prime iro Mundo e o S ul o Terceiro; no contexto brasile iro o S ul que r ico e o Norte pobre. No caso do Brasil visto por Mrio de Andrade, o Norte que ficou silenciado pelo dinmico e moderno Sul, que se tornou no novo centro de produo cultural, ar tstic a e c ientfica, 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 cult ura brasileir a. Na opinio de Mrio de Andrade existe um dese quilbr io entre a herana colonial e uropeia dominante e as influncias indgenas e afric anas que representam as voze s subalternas da realidade brasile ir a daque la alt ura, usando o termo no sentido que lhe atribui Gay atri Sp ivak (1995), e este desequilbrio impossibilita a construo de uma cultur a nacional prpria. O autor argumenta: Quero resumir minhas impresses desta viagem litornea por nordeste e norte do Brasil, no consigo be m, estou um bocado aturdido, maravilhado, mas no se i... H uma e spcie de sensao ficad a da insufic incia, de sar apintao, que me estraga todo o europeu cinzento e bem-arranjadinho que ainda tenho dentro de mim. Por enquanto, o que mais me parece que tanto a natureza como a vida destes lugares foram feito s s pressas, com excesso de castroalves. E esta pr-noo invencvel, mas invencve l, de que o Brasil, em vez de se utilizar d a frica e da ndia que te ve em si, desperdio u-as, enfeitando com elas apenas a sua fisionomia, suas epidermes, sambas, marac atus, traje s, cores, vocabulrios, quitutes.. . E 69 P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 4 Fall 2012 ISSN: 1874-6969
deixou-se ficar, por dentro, justamente naquilo que, pelo clima, pela raa, alimentao, tudo, no poder nunca ser, mas apenas macaque ar, a E uropa. Nos orgulhamos de ser o nico grande (grande?) pas c ivilizado tropical. .. Isso o nosso defeito, a nossa impotncia. Devamos p ensar, sentir como indianos, chins, gente de Benin, de Java... T alve z ento pudssemos criar cult ura e civilizao prprias. Pelo menos seramos mais ns, tenho certeza. (Andrade 2002 59-60) Este longo d isc urso re vela o chocante contraste que o t urista sente entre o Brasil imaginado pe los habitante s das gr andes metrpoles, tais como So Paulo, que aspir am a fundar um a civilizao moderna imagem da Europa, e o Norte e Nordeste brasile iro, culturalmente hbridos. Um aspecto marcante nestes pensamentos da p ersonagem de Mr io de Andrade a conceptualizao d a nao. A sua viso da nao brasileir a em processo de reformula o cultural e identitr ia, aqui apresentada, cr ucial par a perceber o projecto nacionalista que o esc ritor prope no seu dir io e, em particular, a posi o do narrador que assume vr ios papis, tais como o artista, o poeta, o fotgrafo, o jornalist a e o etngrafo, ao longo da narrativa 1 frente ao mundo que o rodeia. Ao desenvolver estas reflexes inspiradas pelo contacto com os lugare s fe itos muito s pressas, com excesso de castroalve s, Mr io de Andrade descontri os fundamentos ideolgicos e conceptuais do nacionalismo ofic ial, vigente na poca. Nas suas impresses, o escritor apresenta a imagem da na o brasile ira c riada pelo disc urso nacionalist a das elites intelect uais e polt icas a partir do conceito da nao moderna. Nesta viso, o Brasil definido como um pas gr ande, c ivilizado e tropical. Os adject ivos grande e c ivilizado, de c ariz claramente positivo, conotam-se com os valores do Estado-nao moderno, com um sistema econmico e administrativo desenvolvido se gundo os princ pios do mundo ocidental. Tropical, por seu lado, usado como um marco de
1
O papel do Mrio de Andrade-personagem multifacetado e vai constantemente mudando ao longo da narrativa. No entanto, uma anlise minuciosa das vrias faces deste protagonista, desenvolvida na nossa tese de doutoramento, no cabe nos objectivos deste ensaio. Em relao construo e descontruo da narrativa etnogrfica (e da figura do etngrafo) nas obras Turista Aprendiz e Macunama, veja-se o nosso artigo As viagens de Mrio de Andrade: entre os factos e a fico (Krakowska, 2012).
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diferena, um e lemento identitrio, cr ucial para a distino do Brasil das outras grandes civilizaes, t anto na perspectiva dos estrange iros como dos seus prprios cidados. A adapta o de certas caracter stic as locais, descritas pela noo de tropical, p ara o disc urso nac ionalista demonstra que os e lementos fund amentais para a construo da ide ia de na o so o reconhecimento da identidade nac ional pe lo Outro e a criao de laos de pertena e identificao entre os membros da comunidade. Este car cter bilateral do processo da formao da ide ia de nao, que se vai construindo no espao liminar entre o Eu e o Outro, coerente com a anlise apresentada por Benedict Anderson em Comunidades Imaginadas, em que o estud ioso destac a a importncia da p artilha do imaginr io comum para a edifica o da nao. Este imaginr io pode ser inconscientemente escolhido pela prpria comunidade, o u pode surgir como consequncia do olhar classific ador do Outro, como acontece no caso da criao de m apas, cen sos e muse us no contexto colonial (Anderson 121). No entanto, tal como o projecto nacionalist a dos grande s imprio s europeus do sc ulo XIX no conseguiu concretizar as suas ambie s unificadoras (Anderson 124), o disc urso nacionalista, critic ado por Mrio de Andrade, tambm falhou o seu objectivo de conseguir foc ar o ve rdadeiro n cleo da identidade nacional brasile ira. O escritor enfatiza que o Brasil, ao forjar a sua c ult ura nacional, desperd iou o elementos de origem africana ou ndia, enfe itando com elas apenas a sua fisionomia, suas epidermes, sambas, marac atus, trajes, cores, voc abulrios, quit utes... (o defeito que o escritor problematiza t ambm no trecho acima c itado do Ens aio sobre a Msic a Brasile ira). Na viso do turista aprendiz, preciso desestabilizar a viso do Brasil como um pas que d continuidade exclusivamente sua heran a europeia. Sem abandonar a ideia da na o moderna (associada aqui civiliza o), o escritor prope uma reviso dos seus fundamentos cult urais num contexto multicultural. Para ele, a condio para criar cultura e civiliza o prprias consiste em interiorizar os e lementos das vr ias cult uras que convivem no territrio brasileiro. A justaposio dos termos cultur a e civilizao refora a ide ia r ecorrente ao longo do texto de que a na o uma forma de cultura, usando a expresso de Anthony 71 P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 4 Fall 2012 ISSN: 1874-6969
Smith (1991 118). Esta c ult ura moldada de forma sign ificativa pe los factores exteriores, tais como o clima, a raa, a alimentao, etc., o que diferencia, na perspectiva de Mr io de Andrade, o Brasil da Europa. Alm disso, os sambas, marac atus e vocab ulrios locais, enumerados pe lo escritor, so uma herana de toda a c omunidade, e no apenas dos descendentes directos d as vr ias etnias que a compem. Isto , como no Brasil no h um nico nc leo tnico, os mitos, smbolos e memrias comuns so necessr ios para a criao de laos de pertena. Assim, ao analisar o discur so de Mrio de Andrade sob a perspectiva da teoria etnosimbloca de Anthony Smith, a incorporao no imaginrio nacional de tradies e costumes locais, que surgiram numa determinada re gio devido presena de razes afric anas ou indgen as, crucial para a formao da ideia de nao, porque a na o pode ser uma formao social moderna, mas baseada de certa forma em cultur as, identidades e heranas prexistentes 2 (1999 175). A ideia de comunidade conscientemente destacada no discur so do turista aprendiz. Na ltim a parte das suas consideraes, o escritor de ix a de referir o Brasil como uma entidade abstracta e passa a dirigir-se directamente aos membros da nao. A repetio do pronome possessivo nosso e a utiliza o de verbos na primeira pesso a do plural (nos orgulhamos, de vamos, pudssemos, seramos) cria um lao de afinidade e fraternidade entre os cidados, remetendo para a ideia de Benedict Anderson de que a nao uma comunidade lim itada, tal como a famlia (Anderson 27). Alm disso, na afirmao Deviamos pensar, sentir como indianos, chins, gente de Benin, de Java... reve la- se um a proximidade epistemolgic a entre as vrias comunidades que nasceram nas runas do sistema colonial e esto a forjar a sua c ultura e a sua identidade a partir de e contra a cultura dominante do colonizador. A renncia da cultura prpria em favor duma cpia irreflectida dos valores e das matrizes ocidentais , segundo Mrio de Andrade , particularmente visve l quando se compara a cultura brasile 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).
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peruana. O viajante repara ao chegar ao territrio peruano que os peruanos, de scendentes de espanhis, falam com orgulho patritico dos Incas, na c ivilizao incaica, n a msic a in caic a (Andrade, 2002: 105). Em contraste, no Brasil, se gundo o autor, h apenas tentativas de lanar o estilo m arajo ara (2002 105), que se refer e ao est ilo m uito e laborado das cermicas criad as pelas tribos indgen as pr-colombianas que ocup avam a Ilha de Maraj no estado do Par 3. A descendncia Inca tornou-se, como observa o escr itor, um a referncia c ult ural cruc ial tanto para a auto-defini o do povo peruano como para o reconhecimento da sua integridade pelos Outros. No entanto, quando o turista visit a, no Peru, a povoao ndia Huitta observa um a decadncia visve l das tradies e dos cost umes cultivado s pela tribo, que vive na terra cedid a pelo governo e que trabalha apenas 20 dias por ano, conforme exigido pelas autoridades. Alm disso, o aldeamento j um pueblo de ndio se vest indo como ns, isto cala e palet, ou c al a e camisa, e hablando un s farrapos de esp anhol (Andrade 2002 104). Nest a descrio fragmentria de staca-se uma forte oposio entre ns supostamente civilizados, ve stidos de maneira ocidental, a falar lnguas impostas pelo colonialismo e os ndios os Outros, cuja aparncia e cujo comportamento supreendemente no correspondem viso extic a do ndio se lvagem. A expectativa do exotismo no encontro com o Outro era um marco das narrativas coloniais que apr esentavam as populaes nativas dos territrios explorados como curiosos objectos de estudo. No entanto, na nossa opinio, a viso de Mrio de Andrade, apesar de certas semelhanas com a at itude colonizadora, inverte e desconstri as antigas relaes do poder. Enquanto nas narrativas e urocntricas o Outro era visto como um objecto sem agncia e sem qualquer influ ncia sobre o Eu-colonizador, no Turista Aprendiz h uma rede de interaes entre o Eu e o Outro. Por um lado, o ndio um Outro extico, mas simultaneamente um portador de
3
A existncia do patrimnio marajoara foi descoberta apenas em 1871 pelos pesquisadores Charles Hartt e Domingos Penna e at ao final da dcada 40 do sculo XX os estudos arqueolgicos na rea foram muito fragmentrios. S em meados do sculo, j depois da morte de Mrio de Andrade, comearam estudos mais sistemticos. Veja-se a respeito, por exemplo, a dissertao de Denise Pahl Schaan A Linguagem Iconogrfica da Cermica Marajoara.
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referncias identitrias para a na o inteira. Por outro lado, as leis e os costumes indgenas vo-se transformando e adaptando sob a influnc ia dos valores cultur ais e sociais cultivados pelo resto da sociedade e tambm das suas expectativas enquanto cult uras minoritrias. Um Huitta explic a a Mrio de Andrade este processo de complexas mud anas cultur ais e sociais numa parbola que conta como os Incas de ixar am de construir seus palc ios impressionantes: Huitta nem carece imaginar se fe liz, porque agora ele j passou pra d iante do tempo do palcio e da lei. Huitta feliz, moo, no gente decada no. [...] Huitta s sabe o que Deus mand a porque os h uittas agora possuem um de us que manda nele s. No se amolam mais com o palcio de pedra ne m com o palcio que tem no fundo da gente no escuro. (200 2 108) Assim, neste processo de mltip las tran sformaes identitr ias, as comunidades subalternas (tais como os n dios, os negros, e os orientais) cult ivam a diferena sem renunciar s novas influncias, especialmente vind as da E uropa. De facto, a globalizao da cult ura j estava presente, embora espacialmente lim itada, no tempo das expedies de Mrio de Andrade 4. As comunid ades c ult uralment e dominantes, por se u lado, redefinem as suas r azes e, remetendo metfora de Kapuciski ac im a citada, reconhecem o seu Outro; isto , compreendem que na perspectiva de outras comunidade s elas prprias so vistas como um Outro. A reconstruo da identid ade nacional atr avs da figura do Outro, que podemos observar no dirio, uma representao modernista e pessoal de um fenmeno muito mais amplo, que Mar y Louise Pratt descre ve como a reinveno d a Amric a, in iciada no sc ulo XIX pelas e lites crioulas sulamericanas. A estud iosa ar gumenta:
Nos tempos de Mrio de Andrade, a zona de contacto entre ndios e brancos no Norte do Brasil limitava-se s margens dos rios, visto que o transporte fluvial era o nico meio de contacto com o resto do mundo. Note-se que a Rodovia Transamaznica foi inaugurada apenas em 1972. A sua localizao remota e o difcil acesso classificam o Norte do Brasil como uma regio perifrica, na acepo da teoria de sistemas-mundo de Immanuel Wallerstein (2004). A peridica extenso e retraco de zonas de influncia culturais ao longo da Histria foi sempre condicionada pela facilidade de contacto entre centro e periferia (Braudel, 1993).
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One would seriously misinterpret creole relat ions to the European metropolis (even their neocolonial dimensions) if one thought of creole aesthetics as simply imitatin g or mechanically reproducing E uropean disco urses. One can more accurately think of creole representation as transculturating E uropean materials, se lect ing and deployin g them in ways that do not simply reproduce the hegemonic visions of E urope or simply le gitimat e the designs o f European capital. (187- 188) A estratgia de desconstruir e reformular as relaes entre o Eu e o Outro desenvolvida no dirio em dois nveis conceptuais. A lm da dist ino baseada na c ategoria rac ial (n dio vs. branco) que comporta certos elementos da identidade cultural da comunidade, Mr io de Andrade mostra o forte carcter regional da c ultur a brasile ira e a ex istncia duma identidade bem-definida em cada regio, cuja formao foi influenciada pela presena das comunidade s ndigenas e de origem afric ana no s respectivos territrios. Sob a ptica do paulista, os estados do Norte como o Par ou o Amazonas so zonas do domn io do Outro. Assim, ao chegar a Belm, a cid ade princ ipal da Polinsia (Andrade 1995 62), o viajante estranha o ambiente extico, as mangue iras que domin am a paisagem e os costumes, tais como o hbito de passe ar com os porcos-de-mato de correntinha. O contraste entre a capital do Par e o Brasil que Mrio de Andrade conhecia at altura faz com que o turista fique com a impresso de estar no estrangeiro extico. Nas palavras do autor, engraado o facto de que a gente a todo momento imagina que vive no Brasil mas fantstic a a sensao de estar no Cairo que se tem (2002 62). A chocante sensao de estranhamento em contacto com o outro Brasil repete-se, embora por razes e steticamente diferentes, tambm na chegada a Santarm. Desta ve z, a c idade nortenha impressiona n o tanto pelo seu car cter extico e exuberante, como pela sua semelhana com a Veneza italiana. O tur ista descre ve:
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Pelo an ncio da tarde, chegamos a Santarm, com estranhas sensaes venezianas, por causa do hotel ancorado no porto, enfiando o paredo ngua, e com jan elas em ogiva! Os venezianos falam muito bem a nossa lngua e so todos dum a cor tapuia esc ura, mui lisa. Fomos recebidos com muit a cordialid ade pelo doge que nos mostrou a cidade que acaba derepente. (2002 70) Nesta descr io o e scritor conscientemente desenvolve a compara o entre as duas cid ades atrib uindo metaforic amente a identidade veneziana a todo Santarm, incluindo os seus moradores. Este procedimento permite no s destac ar a c urio sa semelhana, mas tambm, ou em partic ular, transmitir a sensa o de estar no estrangeiro. Deste modo, SantarmVeneza passa a pertencer a uma realidade distinta realidade brasile ira, embora os seus habitantes se jam capazes de falar bem a nossa ln gua. Tambm a pequena anotao na foto do hotel em causa, que constava entre os materiais de M rio de Andrade par a a elaborao do livro de viagem e foi inc lud a na ed io de Te l Ancona Lopez, levanta a questo da construo de identidade s. A inscri o T o be or not to be Veneza / Eis aqui esto o givas de Santarm (Andrade 2002 71) satir icamente in voca o famoso dilem a de Oswald de Andrade do Manifesto Antropfago Tupy, or not tupy that is the question (Andrade 1995 419), que por se u lado parodia o famoso dilem a do Ham let Shake speariano. A cmica interpelao sobre as o givas de Santarm pode incitar a formulao de vrias perguntas. Como construimos a nossa identidade ? Como nos diferenciamos dos outros? Como nos identific amos com a nossa comunidade? Como pode uma cid ade como Santarm marcar a sua identidade dentro do panorama cult ural brasile iro? To be or not to be Veneza passa a ser, nest a perspectiva, uma que sto crucial para a compreenso dos processos identitrio s da nao brasile ira. Tal como o Norte e o Nordeste parecem um pas estrange iro nos olhos dos paulistas, assim o parece So Paulo nos olhos dos habit antes dos estados do norte do Brasil. O prprio turista aprendiz, sendo natural de So Paulo, no norte do pas passa vr ias veze s por um estrangeiro 76 P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 4 Fall 2012 ISSN: 1874-6969
(Andrade 2002 95). Durante a visita misso franciscana, os frade s italianos explicam ao escritor que So Paulo , na sua opinio, profundamente marcado pela influncia italiana, de modo que at Mrio de Andrade fala com uma pronncia muito caracterst ica. De facto, o fre i Diogo dirige-se com muita firmeza comit iva de Dona Olvia: Vocs so paulist as... Vocs n o so brasile iros no! Pra ser brasile iro precisa vir no Amazonas, aqui sim (Andrade 2002 94). No entanto, embora So Paulo no se ja visto como espao de referncia na formao d a identidade aut ctone do Brasil, a metrpole sem dvida considerad a como um centro de produo artstic a, poltica e cientfica. Os jornais, tais como Estado de S. Paulo, so regularmente adquiridos pelos frade s e outros habitantes letrados do norte do pas, o que d a Mrio de Andrade meio orgulho estadual, meio susto da importncia do Estado ( 2002 94). Porm, o acesso aos jornais tambm um marco de diferena que distingue as classe s e as regi es. O turist a observa as crianas que fre quentam a escola primria de Marac agera, no estado do Par, e no tempo livre de pesc a leem as notcias do Brasil nos jornais que ser viram como papel de embrulho: O recreio pra tomar banho de brin quedo no furo. Depois se volta pro b-a-b e assim mais tarde aquele s pescadores somam sozinhos o dinheiro ganhando com os camorins e as pesc adas e lem no jornal que veio embrulh ando a far inha dgua de Belm, o caso de Lampeo e mais desordens dos brasileiros de nascena. (2002 66) A expresso brasile iros de nascena, aqui de car cter claramente irnico, reve la o o lhar crt ico e de sconstrutor sobre a nacionalidade brasileir a por parte de Mrio de Andrade. Ao destacar ironicamente o facto de que os habitantes das grandes cidades adquirem a identidade brasile ira logo no momento de nascena, enquan to os ndios podem tornar-se completamente brasile iros apenas quando vivem por a falando lngua nossa, sem memria talve z de suas tribos (2002 91-92), o turista parodia as re laes de poder entre o colonizado r e o colonizado. No sistema 77 P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 4 Fall 2012 ISSN: 1874-6969
colonial,
os co lonizadores eram,
de
facto,
vistos como
civilizados
portadores de identid ade c ult ural e nac io nal, em contraste com os povos colonizados que precisavam de passar pelo processo de assim ilia o e acultura o para serem considerados membros (embora de estatuto inferior) da comunid ade. Homi Bhabha explica e sta viso estt ica da realidade, que reforava o esteretipo na viso do Outro e just ificava a situao colonial: O esteretipo , assim, enquanto ponto primeiro de
subject ivao no disc urso co lonial, t anto para o colonizador como para o colonizado, o cenrio de uma fantasia e de fesa similare s o dese jo de uma originariedade que mais uma ve z ameaad a pelas diferenas de raa, cor e cultura. O me u argumento est esplendidamente contido no ttulo de Fanon Pele negra, mscaras brancas em que a r ecusa da diferen a transforma o sbdito colonial em inadaptado numa imita o grotesca ou num dup lo que ameaa c indir a alm a e toda a pele, ind iferenciado, do ego. O estere tipo no uma simplificao por ser um a falsa representao de uma dad a realidade. uma simplifica o porque uma forma imobilizada, fix a, de representao que, ao negar o jogo da diferena ( que a negao atrav s do Outro autoriza), constit ui um problema para a representao do sujeito nas sua s significaes d as relaes psquicas e sociais. (2005b 155) No Turista A prendiz, M rio de Andrade desenvolve um complexo jogo da d iferena que reve la mltiplo s esteretipos provenientes do disc urso colonial que se mantiver am na sociedade brasile ira quase um sculo depois d a proclama o da independncia. Neste novo contexto, em que as figuras do colono e do colonizado foram oficialmente abolidas, a simplificao da representao da realidade continua a ser visve l na relao entre as novas metrpoles brasile iras (nomeadamente So Paulo e Rio de J aneiro) e as re gies culturalmente dist intas e pouco modernizadas (Amaznia e Nordeste). A desconstruo desta rela o aparentemente unvoca e unilateral re alizad a no dirio e m termos de diferenciao entre 78 P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 4 Fall 2012 ISSN: 1874-6969
as regies inteir as e no apenas entre os indivduos. Q uando Mrio de Andrade, por exemplo, critica a ignorncia dos habitantes das metrpoles brasileir as e dos turistas estran geiros fascinados pela Amaznia, apresent a todos os viajantes, quer que falem portugus quer ingl s, como um grupo homogneo observada: Todos se propem conhecedorssimos das co isas de st a que, em ger al, no conse gue compreender a realidade
pomposa Amaznia de que tiram uma fantstica vaidade improvve l, terra do futuro ... Mas quando a gente pergunta, o que um responde que castanheira, o outro discute pois acha que pato com t ucupi. S quem sabe mesmo algum a coisa a gente ignorante da terceira classe. Poucas ve zes, a no ser entre os modernistas do Rio, tenho visto in struo mais desorientad a que a de ssa gente, no geral falando ingls. (2002 92). Estas profundas diferenas entre o norte e o sul do Brasil, que em geral no so sufic ientemente conhecidas e compreendidas, so vistas pelas autoridades como uma desvantagem que deveria ser elimin ada. Mr io de Andrade, obrigado a proferir um disc urso improvisado dur ante o almoo com o prefeito de Belm, fic a surpreendido com o entusiasmo com que todos os convidados recebem as suas palavras sobre a possvel an iquilao das fronteiras c ult urais entre os estados. O turista comenta: Fale i que tudo era muito lindo, que estvamos maravilhados, e idnticas besteiras verdade irssimas, e soltei a id ia: no s sentamos to em casa (que mentira!) que nos parecia que tinham se eliminado os lim ites estaduais! Sentei como quem tinha le vado uma surra de pau. Mas a idia t inha ... tinham gostado. Mas isso no impediu que a c hampanha estive sse estragada, uma porcaria. (2002 62) Na viso de Mrio de Andrade, que se vai revelando nas pginas do dir io, a diferena uma vantagem que deve ser est udada e c ultivada. Apenas percebendo a riqueza das cult uras locais, influenc iadas em gro 79 P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 4 Fall 2012 ISSN: 1874-6969
diferente pela presena das tradies e dos costumes indgenas, afric anos, orientais, e tambm europeus, possvel construir um a c ult ura nac ional heterognea, hbrida, mas sim ult aneamente coesa. Sob esta perspectiva, as noes 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 unid ade a p artir d a d iferena c lar amente visve l, por exemplo, no estudo sobre as manife staes de feit iar ia em vrias re gie s do Brasil, que o turista aprendiz desenvo lve n as crnicas de 1928. O cronista de screve a distrib ui o espacial de stas prtic as de maneira se guinte: A feiti aria brasileir a no uniforme no. At o nome das manifestaes de la m uda bem dum lugar p ra outro. Do Rio de Janeiro pra Bahia impera a designa o macumba. As se sses so chamadas de macumbas e os feiticeiros e demais assistentes, s ve zes, so os mac umbeiros. Os feit iceiros, pais-de-terreiro, realizam as mac umbas e invocam os santos, etc. J no norte as sesse s so paje lan as e frequentssima a palavra paj designando o pai-de-terreiro, assim como o santo invocado. Se v logo as zonas onde atuaram as influ ncias dominantes dos afric anos e amerndios. Do Rio at a Bahia, negros; no norte os amerndios. Os deuses, os santos das mac umbas so todos quase de provinincia afric ana. N o Par quase todos sados da religiosidade amerndia. O nordeste, de Pernambuco ao Rio Grande do Norte pelo menos, a zona em que essas influncias rac iais mist uram. Palavr as, de use s, prticas se tranam. (2002 216). Este pequeno e studo etnogrfico-lingustico descreve as diferenas na denominao das prticas de fe iti aria, t ais como os nomes da cerimnia e dos prprios feiticeiros, e indica quais so as influncias cultur ais dominantes na sua constit ui o. No entanto, embora haja uma c lar a fronteira etno-cultural entre o norte e o sul litoral do pas, M rio de Andrade no fala em manife staes locais ou regionais de feit iar ia. Na sua 80 P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 4 Fall 2012 ISSN: 1874-6969
opinio, existe um fenmeno de feitiaria brasileir a. O adjectivo brasile iro no tem aqui sent ido apenas territorial ou poltico, que se refira ao territrio do estado brasileiro, mas comporta toda a srie de valores emocionais relacionados com os sentimentos nacionalistas. A feit iar ia brasileir a vista como uma re ferncia cultur al que pode criar laos de pertena entre os membros da nao. Alm disso, a ide ia de trnsito entre identidade s c ult urais, n ecessr ia p ara construir um a comunidade hbr ida, fortemente destacada nos comentrios de Mrio de Andrade sobre o Nordeste. Este territrio, onde palavras, de uses, prt icas se tranam, uma zona de contacto, usando o termo de Mary L uise Pratt (4), entre as tradies amerndias, africanas e e uropeias, a condio que permitiu o surgimento de novas tradies e novas manifestae s identitrias. Este e spao ps-colonial ofer ece, segundo o tur ista aprendiz, imensas oportunidades que precisam de ser exploradas antes de serem abandonadas e e squecidas. Por isso, o cronista, ao assistir ao bailado tradicional em Paraib, ironicamente comenta o gradual dec ln io da r ique za cult ural do Brasil: Os gr upos e as formas de bailados so diver sos. Alm do s Cabocolinhos, tem os ndios afr icanos, tem os Caninds, os C aramur us, etc. Mas tudo vai se acabando agora que o Brasil principia... (2002 285). No entanto, apesar da possve l uniformizao da cultur a brasile ira, a forte diferenciao das trad ies e dos costumes locais, c ircunscr itos frequentemente s fronteiras e staduais, constitui uma importante referncia identitria para os seus habitantes. Assim, quando os passageiros do Vaticano, onde viaja Mr io de Andrade, so solic itados pelos m issionrio s italianos a assinar o livro de visitas, in dicando as suas nac ionalidades, aparecem design aes tais como paulist a ou amazonense. De facto, o escritor confessa: Dentre os brasileiros de bordo, fui o n ico brasile iro, sem querer (2002 116). Esta tentativa de auto-defin io demonstra como as identid ades formadas num contexto altamente mult icultur al e multitnico, como acontece no caso brasileiro, passam a ser mlt iplas e fluid as. A s cate gorias identit rias unvoc as e exc lusivas, impostas pelo 81 P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 4 Fall 2012 ISSN: 1874-6969
sistema colonial, de ix am de ser vlidas quando confrontadas com o grupo de dana ndios afr icanos ou com a feit iar ia pernambucana que une os elementos de religies indgenas, afr icanas e do catolicismo. Neste contexto, possvel ser um escr itor paulista e brasileiro que procura as suas origen s entre os macumbeiros da Baa, interligando as vrias identidades sobrepostas num mosaico complexo e sempre em construo. Em concluso, O Turista Aprendiz um dirio de busc a de um outro Brasil, c uja identidade se baseia na diferena. Mr io de Andrade , inspirado pelo exemplo do Peru que constri a sua identidade a partir da herana inca, procura as manifestaes da cultura indgena que poderiam servir como referncias da cult ura nacional brasileir a. Nas suas viagens, o escritor descobre stios, tais como Belm ou Santarm, que lhe provocam um profundo estranhamento, o que lhe pe rmite desconstruir e repensar a unvoca viso co lonial do Outro. A lm disso, nestes encontros com o Outro (o ndio, o negro, o oriental, mas tambm o amazonense ou o pernambucano) Mrio de Andrade perceb e a sua prpria condio de ser um estrange iro dentro do panorama do Brasil. A ssim, o Outro passa a ser uma d as manifestaes do Eu. A dife rena passa a ser um marco caracterst ico da cultura nac ional.
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Obras Citadas Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1991. Impresso. Andrade, Mrio de. O Turista Aprendiz. Belo Horizonte: Itatiaia, 2002. Impresso. ---. Ensaio sobre Musica Brasileira. So Paulo: Editores I. Ch iarato & C ia, 1928. Impresso. Andrade, Oswald de. Man ifesto Antropfago. L iteratura Bras ileira. Ed. Maria Aparecid a Ribeiro. L isboa: Universidade Aberta, 1995. 419-420. Impresso. Bhabha, Homi K. O Local da Cult ura. B elo Horizonte: Editora UFMG, 2005a. ---.A Questo Outra. Deslocal izar a Euro pa. Antro pologia, Arte, Literatura e Histria na Ps-Colonial idade. Ed. Manue la Ribe iro Sanches. Lisboa: Cotovia, 2005b. 143-166. Impresso. Braude l, Fernand. O Tempo do Mundo. Lisboa: Teorema, 1993. Impresso. Kapuc iski, Ry szard. O Outro. Porto: Campo das Letras, 2009. Impresso. Krakowska, K amila. A s viagens de Mr io de Andrade: entre os factos e a fico . Dedalus Re vista da A ssociao Portuguesa de Literatur a Comparada. (Forthcoming 2012). Impresso. Lafet, Joo Lus. Mrio de Andrade. S o Paulo: Nova C ultura, 1988. Impresso. Lopez, Tel Porto Ancona. Introduo. O Turista Aprendiz. M rio de Andrade. Belo Horizonte: Itatiaia, 2002. 15-43. Impresso. Pratt, Mary Louise. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. London: Routledge, 1995. Impresso. Ribeiro, Maria Aparecid a Silva. Mrio de Andrade e a cultura popul ar. Cur itiba: Secretaria de Est ado da C ult ura: Cm ara do Livro: The Document Company Xerox, 1997. Impresso. Santos, Boaventur a de So usa. A Critca da Raz o Indole nte Co ntra o desperdcio da experinc ia. 2. ed. Porto: Edies Afrontamento, 2002. Schaan, Denise Pahl. A L inguagem Iconogrf ica da Cermica Marajoara. Disserta o. Pontifc ia Un iversidade Catlic a de Porto Alegre, 1996. Web. 83 P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 4 Fall 2012 ISSN: 1874-6969
Smith, Anthony D. Myths and Memories of the Nation. Oxford: Oxford Univer sity Press, 1999. Impresso. ---. A Identidade Nacio nal. Lisboa: Gradiva, 1991. Impresso. Spivak, Gayatr i Chakravorty. Can the Subaltern Speak? The Post-Colonial Studies Reader. Ed. Bill A shcroft, Gareth Griffiths, Helen Tiffin. London: Routledge, 1995. 24- 28. Impresso. Wallerste in, Immanuel. Worl d-Systems Analysis: An Intro duction. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004. Impresso.
84
LETCIA MARIA COSTA DA NBREGA CESARINO

U ni v e rsi ty of C ali f orni a, Be rke le y
BRAZILIAN POSTCOLONIALITY AND SOUTHSOUTH 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 Brazil. 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 lo w currency of postcoloniality versus notions such as modernity or nationbuildin g in the subcontinent might point to some of the very issue s postcolonial theory seeks to approach: t he constitution of postcolonial subjects, the politics of enunciation, and so forth. In Latin America, postcoloniality has invo lved the construction, by Creole elites, of a corpus of political thought and social theory during lengthy and contested processe s of state -formation and nation-building which are partic ular to the former Iberian colonies (among wh ich, as will be discussed here, Brazil holds an eve n more peculiar post-colonial outlook). The contemporary approximation between Brazil and other countries in the global So uth, those in Sub-Saharan Afric a in partic ular, invites us to revisit this nation-building literature in terms of an articulat ion between processes of inter nal and external colonialism. Contemporary postcolonial theory may provide a fresh aven ue for lookin g at this literature as an early effort to make sense of Brazil s post-colonial condition. This paper will begin by revie wing two contrastive approaches in the anthropological and neighboring lite ratures on Lat in America: the 85 P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 4 Fall 2012 ISSN: 1874-6969
postcolonial and the multiple modernities perspectives. It then discusse s the possible p lace(s) of Brazilian classic nation-buildin g literat ure in these debates, putting forth an argument for the need for subst antial historical embedding when addressing the postcolonial in relation to Brazil. It concludes with remar ks based on ongoing ethnographic research about contemporary South-South cooperation between Brazil and the African continent. 1. Perspectiv es on Bra zil and Latin America: modernity, nation-
building and postcoloniality Differently to the postcolonial, the notion of modernity is a common one in indigenous and foreign social sc iences liter ature about Latin America and Brazil. That modernity is no longer to be thought of in monolithic terms seems to be by now part of scholarly commonsense: multip le (Eisenstadt Introduction, The Fir st Multip le Modernities, Roniger and Waisman), alternative (Gaonkar), other (Rofel), global (Featherstone, Lash and Robertson), critical (Knauft), at lar ge (Appadurai) and, more specific ally for Latin America or Brazil, subaltern (Coronil), subterranean (Aldama), mauso leum (White head), cannibal (Madureir a), or tropical (Oliven) are among the wide r ange of ep ithets that can be foun d in the literature. Contemporary globalization is the preferred chronological and epistemologic al start ing point of much of the literature on mult iple modernities. According to one of the champions of this approach, the adject ive multiple is meant to come to terms with the fact that the actual developments in modernizing societie s have refuted the homogenizing an d hegemonic assumptions of th[e] Western program of modernity (Eisenstadt Introduction 1). Modernity is thus disentangle d from the West, and its unfold ing into multiple s is re garded as the outcome of Western modernitys intrinsic opening to reflexivity which, with the intensification of global connections, would have allowed for the emergence of non-Western moderns. In anthropology, the idiom of multip le modernities is present among those working on areas and loc ale s 86 P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 4 Fall 2012 ISSN: 1874-6969
that have different cult ural histories than the West (Knauft 1) that is, regions caught within the grasp of Western colonial expansion much later than Latin America, such as A sia (Appadurai, Rofel, Tambiah) and Afric a (Piot, Deutch et al.). There are however fundamental differe nces between the Latin American experience with modernity and colonialism and that of the areas typically covered by the anthropology of multip le modernities. As a first multip le modernity (Eisenst adt The First Mult iple Modernities), Lat in America entertains a re lat ion with the West that vastly predates contemporary globalizat ion, reaching as far back as ear ly European modernity. Historical depth is therefore a particular ly important analytical element when reflecting 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 global processes, and e ven to modernization and development discourse. Thus, multiple modernities literature gene rally associate s modernity in Latin America less with one linear, continuous process than with periodic modernizing moves (Domingues xi). Replicat ing a common argument in Brazilian h istoriogr aphy, Brazilian socio logist Ren ato Ortiz locates the consolidat ion of Brazils interest in modernity in the 1930 s, when, according to him, it became something present, an imperative of our times, and no longer a promise dislocated in t ime. Problematic modernity, controversial but without do ubt an integral part of day-to-day life (tele vision set s, automobiles, airports, shopping centers, restaurants, cab le television, advertisin g, etc.). (258) Another important claim is that Creole elites in newly independent states have been the key architects of Latin Americas post-colonial versions of modernity (Roniger and Waisman). Indeed, in contrast with European colonizat ion in Asia and e specially in A fric a, during much of the nineteenth century the Latin American republics were, even if st ill large ly 87 P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 4 Fall 2012 ISSN: 1874-6969
financially dependent on Europe (Britain in particular), relatively left alone to carry out their own state-formation experiments. As others (Tavolaro, Calde ira, Domingue s), Ortiz deploys the ide a of multip le modernities to counteract the incomplete modernity paradigm common in Brazil s classic social theory briefly p ut, those works that, implic itly or explicit ly, define modernity in Brazil in terms of a lack. Brazilian socio logist Srgio Tavolaro advocates the multiple modernitie s approach as an alternative to what he calls socio logy of dependency and sociology of the patriarchal-patrimonialist heritage, which wo uld be incapab le of thinkin g contemporary Brazil as a fin ished exemplar of modernity (6), being therefore responsible for our permanence in a sort of semi-modern limbo (10). Following Eisenstadt, he argues that an acknowledgement that modernity is historical, contingent, multifaceted and tend ing towards the global wo uld be enough of a way out of Brazilian intellectuals in his view wrong-headed obsession with unauthenticity and peripherality (11). A quest ion can be raised here that paralle ls the one put by Ferguson (Global Shadows) concerning multip le modernities perspectives on Afr ica. Would the brushing away of the incomplete modernity paradigm with the stroke of a pen, and by selectively associat ing modernity with the diffusion of certain material and immaterial forms, 1 be enough to wipe it out of the self-conscio usness of the actors themselves? Moreover, this would imply dism issing an entire corpus of Brazilian classic soc ial thought that has more to offer than being either wrong or right. At least since independence in 1822, Brazils intellectual and political elites have been struggling with the challenge of constructing a nation-state. But it was the inception of the Republic in 1889 that prompted an onrush of what would becom e known as ensaios de interpretao do Brasil (essay s of interpretation of Brazil), a hybrid literary-politicalscholarly genre characterized by a quest fo r Brazil s uniqueness as a nation while at the same time diagnosing obstacle s to, and proposals for, its self1
Like a modern cultural industry, urbanization, telecommunication technologies, a rationalizing mentality in public management, or greater commitment to market efficiency (Ortiz 257).
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fulfillment. The most interesting aspect of this literature is not whether it acc urately descr ibes Brazil s socio-cultur al configur ation or its particular brand of modernity, but to which extent such public ly ac knowledged and highly influential works have effect ive ly concurred for shaping their own object. Modernity in this case refers not to one dividing line between the national and the foreign, or between center and periphery, but encapsulate s a host of other cleavages that are p articular to Brazils historical experience. A key c leavage refers to t he idea of the two Brazils. Generally associated with Jac que s Lambe rts Os Do is Brasis, this notion maps a divide between the modern and the traditional onto spatial discontinuitie s (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. Historic ally, this dualism has been tightly connected to the slow process of occupation of the Brazilian h interlands, which c ulminated in the countrys politico-territorial unificat ion. Although offic ially completed with the consolidat ion of Brazils contemporary borders in the early twentieth century, this integration effort persists to this day in other fronts ranging from infr a-structure (transportation, telecommunications, energy , agric ulture, etc.) to c ulture (educat ion, mass media, etc.). The very forging of a Brazilian national identity is intimately connected to these processes, and ind igenous social theory has been a key ideologic al mediator in both internally and externally-directed nation-building efforts. Virtually all ensaios draw on some version of the modern-traditional dichotomy, but often wind up complicat ing rather than reaffirming it. By the time Gilberto Freyre was writin g Casa-Grande & Se nzal a (1933) later translated as The Masters and the Slaves for instance, the Brazilian Northeast had long lost the political and economic weight it held dur ing colonial t imes to Rio de Janeiro and So Paulo in the Southeast. From the standpoint of this new domestic he gemony, the Northeast came to be seen as a tradit ional region, the prestige of which Freyre tried to rescue by 89 P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 4 Fall 2012 ISSN: 1874-6969
elevating the stat us of it s c ult ure from re gional to national. In the same masterly tour-de-force, he appealed to nationalist appetites by providing a language with which to talk about Brazil as a civilization in its own terms, that is, outside of the rac ial de generation strait jac ket implic ated by biologic al approaches to race and by the whitening ideolo gie s prevalent in Brazil dur ing the e arly twentieth century (Skidmore). In his oeuvre, Freyres regionalism often opposed to the cosmopolitanism of So Paulo modernists like Mr io and Oswald de Andr ade, also on the spotlight dur ing the 1920 s and 30s is further coupled with Lusotropicalism, his transnational alternative to Western European hegemony based on a supposed c ult ural unity and superior c ivilizational potentials of the Portuguese wor ld (Freyre, Um Brasileiro em Terras Portuguesas 244). An earlier manifestat ion of the two Brazils p aradigm is even more telling of the contradictory and complex nature of post-colonial nationbuildin g efforts: Euclide s da Cunhas 1902 masterpiece Os Sertes translated as Rebell ion in the Backl ands. The key dichotomy here is between the coast and the backlands, but the books core effort lies precisely in an ambiguous reversion of the common association between the former as civilized, and the latter as primit ive. In Da Cunhas hands, European scientific theories of environmental deter minism t urn into a contradictory praise of the sertanejos (bac klanders) as a r ace 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 denunciation of the coastal elites neglect (or misconceiving) of their own civilizin g mission towards our r ude native sons, who were more alien to us in this land of o urs than were the immigr ants 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 Freyres in its refusal to think in terms of the assumption of a harmonic whole un derpinning Brazilian culture and society. Not by chance, Da Cunha has been framed (e.g., by Sanjins) as a sharp postcolonial critic avant la lettre.
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More recently, the idea of the two Brazils has been cast by Brazilian anthropologist Cardoso de Oliveira (A N oo de Colonialismo Interno) in terms of the concept of internal co lonialism (Stavenhagen), that is, the continuance of external colonialism, this time led by national elites ove r domestic subaltern groups. Until the 1988 Constitution, the Brazilian state used to conceive of this relation from the perspective of indigenous peoples incorporation has been to the national polity. The both paradigm by of incorporation rendered problematic indigenous
movements and by scholarship inspired, among others, by postcolonial critique. A lcid a Ramos has looke d at the Brazilian states re lat ions with indigenous peoples along the lines of Edward Saids Oriental ism. Going a bit further, Teresa Calde ira has shifted the focus of the ethnographic authority critique away from central, empire-building anthropologies in order to ask the important (though barely addressed) que stion of if, and how, national peripheral anthropologies like Brazils wo uld reproduce domestically the predicaments of the colonial encounter (Asad). On the other hand, critique s from a multip le modernities st andpoint (e.g., Tavo laro) claiming that the ensaios essentialize a supposed Brazilian character, might be missin g the point by reducin g their complex reflections on what we would tod ay call the postcolonial quest ion, to an assert ion of Brazils inability to become fully modern due to its Iberian roots. Intellectuals like Freyre and Da Cunha were not simply identifyin g obstacles to Brazils modernization, but unsettlin g the very grounds on which modernity was thought of as possible in the peripheries. In this sense, the nation-buildin g liter ature paved the way for rendering problematic, alway s in an ambivalent fashion, the very epistemologies o f central ideologies and instit utions thus presagin g future postcolonial moves. Here, moreover, a sit uated positio n is made exp lic it: these authors were not just descr ibing some objective re ality out there, but participatin g in the very constitution of their object, the Brazilian nation-state. 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 Brazils 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).
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This literat ure has therefore a different character than a simple either-or focus on coloniality and modernity, as it has performed the very que stions raised by the contemporary scholarship disc ussed here. If, for example, the foreign appears as the full-fle dged modern which opposes the domestic as bac kward and incomplete, the latter sim ultaneously appears as the autochthonous authentic in contrast to the foreign spurious. This dichotomy intersects further with other cleavages that bring into relief internal contradictions to the nation-state. Ideas of Brazilian modernity are multifaceted dependin g, in each case , on the articulations between the regional and the national, and the loc al an d the universal. One c an see, for instance, how the idea of the nation is deflected by regional disposit ions in the works of authors such as Gilberto Freyre (Northeast), Roberto DaMatta (Rio de Janeiro), and the 1922 m odernists (So Paulo); and how these relations can be further articulat ed with (and complicated by) statements of un iversality, as with the 1922 modernists. Finally, Br azilian s have seen and continue to see their modernities from a multip lic ity of own reality angles: vis--vis central hybridism, opposition,
difference, de ference, dependency, mimicry, defic it, catchin g up, creat ive absorption, inappropriateness, and so forth. The authors approached here are but a small (albeit influential) sample of these multiple possib ilitie s. In general, the postcolonial literature is more sensitive to suc h complexities than its multip le modernities counterpart. But as virt ually all disc ussions on the question of postcoloniality in Latin Americ a sugge st (Mignolo, Ashcroft, Moraa et al., Moraa and Juregui), turning the disc iplinary lense s of postcolonial studie s to the subcontinent is not a simple t ask. The overarchin g que stion se ems to be whether postcolonial analy sis could be applied to e arlier post-colonial experiences such as L atin Americas, that is, beyond the late twentieth century context from which the field emerged, mostly in response to independence struggles in Afric a and Asia. Ashcroft has traced a useful picture of th e multip 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 92 P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 4 Fall 2012 ISSN: 1874-6969
being formed in Europe; differences between the Spanish and Portuguese colonialisms and the ones to which postcolonial studies normally refer (especially Brit ish and French); whether and how the occupant of the Empire position has changed over time (to include, chiefly , the United States); the greater ambiguity between colonizers and colonized, often framed in terms of hybrid or Creole cultures; the que stion of internal colonialism in relation to black, peasant and indigenous populations; the particular d ialectic s of acceptance-resist ance to colonial domin ation and foreign influence by national elites; and whether the attempt to extend postcolonial st ud ies to Latin Americ a wo uldnt be it self a neocolonialist move. As is also the case e lse where, to think of Latin America from a postcolonial standpoint requires go ing beyond the Colonial Period as demarcated by the historiographical c anon (in the case of Brazil, from 1500 to 1822). Colonialism as a h istorical experience is, in this sense , dist inguished from coloniality, where the latter concerns those more elusive yet persistent and contradictory effects of colonization on formerly colonized peoples self-consciousness. M oreover, given the longer time span elapsed since the demise of colonization, the primordial colonizer has lost gro und to further waves of external influence that have succeeded the period of Portugue se and Spanish dominion: most obviously Britain and the US in geopolit ical economy, but also France and even Germany in softer ( intellect ual and inst itut ional) spheres. Such lo ngue dure, couple d with Brazilian partic ular ities within Lat in America, make the applic ation 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 insights from contemporary postcolonial critique to bear on Latin American particular ities: to expand the problem of coloniality as conceived by postcolonial theorys chief paradigm s (Said, Fanon, Spivak, or Bhabba) (Moraa et al.); more focused approaches from a subaltern stud ies (Rodrigue s) or cultural studie s (Del Sarto et al.) perspective; and stud ies connecting c olonialism in Brazil with it s counterparts in Lusophone Africa (Santos, Fiddian). Dependency theory 93 P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 4 Fall 2012 ISSN: 1874-6969
has also been a favorite topic, be it as the object of, or in contrast to, postcolonial approaches (Grosfogue l, Kap oor). For Brazil, popular themes have inc lude d cultur al movements like the 1920 s Brazilian modernism (Madureir a) or mid-century Cinema Novo (New Cinema) (Stam). The que stion of race, partic ular ly fraught with tension in the contestation of Freyres rac ial harmony le gacy by late-century blac k activism, is extensive enough to make up a subfie ld on its o wn (for instance, Bourdie u and Wac quant, Sansone, and other contributors to the same issue of the Brazilian journal Estudos Afro-Asit icos). In general lines, one could say that if the multiple modernitie s approach has its ultim ate reference in contemporary globalization, views the history of modernity as startin g in eighteenth century Europe and unfold ing through a mult iplication of modernizin g projects mediated by local e lite s, and privilege s modernitys bright side (i.e ., its emanc ipatin g aspects), the postcolonial approach to Latin America begins with the Conquest and the world-system which unfolds thereof, vie ws the history of modernity as the systemic artic ulation of colonialitys m ult iple elements, and privilege s modernitys dar k side (i.e., its subalternizing aspects). A collective of Latin-American scholars ( many of whom US-based) has been particular ly vocal in these debates. According to one of it s members, the Colombian anthropologist Arturo Escobar (Wor lds and Knowledge s Otherwise ), the groups chief claim for innovat ion lies in the uniqueness of its deco lonial critique, firmly grounded in the particular ities of L atin America s experien ce. This crit ique does not claim to be situated outside of modernity, b ut at its margins, and proposes that modernity-coloniality (rather than modernity alone) be the unit of analysis. One of the notions propounded by this group, that of coloniality of power , seeks to account for the tenacity of colonialism s material and discursive structures beyond national independences, and refers to a ch ain o f entangled global hierarchie s that extrapolates military and economic domination to include r acial, gendered, sp iritual, epistemic , and linguistic elements. All these forms of power are articulated in what has been
94
referred
to
as
the
modern
colonial
world
sy stem
(Quijano
and
Wallerste in, Escobar World and Knowledges Otherwise 185). The idea of border-thinking (Mignolo) also has a subcontinental flavor in its e vocation of the tropes of mixture and Creolization so fam iliar to Latin-American social thought, but now stripped of connotations of harmony (as in Freyre). If, on the one hand, border-thinking may be seen as occ upying that othering space of alternat ive (i.e., non-modern) civilizational matrixes that was, in the case of Latin America, eventually filled by the Creole, on the other it takes place in the epistemologic al and political space opened up by colonial difference, from where it aims at reaching at an outside of Western hegemony. This view is in line with that of many postcolonial crit ics, b ut in Lat in America the idea of margins acquire s greater prominence, since its subaltern point of view has been historically constituted as internal to the West. The postcolonial perspective therefore opens up a field of inquiry for from which the most West multiple modernities approaches The lack appropriate M ult iple conceptual tools. Some of the latters insistence in detach ing modernity (Eisenstadt Introduction, First Modernities, Roniger and Waisman), for instance, is tellin g of, as M ignolo would put it, their blindness to colonial difference, or to the fact that modernitys claims to universality are the result of a historic al process o f expansion of Western soc ieties predicate d on the hierarchizat ion and subjugation of alternative worldvie ws. Moreover, multiple modernities focus on collective identitie s cannot addr ess the postcolonial que stion of subaltern enunciation in all its complexity. It is no surprise, then, that the pool of actors populating such studie s, pictured as strugglin g for the hegemony of their own version of the modern project, is almost exclusively lim ited to national elites, intellectuals, or organized soc ial movements. The subaltern who does not exist as a well-defined collect ive sub ject (in other words, who does not have an e xplic it, b ounded identity) does not find much room in this framework. 3 Most of the multiple modernitie s
The idea of popular culture is one way of framing these amorphous identities (Rowe and Schelling).
3
95
approaches to Latin America only see m to be able to work against contradiction, ambiguity, and indeterminacy. In this sense, a postcolonial approach would have the advantage of thinking not against but thro ugh the latter in order to make sense of sub altern subjectivity, instead of dism issing the incomplete modernity paradigm in Latin America by generously democratizin g modernity to the global peripheries. A stimulat ing engagement with the questio n of Brazils status within the postcolonial terrain has been put forth by the Portuguese socio logist Boaventura de Sousa S antos. Among Santoss arguments on the particular ities of Portuguese colonialism are the original hybridity of Portugue se culture; Portugal s status as a subaltern colonialism (vis- -vis the British, b ut at points also in re lation to Spain); the fact that it s enterprise was more colonial than capitalist, result ing in that the end of Portugue se colonialism did not determine the end of the colonialism of power (10); and that, given the incompleteness of the nation-building process in Portugal it self, Portuguese cult ure became a borderland cult ure where form would prevail over content. According to Santos, these would h ave shaped a peculiar (post-) colonial o utlook in Portugal s former colonies, espec ially Brazil, which was not only the largest of them but eventually became itself the center of the Portugue se Empire between 1808 and 1821. The fact that the Portugue se colonizer had to retroactively reckon with what became the new norm namely, British imperalism had paradoxical and long- last ing consequences for its colonies: they came to suffer, S antos ar gue s, from both an excess and a defic it of colonialism. Portuguese colonialism c ame thus to be seen by those in Brazil both as a root cause of its underdeve lopment and as a sort of friendly colonialism. Santos goes on to argue that the particular itie s of Portuguese colonialism entail a specific kind of postcolonialism. In the case of Brazil, two points stand out in this re gard. On the one hand, the abovementioned double colonizat ion (by Portugal and then by the Empires that followed it) became later the constitutive e lement of Brazils myth of origins and 96 P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 4 Fall 2012 ISSN: 1874-6969
possibilit ies for de ve lopment. ... It divide s Brazilians between those who are crushed by the excess of past and those that are crushed by the excess of fut ure (19). On the other hand, the colonial not weakness an d allow for the incompetence of the Portuguese Prosp ero did
persistence of neocolonialist relat ions,
but by the same token it
facilitated, partic ularly in the case of Brazil, the reproduction of colonial relations after the end of colonialism what is known as internal colonialism (34). Indeed, the intensity with which colonialism was t urned inwards in Brazil might have been a h istorical effect of having had a colonizer that was itse lf subaltern (but wh ich had nonetheless the tradition of a strong patrimonial st ate). One can think of the gap in Brazil between those crushed by the excess of past and those crushed by the excess o f future as moving along the lines of internal colonialism (most prominently, in relation to indigenous p eoples, but also encompassing peasants and descendents of Afr ican slaves). But it also overlaps with other long-lasting gaps in Brazil such as those in income and education. On the other hand, the excess of fut ure eloquently encapsulated in the recurrent motto in Brazilian cult ure: Brazil, the land of the future nourishes the long-last ing expectation of one day becoming a fully developed country, as well as a major global player. The particularit ies of Brazilian postcoloniality as accounted for by Santos also seem to have shaped nation-building ideo logie s as they turned outwards. From the point of view of double colonization, for instance , Freyres The Masters and the Slaves can be re garded as a retroactive response to Britains redefin ition of the rules of colonial discourse rac ist sc ience, progress, the white mans burden (Santos 12). Freyres borrowing of Franz Boass notion of culture as an alternative to biological understandin gs of race (The Masters and the Slaves xxvi) allowed him to recast in a positive light what was until then understood as a source of degeneration (Skidmore): miscegenat ion. Many of the dichotomies present in the ensaios and e lse where also struggle with the perceived gap that emerged between Brazil s Iberian roots an d Western European hegemony. 97 P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 4 Fall 2012 ISSN: 1874-6969
Each of their poles refer, as it were, to one colonizer: hierarchy-equality (DaMatta), (Holland a). Finally, S antos invites us to think in terms not of a generic postcolonialism accessed by means of postcolonial theorys abstract constructs, but of a situated postcolonial ism, which supposes a careful historical and comparative analysis of the different colonialisms and their aftermaths (20). I wo uld add to this the importance not only of historical but ethnographic embedding when reflecting on postcoloniality as in in particular forth by peripheral Donna regions (or between them, the South-South interests patrimonialism-bureaucracy (Faoro), or cordiality-civility
relations). In this vein, one could t ake situated also in the sense p ut Haraway: makin g e xplic it concrete undergird ing epistemologic al constructs and their corresponding claims to universality. In the remainder of this paper, I will tentatively take up these and other insights by exploring recent approximations between Brazil and the African continent within the context of (re)emerging South-South alignments. 2. Postcoloniality Brazil and Africa As suggested by Santoss notion of situated postcolonialism, in Contemporary South-South Alignments :
disc ussing contemporary relations between Brazil and Africa should not be an intellect ual exercise in the abstract. M oreover, a longue dure historical frame as we ll as Br azil s ambivalent position between its historical alliance with the West and terceiromundista (Third- Worldist) alignments are key for understandin g how such relat ions are unfo ldin g today. The trajectories o f Brazil and the African continent have crossed each other at various points during the half millennium of European colonialism in the Americas and in Africa, and continue to do so along lines t hat are fundamentally sh aped by their respective post-colonial legac ies. Fro m the very beginning, relations between the two continents have been a constitutive part of the world system inaugurated by We stern European expansion from the fifteenth century onwards. These have often been framed by the historical literatur e 98 P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 4 Fall 2012 ISSN: 1874-6969
in terms of the At lantic triangle where by Europeans provided Afr ican traders with manufact ured goods such as te xtiles and guns, in exchange for slaves to work in their New World colonie s (the so-called Middle Passage), while the latter supplie d Europe with high ly valued products as sugar and precious metals (to be jo ined by coffee, co tton and others) (Mintz). In the case of Brazil, howe ver, it make s more sense to think in terms of a fourvertex figure, as by the late se venteenth century Portugal itse lf had become politically and economically dependent on the rising British empire (Penha). Throughout Brazils co lonial history, its r elations with Afric a have been fundamentally mediated by the transatlantic slave trade, in which the Portugue se, and later on the Brazilians t hemselves, played a prominent role. The mid-nineteenth century, when England finally succeeded in curbing the influx of A frican slave s to Brazil, is generally regarded as inauguratin g a century of stalled relations between the two regions, eventually punctuated by free and forced movements of returned slaves and slave-descendents especially to West Afric a. Meanwhile, the Brazilian state was busy with its own process of inter nal colonizat ion and territorial unificat ion and, later on into the twentieth century, industrialization. It is not until later in that century, with the African continent ushering into independence struggles, that Brazilian diplomats (and businessmen) would look again with interest across the Southern Atlantic (Saraiva, Dvila). But regardle ss of the flow of people, goods and information between the two regions, Afric a had an important role to play in Brazil dur ing the early twentieth century. This was not, however, the actual Afr ica, b ut an Africa seen through the mirror-image of Brazils nation-building ideologies. In the best-known and most influential version of Brazilian nationality, Afric ans joined the Amerindians and the Portugue se to make up the Brazilian melting pot the Frey rean picture of a rac ially m ixed society de void of se gregation and rac ism . According to another axis of Freyres oeuvre (Um Brasile iro em Terras Portuguesas), which wo uld also wie ld high influence in Brazils foreign policy circles, Portuguese colonies in
99
Africa p articipated in the fantasy of a L usotropical c ivilization sharin g similar character istic s with the Brazilian post-colonial experience. Historic al works (such as Sar aivas, or Dvila s recent account of Brazils stance on independence struggles in Portugue se colonie s in A fric a) sugge st that the power of Freyrean discour se in Brazilian s selfconsciousness and its influence on the countrys international move s should not be underestimated. This is espe cially true with regard to Brazil s special relation which some have descr ibed as sentimental (Penna Filho and Lessa) with Portugal, wh ich preven ted it from taking a c lear stand opposing the last stronghold of E uropean colonization in Afr ica. Freyre himself played a role in this respect, not only in Brazil but also in Portugal, where he supported, sometimes in person, the ideological apparat us of the Salazarist regime. This e ventually came at a cost to Brazil, by breeding acrimonious resentment among leaders not only from former Portuguese colonies in Afr ica (Mozambique in partic ular) but from the remainder of the continent as well. Brazils foreign policy for Afric a therefore reflects its fundamentally ambivalent insert ion in the world system that gradually emerge d with the conquest of Americ a. On the one hand, there has been an almost automatic privileging of relations with the former empires of Portugal, Western Europe and the US. On the other, there is an opposite drive towards terceiromundis mo, where a closer alignment is sought with other developing nations across what is being today calle d the global South. While the former follows the typical dynamic s of center-periphery relations, the latter is driven by a will to shed political and ec onomic dependence on Northern nations (the US in particular, whom Brazilian dip lomacy has alway s resented for being treated like a junio r partner) while strivin g for regional and more recently, global le adership. It is not casual, then, that closer relations with A frica were most aggressively so ught by Brazil in moments of emergence, such as durin g t he 70 s economic mirac le and recently durin g Lulas two terms in office (2003- 2010). 4 Therefore, by
4
A partial exception was the independent foreign policy pursued during Jnio Quadros and Joo Goularts short-lived presidencies (1961-64). Attempts at approximation with Africa would be resumed during the
100
becoming a provider of international cooperation, Brazil is addressing as much its Southern counterparts as Northern powers, from whom it seeks recognition as a major global player. Such efforts at approximation with A frica, based on the doctrine of responsible pragmat ism (Saraiva), submit foreign relat ions to the imperative s of national deve lopment to the point of sometimes clash ing frontally with geopolitic s. Probably the most striking inst ance of this was during the Geise l ye ars (1974- 79), when the paradoxical situation cam e about where a harsh anti-communist military dictatorship was the first non-African regime to recognize a Marxist government: independent Angola under the MPLA (Peoples Movement for the Liberation of Angola). This was a late attempt at redeeming Brazil from the lac k of a firm commitment against the persistence of colonization in Lusophone Africa and the South-African apartheid re gime, which had bred hostilit ies among many of the new Afr ican leader s an d put Brazil in the blac k list of oil-producin g Afr ican nat ions and their A rab allies dur ing the 1970s oil shocks (Saraiva). Much in Brazil s d isco urse on its re lat ions with Afric a has been retained since then. In cooperation activit ies, the Itamaratys (Brazil s Ministry of Foreign Relations) st andard discourse on Brazilian c ult ure tends to follo w the Freyrean lines of rac ial mixture and harmony e ven if during the last dec ade or so, as happened occasionally in the past, such hegemonic disco urse has been increasingly challenged by r ace-based movements in Brazil (Sar aiva). As one moves however from policy to operational staff in volve d in cooperation activities, references to race politics (and e ven to questions of race in general) become increasingly less common. This points to the relevance of other analytical an gle s or rather, to the need for an articulated approach, as has been sugge sted by the Latin American postcolonial literature discussed above. An analyt ical an gle that stood out dur ing fie ldwor k relates to the idea of culture, partic ularly in the central way assumptions of cult ural
Military Regime, but such efforts eventually fell apart during the 80s under the weight of an economic crisis that swept both sides of the Atlantic (Saraiva).
101
affinitie s between Brazil and (especially West and Lusophone) Africa are deployed in cooperation. Most typically, such affinit ies are e voked in the spheres of music, food, d ance, sports, religion, or language. Such emphasis on assumed affinit ies at the le vel of culture is in line with ar guments stressin g the centrality of non-conceptual forms of embodie d subject ivity in Afr ica s trans-At lantic diaspora (Gilroy 76). But it co uld as well reflect gaps in historiography that are being gradually bridge d by stud ies focusing for instance on the African origins of agr icultural techniques brought to the Americas (e.g. , Carney). 5 What this indic ates most forcefully, however, is the peripheralization of both world regions during the rise to hegemony of the West and its domin ance in harder social dimensions such as (industrial-capitalist) economy, (liberaldemocratic) political institut ions, and (techno-scientific) knowledge. Thus, what would be the proper terrain for relations across the Southern Atlantic was left to what is understood, according to Western modernitys normativity, as the softer (and autonomous) spheres of religion, culture, and so forth. But culture is not a pre-given essence t hat would have remained unchanged throughout the centuries, untouched by history or politics. Th is becomes especially evident when dissonances arise between Brazil s constructed image of it s Afric an heritage and actual contemporary Africa. Especially in the aftermath of the independence struggle s, not all A fric ans saw such supposed cult ural legacie s in a p ositive light, connected as they were with a trad ition that those eager to modernize wished only to le ave behind. A telling anecdote recounted by Dvila (61) speaks of a Nigerian student in Salvador who went crazy of fear of candombl gods, 6 associated as they are by many urban, Christianized Africans with the dangers of the bush a reve aling contradiction between Africas place in Brazil s nation-build ing and contemporary Africas own processes of internal colonialism.
An important lacuna in Gilroys 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 Candombl is a modality of Afro-Brazilian religion akin to the Haitian Vodou or the Cuban Santera.
5
102
But cultur al polit ics m ay also t ake on a deliberate form, as in th e invention of sh ared trad itions focuse d on Afric an returnees from Brazil. Dvila tells of how visits to communitie s of returnees in Benin, Togo, Ghana and Nigeria were mandatory in Brazilians m issions to Afr ica in the 60 s and 70s. More recently, the Brazilian government has been actively engaged in enhancing the visib ility of these historical tie s, e ven including them in the cooperation it provides. I have visited a house in Jamestown (Accra) that has been turned into a small museum telling the story of one such community of returnees, the Tabon people of Ghana. It also housed weekly Portugue se c lasses and periodical screenings of Brazilian movie s. President Lula visited the new m use um (named Brazil House and located at Brazil Lane ) in one of his many official trips to Africa. Such act ive construction of shared ident ities does not mean that spontaneous affinitie s may not arise dur ing cooperation activities. Indeed, I have sometimes heard from Afric an par ticipants of how their Brazilian counterparts were more easy-going, le ss patronizing and had a better sense of humor than as one of them tellingly put it other Europeans. But that these are manife stations of some lingering shared c ult ure or even consequential for the success of technical cooperation itself is far from obvious. After all, other social dimensions at play durin g cooperation activitie s politic al constraints, career interests, bureaucratic protocols, institut ional en vironments, material infr a-structure carry sign ificant weight. But neither is the assumption of similar ities limited to the realm of the social, it also include s nature in a central way. In the world of BrazilAfrica cooperation, it is common to hear of how, as in a very easy jigsaw puzzle, the Eastern coast of Brazil and Africa s We st fit e ach other perfectly, united as they once were before the Atlantic Ocean came into existence. Thus, Brazilian technologies would be more easily adapted to Sub-Saharan Afric a, the discourse goes, because of their shared geoclimat ic conditions. The imagery of the tropics is salient here. In the 70s, Brazilian manufacturers aimed at getting a piece of Nigeria s at the time burgeoning consumer market (what would also help offset the rising cost 103 P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 4 Fall 2012 ISSN: 1874-6969
of importing Nigerian oil) by act ive ly advertising domestic appliances especially suited to tropical are as. According to one of the ads, which brought soccer star Pel as poster boy, these appliances, te sted at the source: a tropical country, Brazil, were made to work no matter the conditions of heat, humid ity and volt age fluctuations (D vila 240- 1). These and other arguments about how Brazil was determined to share the technological patrimony it has accumulate d in its experience as a tropical country with these African nat ions (Dvila 225) bear strikin g resemblance to the ones put forth by cooperation agents with respect to agric ultural technologies being c urrently transferred to Africa. Brazil is indeed a global le ader in tropical agric ulture, an d
similar itie s in soil and climate are assumed (and advertised) as a comparative ad vantage vis--vis both traditional and emerging donors. In the practice of projects, however, such c orrespondence between contexts has to be actively e stablished (or some would say, constructed) by the adaptation and valid ation work carrie d out by Brazilian researchers in partnership with their African colleagues. Moreover, such work involve s not only overcoming technical hurdles, b ut dealing with the broad range of social elements that also have a play in the successful transfer of technology and knowled ge agr ic ult ural re search, educ ation and extension institut ions, land and labor systems, market access, availability of inputs, credit, and risk management mechanisms, among others. And these are elements in Brazils and Afr ican countries colonial and post-colonial histories that are not always m arked by similarit ies, for inst ance in region s like We st Afric a where agric ulture remains large ly a domain of polit ically weak subsistence small-holders (in sh arp contrast with Brazil s influential lobby of export-driven large landowners). In cooperation discourse, such topography of natur al-c ult ural
similar itie s is further articulated with a temporal dimension: if Brazil and Africa can entertain today a potentially promisin g cooperation partnership, it is because, as a tropical de veloping country, Brazil has already suffere d from, and overcame, many of the problems plaguing Afr ican nations today . This is a partic ular way of rearrangin g the developmentalist timeline of 104 P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 4 Fall 2012 ISSN: 1874-6969
modernization discussed by Fer guson (Glo bal Sh adows 188). I f, on the one hand, it reproduces the classic modernization telos by assum ing that the path already treaded by a more developed periphery (Brazil) could somehow show the way for a less de veloped periphery (Africa), on the other it claims that the kind of knowledge (in this case, in tropical agric ulture) historically accum ulated by Brazil would be better than alternative so lut ions offered by the de ve loped world. A s Freyre s, this is an ambivalent view on modernization deflected by postcolonial preoccupations about turning a peripheral historical experience into a positive asset vis- -vis central hegemonic models. In a similar ve in, some versions of cooperation disco urse c laim that Brazil, as a receiver of international aid for decades, would know how not to provide it for instance, by not tying conditionalities and not interfering in the receivin g countries internal affairs. Moreover, Brazilian cooperation is deeply shaped by questions related to international asymmetries, especially with respect to global go vernance and trade frameworks that are considered as no lon ger appropriately responding to the realities of an increasingly multipolar world. Thus, one of Brazil s most visib le interests in cooperating with Africa has been to muster support for a reform of the United Nations Security Counc il that wo uld inc lude Brazil as a permanent member. Other prominent arenas of interest have include d other leve ls of the UN system (the Food and Agriculture Organization, for instance, has recently elected a Brazilian for its Director-General) and trade negotiations in the WTO (especially over agric ult ural subsidies and market access to Europe and the US). In this sense , it co uld be argued that South-South cooperation presents a more situated view than the god trick (Har away) frequently assoc iated 7 with Northern development institutions such as the World Bank: that is, an interest-free view of everything that is itself situated nowhere.
For instance, by Escobar (Encountering Development) or Ferguson (The Anti-Politics Machine).
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Finally, Brazil s rhetoric of cultur al affinities also diver ges from Western vie ws of A fric a as absolute otherness (Mbembe). Rather than being that which one is not, Africa has been incorporated in a central (albeit ambivalent) way in Br azil s nation-building ideolo gie s, most prominently and consequentially 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 racial harmony paradigm is today under he avy fire domestic ally attests to the precarious nat ure of ideologies that c laim to be all-encompassin g in a world region marked by the postcolonial ambivalences and contradictions sketched above. As history unfolds, then, new quest ions are raised. If once Freyre and others took serio usly the project of cr eating future Brazils in Afric a (Dvila), in contemporary practice this seems to unfold less in the spheres of cult ure and race relations than at the harder levels of technology transfer, instit ution-build ing, global trade and other areas directly or indirectly addressed by cooperation efforts. Moreover, even though Lusophone Africa remains a privile ged tar get of Brazilian cooperation, the alignment 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 politic al project, sp earheaded by Brazil and other emerging co untries, of changing global str uctures of governance and trade along lines more congruous with the growing re levance of the so-called global South. In a historical sense, then, Freyres legac y may be seen positively , not so much in terms of how it came about at a time when sc ientific rac ism and whitening polic ies were prevalent in Brazil (Skidmore), but by having provided a necessary ideological foundation for Brazil s nation-buildin g efforts in the aftermath of the inception of the Republic. In other words, the racial harmony claim had an ideological part to play in a broader historical process of construction of a national economy and state institut ions durin g the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, that eventually became a firm foundation for Brazil s contemporary emergence as a global 106 P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 4 Fall 2012 ISSN: 1874-6969
player and trader. Contrastive ly, in the wake of national independences few if any countrie s in Sub-S aharan Afric a were able to carry forward such process in a sustained 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 le ast a mistake Brazilians did have an opportunity to commit. If the Freyrean le gacy is today bein g rethought and challenge d, this is done in a highly globalized context in relation to which Brazil is less vulnerab le and dependent than most African nations, both economically and polit ically. Meanwhile, partic ularly in weaklygoverned African states the national ec onomy model appears less a threshold of modernity than a brief, and large ly aborted, postindependence project (Ferguson, Glo bal Shadows 207). Today, expectat ions of modernity in the African continent are also being shaped by re lation s with Brazil and other emergin g donors like China or India. It seems ear ly to assess the effects of this new state of affairs whether it will act ually correspond to the invariably beneficent discourses that usually accompany and le git imize South-South cooperation. 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 traditional donors. Therefore, when looking at Brazil-Afr ica relations, Lat in American postcolonial literature s insight about lo oking not at discrete le vels of analy sis (such as race or ethnicity) but at the chain of entangled, historically constit uted world-system hier archies (in the economy, trade, geopolitic s, knowled ge and technology, and so forth) is most we lcome. Moreover, cooperation in spite of the to disc ursive construction of South-South it must be contrastively North-South development,
recognized that the global South is neither homogeneous, nor external to the world sy stem built under Western he gemony. This entails reinstat ing the analytical re levance of margins, ambiguitie s, contradictions, and situatedness. Insights from ethnography (e.g., Watts), which draws on the practice of cooperation rather than exclusive ly on institutionalized discour se, also point in these directions. Finally, for all that was said about Brazils perspective s on Afric a, the reve rse must also be true: Afr ica s var ied post-colonial experiences and exp ectations must have a play in 107 P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 4 Fall 2012 ISSN: 1874-6969
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 scrutiny by historians, anthropologists, and the wide array of actors, from both Brazil and African countries, involved in the design and practice of South-South cooperation.
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Works Cited Aldama, Fredric k Louis. Subterranean Modernities and Phantasm al Nations: Some Questions and Observations. Latin Americ an Research Review 41.3 (2006): 201- 9. Print. Appadurai, Arjun. Mo dernity at Large. Cultural Dimensio ns of Globaliz ation. Minneapolis: Univer sity of Minnesota Press, 1996. Pr int. Asad, Talal, ed. Anthro pology and the Colonial Encounter, New York: Humanit ies Press, 1973. Print. Ashcroft, Bill. L atin America and Postcolonial Transformation. O n PostColonial Futures: Transformatio n of Colonial Cultures, New York: Continuum International Publishing Group , 2001. 22- 35. Pr int. Bourdieu, Pierre and Loic Wac quant. On the Cunning of Imperialist Reason. Culture, Theory & Society 16. 1 (1999): 41- 58. Pr int. Calde ira, Teresa. City of Walls. Crime, Segregation and Citize nship in So Paulo. Berkeley: Un iversity of California Press, 2000. Pr int. Cardoso de Oliveir a, Roberto. A Noo de Colonialismo Interno na Etnologia. A Sociologia do Bras il Indgena, So Paulo: Editora da US P, 1972. 77- 83. Pr int. ___. Per ipheral Anthropologies Versus C entral Anthropologies. Jo urnal of Latin American A nthropology 4. 2 (1999): 10-30. Print. Carney, Judith. Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivatio n in the Americas. Cambrid ge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001. Pr int. Coronil, Fernando. Magical State: Nature, Money and Modernity in Venezuel a. Chicago: Un iversity of Chicago Press, 1997. Print. Cunha Jr., Henrique. Tecnologia Af ricana na Formao Brasileira. Rio de Janeiro: CEAP, 2010. Pr int. Da Cunha, Euclides. Rebellio n in the Backlands. Trans. Samue l Putnam. Chicago: Un iversity of Chicago Press, 1957. Print. Dvila, Jerry. Hotel Trpico. Brazil and the Challenge of African Decoloniz ation. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010. Pr int. DaMatta, Roberto. Carnivals, Rogues, and Heroes: An Interpretatio n of the Braz ilian Dilemma. Trans. John Drury. Notre Dame: Notre Dame Univer sity Press, 1991. Print.
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Del Sarto, Ana et al., eds. The Latin American Cultural Studies Reader. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004. Pr int. Deutch, Jan-Georg, Peter Probst and Heike Schmidt, eds. African Modernities. London: Heinemann, 2002. Prin t. Domingues, Jos Maur cio. Latin America and Contemporary Modernity. A Sociological Interpretatio n. New York: Routle dge, 2008. Print. Eisenstadt, Shmue l. Introduction. Multipl e Modernities. Ed. S Eisenst adt. New Brunswic k, NJ: Transaction Publisher s, 2002. Print. ___. The First Multiple Modernities: Colle ctive Identities, Public Spheres and Polit ical Order in the Americas. Globality and Multiple Modernities. Comparat ive North Americ an and Lat in Americ an Perspectives. Ed. Luis Roniger and Carlos Waisman, Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2002. Print. Escobar, Arturo. Encountering Develo pment. The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995. Pr int. ___. Worlds and Knowled ges Otherwise: the Latin American Modernity/Coloniality Research Program. Cultural Studies 21.2- 3 (2007): 179- 210. Pr int. Faoro, Raymundo. Os Donos do Poder. Formao do Patronato Poltico Brasile iro. 1958. So Paulo: Globo, 2001. Pr int. Featherstone, Michael, Scott Lash and Roland Robertson, eds. Global Modernities. London: Sage, 1995. Pr int. Ferguson, James. The Anti-Politics Mach ine. Developme nt, De-Policiz ation and Bureaucrat ic Power in Lesotho. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1990. Pr int. ___. Global Shadows. Africa in the Neoliberal Global Order. Durham: Duke Univer sity Press, 2006. Print. Fidd ian, Robin, ed. Postcolonial Perspectives on the Cultures of Latin America and Lusophone Afric a. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2000. Pr int. Freyre, Gilberto. The Masters and the Slaves. A Study in the Developme nt of Braz ilian Civil izatio n. Trans. Sam uel Putnam. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1946 . Pr int. ___. Um Bras ileiro em Terras Portuguesas. Introduo a uma Possvel LusoTropicologia, Acompanhada de Co nferncias e Discursos Proferidos em Portugal e 110 P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 4 Fall 2012 ISSN: 1874-6969
em Terras Lusitanas e Ex-Lus itanas da sia, da frica e do Atlntico. Rio de Janeiro: Jos Olympio, 1953. Print. Furtado, Junia Pereir a. Tropical Empiricism. Making Medic al Knowledge in Colonial Brazil. Science and Empire in the Atlantic World. Ed. James Delbourgo and Nicholas Dew. New York : Routledge, 2008: 127-51. Print. Gaonkar, Dilip, ed. Alternative Modernities. Durham: Duke University Press, 2001. Print. Gilroy, Paul. The Bl ack Atlantic. Mo dernity and Do uble Consc iousness. New York: Verso, 1993. Print. Grosfoguel, Ramon. The Epistemic Decolonial Turn: Beyond Politic alEconomy Paradigms. Cultural Studies 21.2- 3 (2006): 179-210. Pr int. Haraway, Donna. Situated Knowledges: the Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Per spective. Feminist Studies 14. 3 (1988): 575-99. Print. Hollanda, Srgio Buar que. Razes do Brasil. 1936. So Paulo, Brazil: Companhia das Letras, 1995. Print. Kapoor, Ilan. Capitalism, Cult ure, Agency : Dependency Theory versus Postcolonial Theory. Third Worl d Quarterly 23. 4 (2002): 647-64. Print. Knauft, Bruce, ed. Critic al Modernities. Alternative, Alterities, Anthropologies. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 2002. Print. Lambert, Jacques. Os Dois Brasis, Srie Brasiliana v. 335, S o Paulo: Companhia Editora Nacional, 1967. Pr int. Madure ira, Lus. Cannibal Mo dernities. Postcoloniality and the Avant-Garde in Caribbean and Braz il ian Literature. Charlottesville : University of Virginia Press, 2005. Pr int. Mbembe, Achille. On the Postcolony. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. Print. Mignolo, Walter. Local Histories / Global De signs. Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. Print. Mintz, Sidney. Sweetness and Power. The Place of Sugar in Modern History. New York: Penguin Books, 1986. Pr int.
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Moraa, Mabel and Carlos Juregui, eds. Revisit ing the Colonial Question in Latin America, Madrid: Iberoamericana Editorial, 2008. Pr int. Moraa, Mabel et al., eds. Coloniality at Large. Latin America and the PostColonial Debate. Durham: Duke University Press, 2008. Print. Quijano, Anbal and Immanue l Waller stein. Americanity as Concept, or the Americas in the Modern World-System. International Journal of Social Sciences 134 (1992): 583-91. Pr int. Oliven, Ruben. Brasil, um a Modernidade Tropical. Etnografic a 3. 2 (1999): 409-27. Print. Ortiz, Renato. From Incomplete Modernity to World Modernity. Multiple Modernities. Ed. S. Eisenstadt. Brunswick, N J: Transaction Publishers, 2002. Print. Penha, Eli. Rel aes Brasil-frica e a Geopol tica do Atlntico Sul. Salvador: EDUFBA, 2011. Print. Penna Filho, Pio, and Antnio Lessa. O Itamaraty e a frica: as Origens da Polt ica Afr icana do Brasil. Revista Estudos Histricos 1.39 (2007): 57- 81. Pr int. Piot, Charles. Remotely Global: Village Modernity in West Africa. Chicago: Univer sity of Chicago, 1999. Print. Ramos, Alc ida. Indige nism: Ethnic Politics in Braz il. Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1998. Print. Rodrigues, I leana, ed. The Latin America Subaltern Studies Reader. Durham: Duke University Press, 2001. Pr int. Rofel, Lisa. Other Modernities. Gendered Yearnings in Ch ina after Social ism. Berkeley: Un iversity of California Press, 1999. Pr int. Roniger, Luis and Carlo s Waisman, eds. Glo bal ity and Multiple Modernities. Comparat ive North Americ an and Lat in Americ an Perspectives. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2002. Print. Rowe, William and Vivian Schellin g. Memory and Modernity. Popul ar Culture in Latin America. New York: Verso, 1991. Prin t. Sanjin s, Javier. The Nation: an Imagined Community? Cult ural Studies 21. 2-3 (2007): 179- 210. Print.
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Sansone, Livio. Um Campo Saturado de Tenses: o Estudo das Relaes Raciais e da Cultura Negr a no Brasil. Estudos Afro-Asit icos 24.1 (2002): 5- 14. Pr int. Santos, Boaventura de Sousa. Between Prospero and Caliban: Colonialism, Postcolonialism, and Inter-identity. Luso-Braz ilian Re view 39.2 (2002): 9-43. Print. Saraiva, Jos Flvio. O Lugar da frica. A Dimens o Atlntica da Poltica Externa Brasileira (de 1946 at Nossos Dias). Braslia: Editora UnB, 1996. Print. Skidmore, Thomas. Black into White: Race and Natio nal ity in Brazil ian Thought. Durham: Duke University Press. 1993. Print. Stam, Robert. Tropical Mult icultural ism. A Co mparative History of Race in Braz ilian Cinema & Culture, Durham: Duke Univer sity Press, 1997. Print. Stavenhagen, Rodolfo. Classe s, Colonialism, and Acculturat ion. Studies in Comparat ive Internatio nal De velopment 1. 6 (1965): 53- 77. Pr int. Stocking, George. Afterword: A View fro m the Center. Ethnos 47.I-II (1982): 172- 86. Print. Tambiah, Stanley. Transn ational Movemen ts, Diaspora, and Multiple Modernities. Multiple Modernities. Ed. S. Eisenstadt. Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2002. Print. Tavolaro, Srgio. Ex iste uma Modernidade Brasileira? Reflexes em Torno de um Dilema Sociol gico Brasile iro. Revis ta Brasile ira de Cinc ias Sociais 20. 59 (2005): 5- 22. Pr int. Watts, Michae l. Deve lopment Ethnographies. Ethnography 2.2 (2001): 283-300. Pr int. Whitehead, Laurence. Lat in America as a Mauso leum of Modernities. Globality and Mult iple Modernit ies. Comparat ive North American and Latin American Perspectives. Ed. Luis Roniger and Carlos Waisman. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2002. Print.
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CAROLINA CORREIA DOS SANTOS

C ol u mbi a U ni ve rsi ty
SOBRE O OLHAR DO NARRADOR E SEUS EFEITOS EM OS SERTES E CIDADE DE DEUS
Garreth Williams afirma que, devido s suas histrias comuns de coloniza o, a moderniza o dos pase s da Amrica Latina, demandava e continua a demandar o esforo de formao de um povo que, apesar de sua heterogeneidade constitut iva, de veria e stabelecer-se as a potentially hegemonic formation designed to suture the totality of the nations demographic and cultur al d ifferences to the formation and expansion of the nation-state (5). O Brasil no seria ex ceo regra. O e stranho hbito de entender a histria brasile ira como um a espcie de exceo dentro da Amrica Latina, hbito que feste ja a inter ao harmnica entre os povos constitutivo s do Brasil, vem sendo, ainda que tardiamente, contestado. Neste sentido, Jos M urilo de Carvalh o afirm a que o evento conhecido por descobrimento do Brasil deveria se chamar encobrimento do Brasil, critic ando o fato de o termo descobrimento ter sido pouco contestado no pas, na ocasio da comemorao dos 500 anos. Ao contrrio dos nossos vizinhos hispano-americ anos, explica C arvalho, o debate acerca da palavra no nos diria respe ito, ou seja, o eurocentrismo que a utilizao de descobrimento implic a no ser ia pro blema para os brasile iros. Uma das r azes residir ia na crena de que no nosso caso as re laes entre os nativos e os portugue ses foram amigveis, diferentemente das relae s estabelecidas pelos espanhis. Desse m odo, a carta de Pero Vaz de Caminha, por exemplo, tem servido muito bem ao propsito de criar uma imagem quase idlica do encontro entre portuguese s e nativos (400). No entanto, muitos documentos provariam o contrrio e chegariam mesmo a igualar, em termos relativos, o genocdio de ndios no Brasil com o genocdio de nd ios na Amrica hispnica. Segundo Carvalho, ao final de 114 P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 4 Fall 2012 ISSN: 1874-6969
trs
sculos
de
coloniza o
portugue sa
trs
milhes
de
nat ivo s
desapareceram, trs quartos da populao original: imenso encobrimento, construo de memria ( 400). Os comentrios de Carvalho sobre os 5oo anos do Brasil, paradox almente, demonstram que h, entre ns, alguma conscincia d a vio lncia inerente ao processo de formao da na o ao mesmo tempo em que h, talve z ainda majo ritariamente, a negao dela. Euclides d a Cunha public a Os Sertes em 1902. Embebido do cientificismo que o sc ulo dezenove apresentou e exigiu de se us intelectuais, a obra um tratado sobre o serto nordestino brasile iro e uma tentativa de introduzi-lo em um rol de conhecimentos acerca do Brasil. Mas no s isso: Os Sertes tem o intuito de ab arcar e incluir paisagens e tipos humanos no que viria a ser o Brasil moderno. Assim, e contraditoriamente, para Euc lide s da C unha, o sertanejo era o smbolo de um Brasil origin al e talve z a nic a via por meio da qual a cult ura nac ional resist iria ao avano dos imperialismos e uropeu e norte-americano, desprezados pelo autor que os via como a assimilao impensada de usos, costumes e ideias. Ao mesmo tempo, o sertanejo desapareceria de vido fora da histria. Descontadas as supersties que os homens que povoavam o interior tinham, Euclide s acreditava serem ele s os sed imentos bsicos da nao (qtd. in Se vcenko 145), cap azes de livrar o Br asil das falcias de um cosmopolit ismo insustentve l. Nicolau Sevcen ko chega a afirmar que para o escr itor do final do sc ulo dezenove somente a descoberta de uma originalidade nacional d aria condies ao pas de compartilhar em igualdade de condies de um regime de equiparao un iversal das sociedades, envolvendo influncias e assimilaes recp rocas (122). A supresso do sertanejo cogitada na N ota Prelimin ar no teria portanto, o poder de apagar o fe ito hist rico do homem do serto, que teria sido, resumidamente, o de ajudar a construir (sedimentar) a nao brasileir a. Assim, pode-se afirmar que par a Euclides sua prpria obra deve compor o esforo de uma formao potencialmente hegemnica. por meio deste entendimento do autor e sua ob ra que Euc lides passa a ser visto como colaborador na construo de um discurso mestre hegemnico sobre
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o Brasil que prev uma totalidade harmnica, no homognea, mas coesa, e, portanto, um discurso colonial. Levando em conta que um disc urso colonial se arroga a tarefa da criao de um d isc urso de dominao que garanta a hegemonia num determinado espao de alguns sobre outros, ou melhor, de determinadas ideias sobre outras, me parece, ainda, que a c onstruo de um texto como Os Sertes vem a corroborar uma interpretao sobre o Brasil que perdura. O livro de E uclide s, ao mesmo tempo em que cria um nc leo tnico para a nao brasile ira que necessitava naque le momento de uma narrativa par a constituir-se como tal 1, no deix a de defender os ide ais europeus (e republic anos), herana prpria de um pas colonizado, inculcada em toda Amrica Latina. Quando muito da crtic a v, na denncia da matana desnecessria dos canudense s pelo exrc ito, uma inve rso do pensamento usual do s intelectuais lat ino-americanos, creio que essa crtic a fecha os olhos para o fato de que E uclide s censura a repblica por agir barbaramente, como os sertanejos, e rejeitar, portanto, uma misso mais pedaggica e menos vio lenta ou retrgrada, como talvez Euclide s colocasse. Ou se ja, ne m exrcito e nem sertanejos seriam suf icientement e modernos p ara o autor de Os Sertes. Euclide s no teria tomado o lado dos vencidos 2 , como se costuma dizer, mas sim cooperado com o entendimento do Brasil como pas em falt a, sempre na busca de modernizar-se completamente. A denncia, desse modo, colabora com uma interpretao sobre o Brasil com contornos hegemnicos, reiterado com nuances distintas nos trabalhos de Srgio Buar que de Holanda e Roberto Schwarz 3. O argumento primeiro deste artigo, portanto, no simples. Haveria em Os Sertes algo contrrio car acterstica que Williams enxerga no disc urso nac ional hegemnico, ao mesmo tempo em que, major itariamente, cooperaria com sua construo no contexto brasile iro. Ou se ja, Os Sertes
Para uma discusso sobre a necessidade de um ncleo tnico nacional, ver Smith. Para um exemplo desta leitura de Os Sertes, ver Santiago. 3 Como ilustrao, ver a famosa expresso desterrados em nossa terra em Razes do Brasil de Holanda, e o no menos conhecido incio de Nacional por subtrao de Schwarz.
1 2
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traz tona uma situao de assimetria de poder a obra denuncia a brutal vio lncia do estado republic ano, mais forte que os homens e mulheres de Canudos criando, simultaneamente, um disc urso hegemnico mestre sobre o Brasil. Por um lado a denncia, por outro, a execu o de outro ato vio lento, cristalizado na categor izao do s sertanejos enquanto Outro bem como sua inser o numa re la o assim trica de poder, via assimila o. Afinal, segundo o autor, os sertanejos far iam parte dos estgios inic iais de evoluo do brasileiro. No obstante, im portante ressaltar que a denncia euclid iana do atraso tamb m dos patrc ios mais desenvolvidos, refora os contornos de boa parte do pensamento intelectual sobre o Brasil: nunc a moderno, uma falcia constante. Finalmente, a ut ilizao da forma cientfica de conhecer, isto , o uso d as t axonomias e teorias como evolucionismo para compreender o serto e seus hab itantes tambm deve ser entendido como o desejo de filiao do escritor de Os Sertes a uma tradio ligada ao poder (da cincia). Devemos pensar no eurocentrism o, aqui, a contragosto de grande parte da crtica 4. Isso posto, deve-se admitir, entretanto, que Os Sertes no se deixa sintetizar fac ilmente. A principal obra de Euclides da Cunha parece, neste sentido, suportar d istintas le itur as. Roberto Gonzale z-Echeverra, por exemplo, sugere a mud ana do prprio escritor. Euclide s, assim, apelar ia to the rhetoric of amazement, to the language of the sublime, to account for the presence of his fragile and transfiguring se lf before a reality that is bewildering as well as compelling (132). Esse apelo retrica do deslumbramento, ademais de indicar uma leitura testemunhal de Os Sertes, ajuda a entender uma parte da recepo crtica do livro: Os Sertes majoritar iamente compreendido como obra hbrida ( literat ura, c incia e histria), alm de a principal e origin al denncia do curso que a recminstaurad a repblica h avia tomado 5. Como aludido anteriormente, Euclides acreditava que a repblica dever ia ter ensin ado os brasileiros a tornarem-se cidad os e no ter optado pela eliminao do arraial de Canudos.
4 5
Um exemplo est em trecho do primeiro captulo de The Lettered City, de Angel Rama. Sobre o carter hbrido de Os Sertes, entre muitos outros, ver Ventura, Valente e Zilly.
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importante ressalt ar que para Euc lides os sertanejos sequer conformavam um perigo inst ituio republic ana, visto que, aos o lhos do autor, essas pessoas no tinham conscincia poltic a. O resultado d a postur a moral de Euc lides formalizada em Os Sertes desemboca no enaltecimento da simpatia do escritor pelo sertanejo (talve z algo realmente indito) em quase todo texto crtico sobre Os Sertes. Da mesma forma como sua crena no evolucio nismo abrandada, considerada apenas como consequncia bvia das circ unstncias a que est ava submetido o autor, a. retrica euc lidiana de indignao, diante do que o escr itor considerou atrocidades cometidas pe lo exrcito, parece ter sido seu maior feito. Essa retrica t ambm est a servio do apelo de Euc lides ao se u leitor: no intuito de que este, brasileiro majoritariamente do litoral, se alinhasse com sua compreenso sobre a formao da nao brasileir a 6, alm de sensibilizar-se para aquilo que considerou um cr ime. Os c anudense s deveriam ter sido ens inados a ser modernos e republicanos 7 e no barbaramente assassinados, j que faziam parte de um estgio anterior na evoluo da histria. Ve jamos como o autor de Os Sertes descreve a distnc ia temporal entre seu leitor e o sertanejo: Ilud idos por uma c iviliza o de emprstimos; respingando, em fain a cega de copist as, tudo o que de melhor e xiste nos cdigos orgnicos de outras naes, tornamos, revolucionariamente, fugindo ao transigir mais ligeiro com as ex igncias d a nossa prpria n acionalidade, mais fundo o contraste entre o nosso modo de viver e o daqueles rudes patrcios mais estrangeiros nesta terra do que os imigrant es da Europa. Porque no no-los separa um mar, separam-no-los trs sculos(Cunha 209) (grifos meus) Partha Chatterjee, ao descre ver o percurso intelectual do Subaltern Studie s Group, afirma que um ponto importante para o grupo era a certeza
Leopoldo Bernucci sugere que haveria no prprio escritor uma ciso. Euclides no deixaria de ter o Romantismo como paradigma literrio. Como assinala Bernucci, A impresso que temos que ele comea a criticar a ideologia romntica. (. . .) Mas termina, no final, exaltando essa mesma ideologia ao criar um enorme painel de vinhetas romnticas para o festejar dos nossos olhos: a imagem da formao de uma nao atravs do esforo de querer buscar a especificidade do brasileiro (. . .). (33). 7 Para um desenvolvimento dessa questo, ver Johnson, Sentencing Canudos.
6
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de que e lite historians, even those with progressive views and sympathetic to the cause of the rebels, sought to ignore or rationally explain away what appeared as mythic al illusory, millenarian, or utopian in rebel actions e que, assim, they were actually m issing the most powerful and sign ificant elements of subaltern consciousness (292). A observao de Chatterjee sobre a reviso historiogr fic a a que se props o grupo de intelectuais indianos ajuda a compreender por que, afinal, E uclides no consegue representar o sertanejo como sujeito. Sua viso no permitia, por exemplo, interpretar o papel de Antonio Conselheir o em Canudos de outra maneira que no a de excntrico lder religioso, nem de imaginar que os sertanejo s pudessem ter optado por seguir o Conselhe iro. NOs Sertes, a simpatia pelo sertanejo advm de uma atit ude paternalista, do entendimento de que aquele no possua as caracter stic as e condies necessrias para efetivamente fazer um a escolha soberana,que para E uclides s poderia ter sido a de no aderir excentricidade de Antonio Conselheiro, mas uma opo a favor da ide ia moderna de nao. Tentando recuperar a agncia que haveria na formao de Canudos pelos sertanejo s, Adr iana Johnson, em Everydayness and Subalternity, discorre sobre a possibilid ade h istrica de entender os canuden ses da mesma maneira que os subalternos indiano s de que fala o Subaltern Studie s Group. Uma ve z que a subalternidade forces us to think about what has remained outside that province we call modernity (2007 22), e que o subalterno sempre misread, os canudenses teriam sido entendidos como pr-polticos e provocadores, ao invs de agentes, e, portanto, sujeitos que podiam compreender as causas e consequncias das suas aes (2007 27). Para Johnson, ento, os sertanejos, ao seguirem Antonio Conselheiro, resistiam ao poder regulado r do Estado brasileiro, que se impunha naque le inc io de repblica. Eram sujeitos que agiam historicamente e por isso tinham suas aes rasuradas pela chamada histria nacional e oficial. Euclides, constit uindo o que viria a se c onformar histria oficial, desdenhava a ao poltic a dos c anudense s ao associ-los religiosidade extravagante (a expresso de Euclide s) de Antonio Conselheiro, ao 119 P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 4 Fall 2012 ISSN: 1874-6969
extraordinrio, irrac ionalidade e de sorganiza o. Esse s defe itos, par a Euclides, ser iam prprios de povos retardatrios que de veriam ter sido abarcados pe la modernidade e no viole ntamente eliminados, como, de fato, foram. Por serem considerados pelo escritor como o sedimento bsico da nao, o sertanejo ex igiu, por outro lado, a compreenso da sua existncia, o que s se dar ia atrav s de um lxico j existente. Euclides, portanto, teve que encaixar as c aractersticas do sertanejo dentro de um catlo go de conhecimentos identific ado com o poder com a linguagem cientfica do sc ulo dezenove e com o discurso histrico. A conse qunc ia, alerta Chatterjee, often unintended, of this historiographic al pract ice was to somehow fit the unruly facts of sub alter n politics into the rationalist grid of e lite consc iousness and to make them understandab le in terms of the latter. The autonomous history of the subaltern classe s, or to put it differe ntly, the dist inctive traces of subaltern action in history, were completely lost in this historiography. (292) Dessa forma, Os Sertes parece estar e m conformidade com a constitui o de uma ide ia de nao que se pretende logicamente construda, corroborando o silncio das cam adas subalternas, no caso, dos sertanejos. O Outro ser ia conhecido de modo a torn-lo fam iliar atravs dos disc urso s identificados com o poder, e a fora da histria tratar ia de e liminar esse s que formaram a na o mas que fazem parte de outro tempo na evoluo de uma raa: O jaguno destemoroso, o tabaru ingnuo e o caipira simplrio sero em breve tipos re legados s tr adie s evanescentes, ou ext intas. ... A c iviliza o avanar nOs Sertes impelid a por essa implac ve l fora motriz da histria que Gumplowic z, maior do que Hobbes, lobrigou, num lance genial, no esmagamento inevitvel das ra as fracas pelas raas fortes. (Cunha 9-10)
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Gonzalez-Echeverra chama a ateno para o entrelaamento, devido ao poder inerente ao d isc urso c ientfico no sculo de zenove, entre a literat ura lat ino-americana de ssa poca e a cincia. O crtico remonta importncia dos cientistas viajantes com seus cadernos de anotaes sobre o continente americano e sua implica o com a liter atura. A narr ativa derivada dessa condi o assumir ia a forma do disc urso hegemnico. Ou seja, its newness and difference, are narrated through the mind of a writer qualified by sc ience to search for the truth. That truth is found in an e volutionary conception of nature. (...) The capacity of truth is due not so much to the cogency of the scientific method, as to the ideologic al con struct that supports them, a construct whose source of strength lies outside the text. (12) Euclides exerceria, precisamente, a tarefa do cientista da metrpole (europeu) de procurar pela verdade a e ssncia nacional que , por sua vez, sustentava-se num construto ideolgico (an evolutionary concept of nature) que resid iria fora do texto ponto que Luiz Costa Lima, em Terra Ignota, retoma com vigor. Em rela o essnc ia nacional, Gonzale z-Echeverra nos lembra que, contribuindo para o d isc urso cientfico das metrpoles europeias acerca dos territrios ainda relativamente desconhecidos de outras partes do mundo, os viajantes cientistas b usc avam, nas suas expedies, no somente exemplares de fauna e flora mas specimens that represented a backward leap into the origins of evolut ion. Hence, to travel to Latin America meant to find the beginning of h istory preserved a contemporary, living origin (110). Mais uma ve z, no preciso muit a eluc ubrao p ara ver atitudes demasiadam ente similares entre o cientista europeu na Amrica Latina e Euc lides da Cunha no serto nordestino. Alm disso, o prprio uso de uma teoria o evoluc ionismo concebida em e para pase s etnicamente estveis (Lima 207) e, portanto, no mestios como o Brasil, alm de fazer surgir problemas que Euc lide s ter que 121 P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 4 Fall 2012 ISSN: 1874-6969
resolver e scapando p ara o m ito o u forjando uma ethnic ity brasile ira, provar a sua submisso ao modo europeu de conhecimento, uma vez que ele prprio copia os cientistas e uropeus na sua maneira de abordar a raa e a nao. Euc lides de sperdi a a chance de questionar a c incia ao passo que, como coloca Lima, paradox almente mostra seu acerto na afirma o do parasit ismo do litoral por se u prprio comportamento parasitrio ante a cincia e uropia (207). Ao no quest ionar a cinc ia e , portanto, ao aplic-la em e par a territrio e populao brasileiros, os result ados do numa sinuc a de bico que E uc lide s no resolve verdade iramente, seno denega. A afirmao n a Nota Prelim inar de que os sert anejos est ariam fadados a desaparecer e a denncia ao longo do texto de Os Sertes de que o que se sucedeu na guerr a de Canudos foi um m assacre, um cr ime da nacionalidade , soam contraditrias, m as so exp lic ve is atravs da vontade de formao de um disc urso hegemnico sobre a na o brasileir a que determina que sua essncia (a ser superad a) estava no homem do serto. Passado um sc ulo do ep isdio de Canudos e pouco mais de noventa anos da public ao da obra de E uclides, mais uma vez o Brasil parece estar s voltas, atrav s d a literatur a e do discurso vinculado a e la, com a confrontao entre seu imaginrio de progresso e o que parece no ter sido includo ne le. Re firo-me, especific amente, publica o de Cidade de Deus 8, livro de Paulo Lins, sobre a favela de mesmo nome na cidade do Rio de Janeiro. No obstante, a sit ua o dist inta: difere ntemente do que pensava Euclides, os fave lados no ser iam retardatrios espera do progresso, mas seus sinais mais vitais e xtremados. Eles representariam, assim, o capitalismo, se guido por pratic amente todos os pase s do mundo, no se u momento mais avanado. Esses homens, alm disso, esto despossudos do que h avia de m ais humanit rio ou de mt ico na interpretao de Euclides sobre o Brasil:
A primeira edio do livro de 1997.
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eles no so a essncia da na o. Pelo contrrio, a fave la de maneira geral estigmat izada de aberraes. Os motivos para a comparao entre as obras de Euc lides da Cunh a e Paulo Lins, entretanto, no residem exclusivamente neste ndulo que uniria os dois livros em torno da ideia de arcaico e moderno ou atraso e progresso. Pelo contrrio, a comparao nasce da observao do entrelaamento de disc ursos que nOs Sertes resultado da insufic incia da cincia (trapacead a por seu autor atravs da fuga para o mito) enquanto que em Cidade de Deus a imbrica o dos disc ursos ressaltada pelo ato crtico, que recolhe alguns fios soltos da n arrativa que pretende abarcar um todo, caracterstica suger id a por seu prprio ttulo. Dessa forma, Cidade de Deus, apesar da distncia temporal a que est do livro de Euclides da Cunha, se configur a uma obra com qualidade s prximas s da obra sobre Canudos. Ainda que ap arente um estatuto literr io mais bem e consensualmente delineado, comum, tambm, algum a indefin io quanto ao carter ficc ional de Cidade de Deus. No por pouco, o prprio Paulo Lin s explica a origem da obra ao final do livro: E ste romance baseia-se em fatos reais. Parte do material ut ilizado foi extrado das entrevistas fe itas para o projeto Crime e criminalidade nas c lasse s populares, da antroploga Alba Zaluar, e de artigos nos jornais O Glo bo, Jornal do Bras il e O Dia (403). Ou seja, de maneira bem parecida a Euc lides da C unha, que tambm se baseo u em mat rias de jornais, alm do trab alho em campo, Paulo Lins no esconde estar lidando com o que aconteceu. Soma-se a esse panorama a principal carac terstica intrnseca s narrat ivas de Euclides da Cunha e Paulo Lins, qual seja, a tarefa de compreender todos, de abarcar toda uma situa o espacial e temporal. Em Os Sertes, essa atitude do olhar denotada princip almente pelas trs partes do livro que visam nad a menos do que o panorama completo: A terra, O homem e A lut a. Cidade de Deus, por sua vez, ainda que intitule seus captulos com nomes de personagens, exp lic a a histria da fave la, do se u surgimento at o possve l pice da viol ncia e do trfico de drogas, ao 123 P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 4 Fall 2012 ISSN: 1874-6969 no ider io nacional co mo um lugar agregador de caracterst icas negativas. Ela resultado do desleixo estatal e seria bero
longo de aproximad amente trs dcadas. Se a compreenso do todo a tarefa a qual Euc lides se dedica em tempo integral, isto , se Euc lide s constri um cenrio fsico que justific a a presena daquele tipo hum ano, que, por sua vez, explica o surgimento de Can udos, o dist anciamento necessrio para que aque la exista a posi o ele ita pelo narrador de Cidade de Deus. Sem nenhum compromisso com o desve lamento da essncia nacional ou com a explica o que esta de scoberta demandaria em relao a preceitos cientficos, o narrador de Cidade de Deus consegue, boa parte do tempo, manter uma distnc ia se gura da matria narrada. Isso no quer dize r que o ponto de vista interno primeiramente aludido por Roberto Schwarz, grande catalisador das le ituras de Cidade de Deus, no esteja operando. A ideia que a d istncia necessria quando a narrativa pretende dar conta de toda a favela. Ou se ja, a distncia gera uma relao de igualdade entre os personagens, onde todos importam. A narrativa no poderia, portanto, permitir-se a dedica o a um nico personagem ou a um grupo exclusivo, o que justific a tanto a prioridade conferida a certos personagens em momentos especficos como a dedic ao personagens sem nomes, componentes do quadro geral de Cidade de Deus. Cogito que e sse olh ar equalizador do narrador em relao s personagens tambm tenha ajudado Schwarz a compreender a narrativa, que, para ele, de ixa o juzo moral sem cho. Este e feito ser ia resultado just amente da proximidade do narrador ao, derivando o imediatismo do recorte, e, assim, uma lgic a causal que no deixa espao para julgamentos. A aproximao entre as obras de Euc lide s e Lins, no entanto, nos coloca um d ilema: se Os Sertes pode ser entendido como literatura do colonizador, ou se ja, como um e xemplar do olhar da elite sobre o Outro incorporado, assim, no discurso hegemnic o sobre a nao de que forma Cidade de Deus, na sua nsia e uclidiana de abarcar o todo, poderia ser uma resposta do colonizado? Ou se ja, diante da distncia do olhar do narrador do livro de L ins, algo propriamente cientfico, como ver em Cidade de De us uma possvel resposta subalt erna? J foi mencionado que os fave lados de Cidade de Deus no dispem do mesmo estatuto de partic ipante na e ssncia da na o brasileir a que 124 P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 4 Fall 2012 ISSN: 1874-6969
conferido ao sertanejo em Os Sertes. Desse modo, os homicdios cometido s contra favelados (tanto na fico quanto na realidade), longe de comporem crimes, so corriqueiros, no afet ariam o discurso hegemnico sobre a nao. A matria da qual se encarrega o livro de Lins funcionar ia como uma espcie de ave sso do disc urso hegemnico: ela ou deveria ser descartvel, diferentemente dos sertanejos, que, cujos assassinatos tornaram-se motivo de denncia. Por outro lado, vale lembrar que Cidade de Deus, se n o apresentasse por suas car acterstic as formais a suspenso do juzo moral, como ressalta Schwarz, poderia se ajustar bem ao discurso crtico que v o Brasil como pas em falta c om um projeto de modernizao e com a modernidade. Ademais, no h pretenso alguma de ajudar a compor a nao (heterognea, mas harmnica) e nem um disc urso que se quer coeso, ao contrrio do intento de Euclides em Os Sertes. Cidade de De us, nesse sentido, j foi acusado, como no importante ensaio de Tnia Pe legr ini A s vozes d a violnc ia na c ultura brasile ira contempornea, de deix ar do lado de fora a engrenagem maior que gerar ia o estado real de vida das pesso as na fave la, tal como o aspecto poltico do narcotrfico ( 141). Por outro lado, Pele grin i tambm responsabiliza o romance por criar um t ipo de diver so para seu pb lico leitor, identific ado pela crt ica como parte da classe mdia, que tambm se divertir ia, supomos, com filmes, novelas e jogos eletrnicos violentos: o texto acaba tocando no extico, no pitoresco e no folclrico que, para o leitor de classe mdia tm o atrativo de qualquer outro pitoresco (143). Contudo, o principal diferenc ial entre as obras aqui abordadas est no tratamento que Cidade de De us dispensa aos seus personagens. O livro, como mencionado, divid ido em trs partes, intituladas com nomes de personagens. J esta d iviso sugere que a narrativa sobre um lugar, como o ttulo do livro ind ica, se dar atravs de seus moradores. Com efeito, so muito mais comuns as de scries dos bec os, vielas, ruas e prdios atravs das aes e movimentaes dos personagens do que por uma pausa na a o propriamente dita para que a descr io pur a ocorra. Esse entroncamento de lugare s e pessoas, por sua vez, d preponderncia a o de fato. O livro 125 P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 4 Fall 2012 ISSN: 1874-6969
traz a ao do personagem fave lado ao primeiro plano. E qualquer que seja a cur iosid ade do leitor em rela o ao lugar , ela somente poder ser saciada pela le itura d as extensas na guerra. dessa m aneira, predominantemente atrav s das aes do s movimentaes e atitude s de Inferninho e seus contemporneos, Pardalzinho e sua gangue , Z Mido e todos envolvidos
personagens, que a favela vai se desenhando. Assim, momentos como o que segue so exemplares: Inferninho largou o taco de sinuc a, foi at o bue iro onde havia entocado seu revlver, de u um confe re na arma, ganhou as r uas na esc urido da noite sem lua. Entrou numa vie la, passou em frente ao jardim-de-infnc ia, atravessou o Rala Coco, entrou na rua da E scola Augusto Magne, esticou- se pela rua do brao direito do rio; a cada esquina diminua os passo s para no ser surpreendido. Nada de polc ia. Ia provide nciar a morte do alcagete para servir de exemplo, porque seno todo mundo poderia passar a alcagetar. Essa t alvez fosse a li o mais importante que aprendera nas rodas de bandido quando menino no morro do So Carlos. Inferninho do dio e seus passos so d a rua do c lube. Foi s atrave ssar o L azer, cortar pela vie la da igreja, dobrar dire ita, pe gar a r ua do Meio e chegar ao Bonfim. (52, grifos meus) Esse trecho ilustrativo de um padr o do romance no s pelo entrelaamento dos movimentos de Inferninho descrio do espao, mas pelo uso do disc urso indireto livre (Nada de polcia. Ia providenciar a morte do alcaguete para servir de exemplo, porque seno todo mundo poderia passar a alc aguetar ) que traz t ona tambm os pensamentos do personagem. Lembremos que o bandido fave lado, o sub alterno, aqui, quem age e pensa. Alguns o utros fragmentos, mais c urtos, ocupam a narr ativa,
constituindo uma descr io que s pode ocorrer porque o movimento das personagens permite. Em r umaram l par a baixo, j que Lar anjinha tinha 126 P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 4 Fall 2012 ISSN: 1874-6969
visto Inferninho entrar na casa do Carlin hos Pretinho pela manh. Antes de atravessarem a praa do bloco c arnavale sco Os Garimpeiros da Cidade de Deus (...) (50), descobrimos que os personagens estavam l em cima e que C arlinhos Pretinho morava em baixo e, ainda, que no caminho estava a praa do bloco carnavalesco, provavelmente, no meio. Lugar, como sugere sua geogr afia, de mediao, j que l que Laran jinha, Acerola e Alusio encontram Passistinha, velho malandro da favela respeitado por todos, que intervm a favor dos trs junto a Inferninho. De fato, a querela foi resolvid a poucas linhas depois. Ao contrrio do que m uito da crt ica argumentou ver no livro 9, o narrador parece negar-se a tirar a foto, a fazer o retrato da Cidade de Deus e entreg-lo ao le itor. O que interessa so as pessoas, os personagens, suas aes e vozes. Inferninho, personagem que d nome primeira parte do livro, numa digresso, nos conta que o pai, aque le merda, vivia embriagado nas lade iras do morro do So Carlos; a m e era puta da zona, e o irmo, viado. (...) Lembrou-se tambm daque la safadeza do incndio, quando aquele s homens chegar am com saco de e stopa ensopado de querosene botando fogo nos barracos, dando tiro para todos os lados sem qu nem pra qu. (...) Um dia aps o incndio, Inferninho foi le vado p ara a c asa da pat roa de sua tia. T ia Carmen trabalhava no mesmo emprego havia anos. Inferninho ficou morando com a irm da me at o pai construir outro barraco no morro. Ficava entre o tanque e a pia o tempo todo e foi d ali que viu, pela porta entreaberta, o homem do televisor d izer que o incndio fora ac iden tal. Sentiu vontade de matar toda aquela gente branca, que tinha telefone, carro, geladeir a, comia boa comida, no morava e m barraco sem gua e sem privada. Alm disso, nenhum dos homens daque la casa tinha cara de viado como o Ari. Pensou em le var t udo da brancalhad a, at o televisor mentiroso e o liquidificador colorido. (23)
9
Para uma crtica que v em Cidade de Deus um quadro na parede, ver Pelegrini.
127
importante notar como Lins, ao resolve r inserir a digresso sobre a vid a, amar gur ada, de Inferninho, se recusa a justific ar sua esco lha por ser bandido. Quando Inferninho soma ao se u dio pelos ricos, derivado das carncias de que vtim a, o fato de que nenhum dos homens daque la c asa tinha cara de viado como o Ari, a possvel compaixo do le itor se esmaec e frente ao preconceito e entendemos, afinal, que nem tudo pode se r justificado quando se trata de seres humanos (e personagens do livro). Os trechos mencionados constituem uma espcie de padro d a narrativa, ded icada, desse modo, principalmente s aes, pensamentos e sentimentos dos personagens. Quando esta a nfase do livro, no se pode deixar de notar a diferena entre Cidade de Deus e Os Sertes. Enquanto o lt imo no pde delegar ao se u personagem, o sertanejo, o privil gio da ao e do pensamento, o primeiro faz disso seu mec anismo operacional. Os fave lados de Lins so seres que agem e pensam, e assim que a narrat iva se constitui estr uturalmente. O romance, portanto, delega agnc ia a homens e mulheres at ento invisveis, extrapolando at mesmo os limites da prpria obra literr ia. Cidade de Deus, nesse sentido , parece incit ar a atuao num a esfera que re al: no somente seus perso nagens passam a fazer parte do imaginr io de um determinado lugar que a literatur a constri, como o romance abre as portas para outros esc ritos desde e sobre as favelas brasileir as. Cidade de De us, ao trazer ao plano literrio seres cuja ex istncia era algo d a ordem do unic amente socialmente compreensvel, gera um espao de le gitima o da obra literria sobre os fave lados, escr ita por fave lados. Os Sertes, por outro lado, apesar da retrica da denncia escolh ida pelo seu e scritor, no consegue conceber os sertanejos alm de um grupo a ser cientificamente conhecido e classific ado. O resultado torna-se algo mais facilmente abarcado pelo conhecimento j existente (em diversas reas), e, portanto, pelo Establishment, visto que ele n o demanda n ada al m da simpatia pela causa moderna da introduo de seres considerado s pr modernos aos valores associados com o poder. O que talve z no fosse pouco, mas que est longe de constituir um a postura de respeito em relao ao Outro. A configura o da ordem social no se altera, a confrontao 128 P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 4 Fall 2012 ISSN: 1874-6969
com o Outro de fato no existe, e Os Sertes determina seu lugar fundamental no pensamento oficial e hegemnico sobre o Brasil. E este pensamento que pode ser reconfigurado a p artir de Cidade de De us.
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Obras Citadas Bernucci, Leopoldo, ed. Discurso, Cinc ia e Controvrsia em Euclides da Cunh a. So Paulo: Edusp, 2008. Print. Carvalho, Jos Murilo de. Nao imaginria: memria, mitos e heris. Adauto Novaes (ed.), A crise do Estado-nao . Rio de J aneiro: C ivilizao Brasileir a, 2003. 395- 418. Pr int. Chatterjee, Partha. A Brief H istory of Subaltern Studies. Nimnabarger Itihas (1998). Rpt. in Empire and Nat ion: Selected Essays. 289-301. Pr int. New York: Columbia Un iver sity Press, 2010.
Cunha, Euclide s. Os Sertes. Rio de Janeiro: Record, 2008. Print. Fraser, Robert. Lifting the sentence: a poetics of postcolonial fiction. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000. Pr int. Gonzalez-Echeverra, Roberto. Myth and Archive: A Theory of Lat in Americ an Narrative. Print. Holanda, Srgio Buarque de. Razes do Brasil. So Paulo: Companhia das Letras. Print Johnson, Adriana. Everydayness and S ubalternity. South Atlantic Quarterly 106. 1 (2007): 21- 38. S aqD uke. Web. 23 Aug 2011. ---. Sentencing Canudos. Pittsbur gh: University of Pittsbur gh Press, 2010. Print. Lima, Luiz Costa. Terra Ignota. Rio de Jane iro: Civiliza o Brasile ira, 1997. Print. Lins, Paulo. Cidade de Deus. So Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2002. Pr int. Pelegr ini, 2012. Rama, Ange l. The Lettered City. Trans. John Charles Chasteen. Durham: Duke Univer sity Press, 1996. Print. Santiago, Silviano. Fechado para balano (sessenta anos de modernismo). Nas malh as da letra. Rio de Janeiro: Rocco, 2002. Print. Schwarz, Roberto. Nac ional por subtra o. Que horas s o? S o Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1987. Print. T nia. A s voze s da violncia na cultur a brasile ir a contempornea. Crtica Marxista, 21 (2005): 132- 153. Web. 16 Fev Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1998.
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---. Uma aventur a artstica incomum. Folha de So Paulo 7 Sep. 1997. Antivalor. Web. 23 Aug 2011. Sevcenko, Nico lau. Literatura como misso: t enses culturais e cria o cultural na Primeira Repblic a. So Paulo: Brasiliense, 1999. Pr in t. Smith, Anthony. The Ethnic Origins of Nations. Oxford: B lac kwe ll, 1999. Print. Valente, Luiz Fernando. Brazilian Lit erature and C itizenship: from Euclides d a Cunha do Marcos Dias. Luso-Braz ilian Review 38. 2 (2001): 11- 27. The University of Wisconsin Press Journals Division. Web. 9 Jan. 2012. Ventura, Roberto. Os Sertes (Coleo Folha E xplic a). S o Paulo: Publifolh a, 2002. Print. Williams, Garreth. The other side of the popul ar: neol iberalis m and subalternity in Latin America. Durham: Duke University Press, 2002. Print Zilly, Berthold. A encenao da histria em Os Sertes. Flvio Aguiar, Ligia Ch iapinni (eds.). Civiliz ao e excl uso: vises de Brasil em rico Verssimo, Eucl ides da Cunh a, Claude Lvi-Strauss e Darcy Ribeiro. S o Paulo: Boitempo e Fapesp, 2001. 176 196. Print.
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DIEGO SANTOS VIEIRA DE JESUS

P onti f i c al C athol i c U ni ve rsi ty of Ri o de Jane i ro
NOT THE BOY NEXT DOOR: AN ESSAY ON EXCLUSION AND BRAZILIAN FOREIGN POLICY
Brazils international profile is sust ained by its soft power expressed in terms of the capacity to persuade, negotiate and mediate. As ex-foreign minister Celso Amorim ind icates, [ i]n the present-day world, milit ary power will be less and le ss usable in a way that these other abilities the c apacity to ne gotiate based on sound economic policies, based on a society that is more just than it used to be and will be more just tomorrow than it is today (The Soft-Power Power). In the last two decades, Brazilian leaders consolidated relat ions with global powers such as the U.S. and the E uropean Union through careful negotiation in order to avo id hostility and deve lop a sense of limited divergence (Lima and Hirst). At the same time, those leader s aimed at reduc ing powe r asymmetries in North-South relations with the coordination of positions with developing countries and non-traditional partners (Vigevani and Cepaluni 1309- 1326). Brazilian authorities look forward to reshaping international in stitut ions with emphasis on equal representation (Hurrell and Narlikar 415-433). In regional politic s, Brazils prominent position in South America was constructed through negotiation aiming at the development of strong political ties with Argentinean authorities and, in the 2000s, better relations with leftist le aders such as Vene zue la s Hugo Chvez and Bolivias E vo Morales. In multilateral inst itut ions, Brazilian negotiators used dip lomatic tools that consolidated the le git imacy of their claims for the reformulation of dec isionmakin g structure s (Lima and Hirst 25-33). Brazilian foreign policys literature indic ates that the deve lopment of a benign power profile is not recent. Gelson Fonseca Jr. (356- 359) indic ates that
Brazils preference for negotiation and mediation created some advantage s internationally , because a necessary condition for modernization was a peaceful international environment. Thus consensus was not a value in itself, but an understandin g of multip le interests, necessary for the legit imacy of Brazil s claims for international projection. According to Amado Cervo (204-205), cordiality was based on the perception of national gre atness, wh ich would make fee lings of hostility superfluous for Brazilian leader s. Zairo Cheib ub (122- 124) indicate s that, through negotiation and international arbit ration, Brazil could de fine its territorial borders and eliminate disputes about them, trying not to be charged of imperial expansionism. A lex andra S ilva (97-102) argues that pac ifism and rule of law created continuity and coherence in the countrys foreign policy, wh ich strengthened Brazilian supremacy in South America and nat ional unity through the consolidat ion of its sovere ignty. In the academic debates on Brazilian foreign policy, it is possible to detect the consensus on Brazils benign international insertion, coherent with its long- standing interests of autonomy and deve lopment, but less attention is given on the perpetuation of subtle forms of exclusion through this soft-power identity, as we ll as its m ain impacts on the maintenance of hierarchies that mar ginalize d ifference in the international le vel, though not alway s in an explicit way. I argue that Brazilian leader s and dip lomats maintain a benign wonder based on negotiation and mediation abilit ies, but this perspective is not innocent or humble, not only in the sense of satisfac tion of Brazilian long- standing interests of autonomy and deve lopment. This artic le sustain s that, in the archetype of softpower power, logocentric structures and dichotomous way s of thinking in relations with deve loping countrie s and global powers remain act ive in Brazilian foreign policy, though there is space for m ediat ion with difference. The apparatus of exclusion in relations between Brazil and other countries creates obstacles for the recognition of the we alth of diffe rence, the development of common experiences towards the destabilization of hierarchies and the shar ing of value s that transcend norms of coexistence. The effect of the maintenance of those divisions is the diffic ulty to look for common gains and to construct stronger
bases for an effective management of collective problems. Difference represented by underdeveloped and other developing countries is sometimes understood as anomaly or bac kwardness in relat ion to democratic or liberal models o f development achieved by Brazil. There is a p attern of exclusion through inclusion, which means that Brazil de ve lops an apparently inclusive perspective of difference in order to preserve and manage hierarch ies. Deve loped and more powerful countries are not explicitly labeled as traditional imperialists or dominators, b ut the emphasis on their ambition and ability to use force and institut ions in their benefit updates o ld colonial discour ses not necessarily in order to destabilize hierarchie s, but to question Brazils inferior positions. Depreciative visions of difference are upd ated, and hierarchies are not overcome as modern regulatory ambitions. These hierarchies are constantly rearticulated and reinvented. Exclusion can be art iculated in complex ways. There is the possibility of mediation with difference, but the mediatio n can provide a path for exceptionalism when certain ways of living are conceived as non-acceptable. The supposed freedom of difference can be conditioned to some kind of authority, for example (Walker). The postcolonial perspective adopted in this artic le gives emphasis to the fact that difference can be man age d not only with spatial strategies of segmentation, but also temporal mechanisms of exclusion with the application of notions of development and modernizat ion, which consolidate difference as backwardness, barbarianism or dysfunction (Blaney and Inayatullah 21-45). Difference confers positive content to the advance of the civilization of the Self. From this perspective , the crystallization of spatial boundar ies between insid e and outside occ urs concomitantly with t he permanence of different stage s of development in a linear interpretation of time. Difference is located in the inferior stage s compared to the advance d civilizations (Blaney and Inayatullah 93- 125, 161-185). Base d on the work of S akaran Krishna, I will deve lop the ide a that dominant discourses that equate modernization with civilization, development and progress can become instruments of power in the hands of oncecolonized states in the deve loping world (Krishna 4), such as Br azil. Those dominant discour ses are more explic it in Brazil s relations with underde veloped
and developin g countries. In order to have a stronger dialogue with the literature of postcolonial st udie s, I will apply E dward S aids crit ique of notions of civilizational superiority and exc lusive c laims to rationality or objectivity. Insp ired by Homi Bhabha, I will ar gue that politic s including international politic s and foreign policy is performative. At the e nd of this artic le, I will emphasize the negotiations between identity and difference, as we ll as the ambiguous and split selves that emerge from those negotiatio ns. The mentioned ambiguity can be a source of creat ive politic al engagements in Brazil s relations with other countries. It can ind icate a hybrid space where negotiation between the authority and its supposed supplicants can occur and change , according to Krishna (78-79, 96). In the next sections, I will exam ine how hierarchies persist in Brazils relations with underdeve loped/deve loping countrie s and global powers, respectively . The examined d isco urses will be main ly the speeches, dec larat ions and interviews of government officials specially the president and/or the foreign minister during Brazils two previous administrat ions, Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995-2002) and Luiz Incio L ula da S ilva (2003-2010), as we ll as authorities of other countries in response to Brazil s decisions 1. Brazils relations with underdevelop ed and developing countries Many Brazilian authorities be lie ve that the Southern Cone and Latin America are becoming what Amorim c alle d a secur ity community, in which war becomes inconceivable ( The Soft-Powe r Power). In Mercosul s 10th Social Summit of December 2010, the then Brazilian president Lula urged the members of the economic bloc to move forward in the integration 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 Brazils main foreign policy decision-makers and institutions, but I will not obliterate differences among domestic actors. Those differences will be discussed whenever they affect Brazils international profile.
construction of a "Mercosul identity", a term coined by the president himself. In his vie w, the le aders of the region had ove rcome the disputes in terms of who was closer to U.S . interests and had important achievements, r angin g from the agreement on the national benches in Parliament and the bloc's direct election of representatives to this partic ular inst itution to the privile ged economic and political sit uation after the 2008 financ ial crisis. A lthough Lula had indicated a higher le vel of convergence in the polit ical relationship among the members "we are not here to talk about nucle ar bombs, nor war" , there are several impediments to integrat ion. They range fr om the lack of an effic ient mechanism for disp ute settlement to the diffic ulty of developin g the ide a of integrat ion in the collective imagin ation of its members societies (Olive ira). Divisions between identity and difference indic ate the permanence of dichotomous ways of thinking about the regional relations in the Southern Cone. Within Mercosul, it is possib le to observe the persistence of a traditional pattern of trade among the members: Brazil continues to import commodities and export manufact ured goods to other members. Moreover, the bloc had a lim ited role in stimulat ing the competitiveness of regio nal exports, particularly man ufact ured goods to markets in the de veloped wor ld, and fighting endogenous reasons for the lac k of competitiveness of ind ustrial imp orts (Vaz). At the intra-regional leve l, different views about the integrat ion process that prevent the coordination of positions and individual strategic interests remain, which take precedence over the alliance between leaders and soc ieties. Many of these differences arise from the conception that Paraguay and Uruguay are relegated to a marginal or submissive position in the distribut ion of gains within the bloc by Brazil and Ar gentina, wh ich account for most of the benefits of economic activity spurred by integr ation. According to the Uruguayan advisor of the Chamber of Commerce Dolores Benavente, Mercosul is like a fam ily: Brazil is the father; Argentina, the mother; Uruguay and Paraguay, the kids (Gerchmann, my translation). The logic recognized even by weaker countries authorities is that the different seen as "less skille d" and "less deve loped" like children are place d in subordinat e positions to the stronger and economically more vibrant members, labe led as
"ad vanced" and "more appropriate" to the parameters of international economy. By naturalizing such categorizat ion, the marginalization of the economically weakest members is perpetuated, e ven though the interaction with the strongest is not interrupted. Since 2006, Ur uguay s and Paraguays leaders have made it clear that time was r unning out to meet their demands regarding the elim ination of asymmetries in the bloc and thus ensure their stay in Mercosul. Paraguayan authorities said that their country would le ave the bloc if Brazil and Argentin a did not interrupt their protectionist practices. In 2006, Ur uguayan authorities argued that Mercosul should have flexib le rules on trade with countries outside the integrat ion process. They stated that, in case of Br azil s non-ac ceptance of a free trade agreement with the U.S., Uruguay could change its status in Mercosul to the one of associated country. Brazilian leader s have not categor ically rejected the initiative 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. Ur uguayan leaders alleged that the failures of Mercosul prevented further progress regardin g the expansion of acce ss to other markets and that their country was damaged by "signific ant costs" such as de industr ializat ion of less competitive sectors and job losses. The creation of the Mercosul Structural Convergence Fund in the second half of the 2000s aimed at reducin g ec onomic asymmetries among Mercosul members, seeking to meet the demands of Uruguay and Par aguay. With the creation of Mercosul Parliament in 2006, Lula urged congressmen to think of generous polic ies for smaller countries and saw that the most powerful countrie s of Mercosul should collaborate in the deve lopment of the weakest. Still, 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 we aker co untries as "supporting actors" in relation to the other members. In the search for a more balanced partic ipation of Paraguay and Uruguay, Brazils and Argentinas decisio n-makers would have to confront the
issue of inst itutional representativeness b eyond the terms in which it h as been treated so as to provide the authentic expression of multilateralism in Mercosul (Bouzas, Mercosul, dez anos depois: processo de aprendizado ou dj-vu?). The maintenance of Brazil s privile ged position in Mercosul is also 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 ex ample, the 1998 Ushuaia Protocol stipulated that democratic inst itutions were a prerequisite for the development of the bloc and changes of the democratic order were barriers to participation in the integration process (Almeida, Mercosul em sua prime ira dcada (1991-2001): uma aval iao polt ica a part ir do Bras il). Venezue la a country in process of accession that should incorporate the democratic commitments at that time was conceive d by many Brazilian p olitic ians and c ivil society gro ups as an "atypical, " "dy sfunctional" or "problematic " model of state that would need to be "tamed" under real democratic value s. Brazilian le gislators critic ized H ugo Chvez s dec ision not to renew the lease of network transmission of Radio Carac as Televisin (RCTV), hinderin g the freedom of the press and woundin g democratic principles. Chve z responded by labe ling Brazilian congressmen as parrots who repeat U.S. orders. Br azilian Congress r at ified Venezue la s acce ssion to the bloc in 2009, but many Brazilian senators co mplained about Chvez and Venezue la. During t alks with U.S . officials ( who suggested intelligence shar ing with the Brazilians in order to monitor the Venezuelans), Amorim declared that Brazil d id not see Chvez as a threat (Viana). Howe ve r, in a confidential tele gram reve aled by WikiLe aks, Defense Minister Nelson Jobim labels Venezue la as a ne w threat to regional st ability and says that Brazilian people consider plausible a militar y incursion by Chvez in a ne ighboring country because of his unpredictable character. This was one of the main reasons for the creation of a South American Defense Council in order to insert Vene zuela and other countries of the region in a common organization that Brazil can control (Celso Amorim diz que Chve z late mais que morde,Veja, my translation ).
In spite of the fact that trade liberalizat io n has proceeded re lative ly quic kly in Mercosul, str uctural imbalances bet ween Brazil and Ar gentina were not elim inated. With risin g budget defic its and weak attraction of foreign inve stment, the Brazil-dependence proved negat ive for Argentina (A lmeida, Mercosul em sua primeira dcada (1991-2001): uma aval ia o poltica a part ir do Brasil, Problemas conjunturais e estrut urais d a integr ao na Amrica do Sul: a trajetria do Mercosul desde suas origens at 2006). The negative image of Brazil in Argentina was strengthened after 1999, when the de valuation of the Brazilian re al and the introduction of a floating exchange r ate h ave generated not only the reaction of Argentinas private sector, but also a polit ical-commercial cr isis of Mercosul s external credibility. At first, with the permanence of the problems linked to the Argentinas lac k of competitiveness, Argen tinean politic ian s saw Br azil as a threat. Some said that there was a Br azilian plan to deliberately harm Argentina and doubted Brazil s good intentions. In references to Brazil, Ar gentinean Economy minister Domingo Cavallo said that coun tries that devaluate their currencies to become more competitive are doing the same thing as stealing from their neighbors (Maia, my translation). Argent inean authorities saw such a policy as harmful to their country, which updated constant criticisms that Brazil tried 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, especially regard in g problems such as the lack of an appropriate institut ional fr amework for solvin g internal disp utes, the gap created by diffe rent perceptions of members about the bloc and the weak macroeconomic policy coordination (Souto-Maior 7- 10). Although in 2002 President Lula h ad made promises to rebuild Brazil s special relationship with Argentina, Argentinean authorities began to make use of trade defense mechanisms considered "abusive" by their Brazilian counterparts, such as unilateral safeguards and antidumpin g measures (Alme ida, Problemas conjunturais e estruturais da integra o na Amrica do Sul: a trajetria do Mercosul desde suas origens at 2006). If Brazil was conceived by Argentine politic ians and businessmen as "unfair and self-interested", Argentin a was seen as "weak" by the Brazilian side. Amorims dec larat ion in 2004 p uts Brazil in a privileged position and marginalizes Ar gentina as less dynamic:
In the beginning of negotiat ions in Mercosul, wh at did Ar gentinean businessmen and public sector want? They saw in Brazil a dynamism that Argentina didnt have, e specially in the industrial sector. They wanted to inc lude Argentina into this dynamism, to positively contaminate Argentine industry, but, for various reasons, they followe d a d ifferent track. It is necessary to get back to this dynamism. () This wont be done with automatic safeguards, trigger s that have problems () Br azil is the bigger country and it will keep having a greater importance in all of this (Amorim, Entrevist a ao Jornal Valor Econmico, my translation). In relation to African countries, the separation of modernity and
backwardness; civilization and barbar ianism was consolidated. The concept of civilization, in the contemporary world, reaffirms the ideas of socioeconomic progress, viable governments, human rights, the strengthening of democratic value s and the repud iat ion of terrorism. It lives on as a modern regulatory ambition, when it disciplines sub jectivity and determines identity in particular spatiotemporal contexts. The civilizin g notions are conceived as an ideal of social organ ization and ad apted to the particularit ies of each place and time, givin g effect to hierarchies that marginalize difference and ensure the integrity of the dominant identity. In Lula s dec lar ations about Afric an countries, many of those hierarchies persisted and reflected the conception of Africa as a bac kward continent. In his visit to Namibia in 2003, Lula said that the countrys capital, Windhoek, was so c lean, that it doesnt even look like Afr ica (BBC Brasil, my translat ion). In his conception shared by different sectors of Brazilian government and society , Africas im ages are connected to poverty and dirtiness, which reifies a contrast between African states and the rich and c lean nonAfrican countrie s. Another example was Lulas dec lar ation about South Afric a s hosting 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 civilized as those who critic ized them before the event (Aze vedo, my translation). Although Lulas intentions to pay a compliment to South Africa and to the Afric an
countries, his dec lar ation reified the centrality of the concept of civilization and the hierarchies it estab lished, accordin g to which Afric an countries were perceived as backward, primit ive or not as civilized as non-African states. Many would say that dec larat ions like those could demonstrate simply the existence of an exclusionary vision on Lulas or h is government members part. I recognize that statements like those alone could not demonstrate the existence of an unequivocal exclud ing profile in Brazilian foreign policy. However, those individ ual declarations take a different dimension when, in re lat ions between Brazil and Afr ican countries, we c an identify mechanisms that reve al cultur al and political postures of hier archization eve n in official doc uments and reports produced by Itamaraty, the Brazilian Foreign Ministry. In its foreign policy balance from 2003 to 2010 for the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries composed mostly by African countries , Brazilian Foreign Min istry indic ates that: For Brazil, the natur al benefits of sh ared lan guage and common cult ural-historical heritage, as we ll as the fact that the country has recognized expertise in strate gic sectors for economic and social development of Afric an Portugue se-speaking co untries and East Timor, such as the case of tropical agr iculture and the fight against HIV-AIDS, make these countries singular partners for the consolidat ion, either in bilateral or communitarian bases, of the South-South cooperation paradigm. Alm ost half of the reso urces destined by Brazil to technical cooperation are destined for Afric an Portugue se-speakin g countries and East T imor (Balano de Polt ica Externa 2003/ 2010, my translat ion). In the official discourse, Br azil is portrayed as the owner of something that its partners do not have: expertise in strategic sectors for socioeconomic development. It inserts Brazil in a privile ged socioeconomic and cultural position in relat ion to its partners, creates the logic of superiority of its policie s, an d reinforces the dependence of other countries on Brazilian support in the area of technical cooperation. The discourse consolidates exclusionary practices in which
the more civilize d and de veloped actor helps its le ss civilized and backward partners. Though this cooperation avoids impositions and conditionalities on aid, those comparative advantages that the Foreign Ministry tries to highlight allow the facilitation of the action of Brazilian institut ions an d companies in those countries. In other occasions, Brazilian authorities tr y to posit Brazil as a mode l to inspire less civilize d, le ss democratic or less deve loped countries, conceiving their solutions for specific problems as nat ural or the best way to solve impasses. In February 2011, when the Egyptian Parliament was dissolved after President Hosni Mubaraks resignat ion, the Brazilian ambassador for Egypt Cesrio Melantonio Neto said that this is the natural way to democracy in Egypt. We can even compare with Brazils history. In our transition to democracy, after the military regime, we needed a new Parliament and formed a National Constitutional A ssembly to elaborate a new Constitution for the country, based on democratic values (Embaix ador do Brasil no Egito apoia dissoluo do Parlamento, my translation). This model image of Brazil and also its leader s is also accepted by those who have more common historical roots with Brazilians, such as the Portuguese-speakin g countries in Afric a. When Guinea-Bissau s president Malam Bac ai S anh won national elections in 2009, he said that he wo uld like to be the Lula of Guinea-B issau. We share a very similar culture, we speak the same language, we share the same hist ory. () I would like to sit and talk to president Lula. Id like to share some points of vie w on deve lopment (). There are a lot of good things in Brazil (Presidente diz que quer 'ser o Lula da G uinBissau' .). A lthough Brazilian authorities might manipulate and emphasize the common aspects of identity with African countries for political and economic convenience, they put Brazil, again, in a privilege d position that reifies hierarchie s. Similar p atterns are visible in Brazils re lat ions with Iran, partic ular ly when Brazil tried to mediate between Iran and Western powers specially the U.S. regardin g the controversial Iranian nuclear program in May 2010. Brazilian authorities brokered, along 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, Brazilian negotiators tried to show that Brazil shared with Iran the identity of a de veloping country that wanted to preserve its autonomy and the inalien able rights to de velop peace ful n ucle ar activitie s. However, in the eyes of most of the international community, Iran seeks to develop its nuc lear program for the possible product ion of nuclear weapons. While Ir an looks distant from the Western model of society, Brazilian leaders reinforced that Brazilian foreign policy was based on un iversal value s such as the defense of human rights, the criticism to the proliferat ion of weapons of mass destruction and the condemnation of terrorism. The reiteration of this im age and its embedded value s perpetuated even unconsciously the idea that countries and societ ies that were not totally adapted or conformed to this standard were "dysfunctional" and "anomalo us" in relation to "civilized" actors. Through the adoption of a diplomatic vocabulary an d the enhancement of communication channels, Brazilian authoritie s trie d to broker the fue l swap, but the U.S. an d European leaders cr itic ized the Tehran Declar ation for not eliminatin g the continued production of 19, 75% enriched uranium inside Iran ian territory. Brazilian authorities tried to increase their relevance in wor ld affairs by disc iplining Iran in modern structures of authority through mediation and trying to build trust. However, the U.S. and European leaders considered that Iran wanted to break international unity regardin g its nuclear intentions. They rejected links between the Tehran Declaration and san ctions against Iran. Though Brazilian negotiators and the global powers leade rs opted for different methods, it is possible to identify in both initiat ive s atte mpts to disc ipline and domestic ate difference, as well as its assimilat ion into structures of authority where the threat it symbolized could be elim inated in the name of stability and we ll-bein g of the international community. The multiple attempts to civilize rogue states show the permanence of a modern regulat ive ambition that locates difference spat iotemporally in order to preserve peace. As Amorim puts:
We think that when we are in the Security Counc il, whether permanent or not, we have to contribute to peace and secur ity in the world and not just deal with our o wn inte rests. I have fo llowed this subject for a long time, and it was a problem that I alway s thought had no solution until I heard about the swap agreement. () And I thought maybe a co untry like Br azil, which has this c apacity for dialogue with several countries, could somehow help. And so I disc ussed this sub ject with the Iranians. President Ahmadine jad c ame here. And I made trips to Iran, and I really found that it was in principle possible to pursue that role (The Soft-Power Power). Amorims declaration shows that Brazil sees itself as different from the problem that Iran brings and, instead, it conceives itse lf as part of the solution in light of its ability to negotiate. Brazil was as a "student" of global powers in the "pedagogy of the competition" (Blaney and Inayat ullah) when it adopted democratic and liberal orientation s deve loped by such powers, which was fundamental in winning support from those states and key international institut ions. A s it became more adept and embedded in the teachers intellectual world, this relationship changed: Brazilian decision-makers tried to prove that they can not only teach Iran on how to act, but also thought that global powers co uld learn a lot from Brazilian lessons of dealing, in a more open and trustful way, with countries traditionally labele d as rogue states. Brazils relations with global powers Although Brazil sh ares the We stern identit y with global powers, other types of hierarchies operated simultaneously in their relations. I recognize there is a lot of space for mediation with difference an d sharing of values between Brazil and the U.S. or the E uropean Union, but many logocentric str uctures remain active. Brazilian dec ision-makers wanted to ensure that regime type and economic orthodoxy, for example, were not used as tools of subtle control by leaders o f dominant states. Domination c an be imple mented in more subtle way s, spec ially by
the preservation of asymmetries in international instit utions, which Brazilian authorities cr iticize very intensely . Amorim said that: Until recently all global decisions were made by a handful of traditional powers. The permanent members of the Security Counc il Britain, China, France, Russia and the U.S., who are incidentally the five nucle ar powers recognized as such by the Nuclear NonProlifer ation Treaty had (and still have) the privile ge of dealing the cards on matters of international peace and secur ity. The G-8 was in charge of important decisions affectin g the global economy. In que stions related to international trade, the Quad the U.S., the European Union, Japan and Can ada dominated the scene (Amorim, Lets Hear From the New Kids on the Bloc). Amorim recognized that developing countries had more participation in world politic s, but asymmetries were preserved: On April 15, Brasilia was host to two consecutive meetings at the highest politic al leve l: the second BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) summit and the fourth IBSA Dialogue Forum (India, Brazil and South Africa). S uch group s, differ ent as they are, show a willingness 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.() Paradox ically, issue s related to international peace and sec urity some might say the hard core of glo bal politics remain the exclusive territory of a small group of countries (Lets He ar From the New Kids on the Bloc). When talking about the Tehran Declarat ion, Amorim (Lets Hear From the New Kid s on the Bloc) saw that emergin g powers such as Brazil could dist urb the status quo when dealing with subjects that would be typically handled by the
P5+1 (the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany), but he also recognize d that the tradit ional cente rs of power will not share gladly their privilege d status. Brazilian dec ision-makers recognized the obsolescence of old types of domination by global powers, suc h as open conquest or co lonization, but indic ated the existence of more subtle for ms of crystallization of hier archies that revived old myths of submission of weake r or less de ve loped countries. Most of those myths were revived by the growing unilateralism of global powers, which contrast to what Amorim (The Soft-Power Power) called Brazil s unique characteristic wh ich is very useful in international ne gotiations: to be able to put itself in someone else's shoes, wh ich is essential if you are looking for a solution. The supposed arrogance of global powers dealing with some international issues were constantly condemned by Brazilian leaders and officers. A s Amorim puts, [t]here are things we [Brazilians] are able to say () that we wo uld 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 lfrighteous guy. And yo u have to do what I say . () They [global powers] m ay think they have the moral authority, but t hey won't be heard (The Soft-Power Power). The maintenance of hierarchies between us and them, identity and difference is more explic it in Brazil s relations with the U.S. . According to Andrew Hurrell, both countries have a consensual position over substantive values that coexist with a deep disagreement over the procedural values. This means that they agree on the importance of democracy and liberal values, but they disagree on which values from the liberal basket should be given priority. Partic ularly after September 11th 2001, those Western liberal value s were emphasized in Brazilian foreign policy, but that was not a synonym for full-scope adherence to policie s adopted by the U.S. For ex ample, wh ile the U.S. authoritie s defended a more interventionist perspective on the defen se of democracy and the design of institut ions in similar mode ls to its o wn so ciety, Brazilians adopted a m inimal and less interventionist definit ion of the term that encompassed free e lections and institut ions and the rule of law. I agree with Hurrell about the consensus on substantive value s, but I think the real clashes of interest, along with deep and
persistent diver gences between Brazil an d the U.S. in the way they vie w the international context have deeper motivations. The common frustration in relations between those countries and the absence of close engagement has to do, in my opinion, with the reiteration of h ierarchies in the bilateral relations that updates o ld d iscour ses of domin ation and imperialism, even in a context of close commercial and polit ical relations betwee n both states. The U.S. represented a threat to Brazilian interests of preserving leadership in So uth America and among developin g countries. Brazils initiative toward a le ading role in South America is visible in the creation of the Union of South American Nations in 2008 and the strengthening of the 1978 Amazon Pact. Nevertheless, fears that Brazil co uld assemble So uth America into a single bloc in order to destabilize U.S. presence in the Americas grew strong after Brazilian reluct ance to follow the American initiative to revitalize its inter-American le adership. Br azilian authorities have also shown their resistance to U.S. interventionist initiative s in Latin America, which wo uld open precedents that threaten sovereignty. Brazilian leaders showed their condemnation, through bilateral and multilateral channe ls, to the U.S. supported coup dtat against H ugo Chvez (Santiso). They also criticized U.S. support for Colombias war against drug traffic king and guerrilla forces that could be used as a pretext for U.S. presence in the Amazon region and showed strong reservat ions regardin g U.S. concern with intelligence and police control in the Triple Border between the cities of Puerto Iguazu, Ciudad del Este and Foz do Igua u, supposedly a sanctuary for Islamic terrorism (Hirst). In economic affairs, Brazilian authoritie s defended that the FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas) str ucture should lie upon the existing blocs in order to consolidate existing sub-regional in itiat ives and their bargaining power towards the U.S. and Nafta. In 1997, Brazil assume d a more affirmative stance based on the indivisib le nature of the negotiat ing pac kage, the coexistence between FTAA and the existing agreements and non-exclusion of any sector in negotiations related to access to market s or the eliminat ion of barriers. In the beginning of last decade ,
the Brazilian governments perception was that the U.S. administration wanted to consolidate the implementation of liberal r eforms and force the unilateral opening of Latin American economies, creating commercial advantages with the reduction of barriers to its exports. Furthermore, the U.S. Congress was not willing to make concessions, such as the elim ination of agric ult ure subsidie s and the revision of antidumpin g le gislation (Bouzas, El nuevo regionalismo y el re a de Libre Comercio de las Amric as: un enfoque menos indulgente; Cortes). Brazilian authorities started to develop the image of the U.S. as a threat connected to intentions of creatin g a hemispheric inst itutional and legal architecture for its hegemonic interests. Brazil feared the dismantling of its industrie s and national service s because of the high le vel of competitiveness of American companies and the possible negat ive impacts on its trade balance. Before the interruption of FTAA negotiations in 2005, Lula s government indic ated that, even if the FTAA were created, Brazil would not become an unconditional ally of the U.S. . S imilar positions were defended by Brazil in multilateral forums where it was an act ive player regardin g the definit ion of rules. In multilater al trade negotiations, Brazilian negotiators criticized the subsidizat ion of agr iculture and exce ssive U.S . deman ds regardin g new issue s such as the enforcement of intellectual property rights. One of the major issues durin g the WTO Doha Development Round wh ich started in 2001 was the debate on pharmaceutical licensing and public health programs, especially concerning the use of non-licensed pharmaceut icals in Brazilian anti-HIV/AIDS programs (Hir st). The Brazilian go vernment and NGOs consider the U.S. position as a threat not only to the industry of generic pharmaceuticals, but also to health care programs for Brazilian society. Divergences that expose persistent hierarchies and the diffic ulty in dealing with the U.S. were also visib le in Brazil s multilateral posit ion towards nuc lear non-proliferation and n uclear disarmament issues. In spite of constant U.S. pressures, the Brazilian government refused to sign the IAEA Additional Protocol, partially because the reinforced safeguards sy stem could create obstacles for the safety of national ultracentrifuge technology. Nevertheless, Brazilian authorities also saw that reinforced safeguards were not sustainable
without parallel deve lopments by the nuclear-we apon states re garding n ucle ar disarmament (Rublee 54). Brazil st ill saw n ucle ar-weapon state s such as the U.S. as threats because they did not live up to the commitments of NPTs Article VI to elim inate nucle ar ar senals. Lula declared t hat [t]he existence of weapons of mass destruction is what makes the wor ld more dangerous, not agreements with Iran (Lula, N ucle ar We apons Make the World More Dangerous, Not Agreements with Iran). Brazils relations with the European Unio n were also characterized by the preservation of hier archies, though in a more subtle way. The E uropean Union developed a strate gy of engagement with Latin American countries based on the promotion of economic development and global projection of European values and interests. The change in those relations was connected to the liberalization of European economies, the attempt to highlight the European Union in the new global economic politic s and the competition with the U.S. for new m arkets. The model of cooperation developed by the European Union is based on partnership, inspired by notions of equality and cooperation that transcend power inequalit ies and supposedly challen ge the notion of hierarchies. Inter-regionalism might encompass politic al and instit utional reforms, as we ll as soc ial inclusion and the overcoming of power imbalances betwe en Europe and Latin America. The European Union tries to show that it is more concerned with a type of cooperation in which the North assumes responsib ilities for the Souths deve lopment and encourages transformations re lated to so cial responsib ility and partic ipation of civil society (Gruge l). It was a way to minimize dominat ion and submission stereotypes created by colonialism. However, new hierarchie s emerge and rearticulate o ld myths of dominat ion of European powers and dependency of Southern countries in contemporary times. In this context, Brazilian authoritie s see, behind the benevolent image of European strategy of partnership, the persistence of hierarchies that translate into protectionist barriers by the European Union against the access of Brazilian and Latin American export to its mar kets. Those barriers consolid ate exclusion and represent a threat to Brazilian development, relegating the country to an inferior position in light of its necessity
to export agricultur al products for economic growth. Brazilian politic ians and businessmen understood the maintenance of strict rule s that damage free trade as a threat to the development of the Brazilian economy and to the preservation of the countrys identity as an emerging country. Final considerat ions Although there is space for mediation and interaction with difference in Brazils relations with other countries, mechanisms of exc lusion persist and cre ate obstacles to the de velopment of common experiences towards the destab ilization of hierarchies and the sharing of value s that transcend coexistence. Difference represented by underdeveloped and other developin g countries was conceived as backwardness in relation to liberal an d democratic models of de velopment achieved by Brazil. Global powers were seen as ambitio us through the revival and adaptation of old colonial disco urses. Negative visions of difference persist and are constantly updated, reinvented and rearticulated. It would be very simplistic to say that this ar gumentatio n constructs the idea that, if Brazil recognizes that it has a more dynamic economy than his South American neighbors or his Afric an partners, it would be e viden ce of Brazil s prepotency. It would also be limited to affirm that, if in the commercial and economic trade disputes with stronger powers (the U.S., European Unio n, etc.) Brazil moves towards protecting its national interest, it would be considered instantaneously a subtle indic ation of a dichotomist suspic ious and resentful posture. What is being defended here is that Brazilian foreign policy might reflect deeply internalized notions of the depreciation of difference, wh ich create obstacles to better political solutions for many problems in the relations with other countries. I do not suggest in this artic le that the appreciation for dialogue and negotiation would re quire Brazilian authorities to deliberately ignore the existence of rich and poor countries, weak and strong states or even the anarchic characteristic of the international system. Instead, Brazilian leaders and society should consider those categories, but not take them for granted or as immutable elements of the international context. The destabilizat ion of the pre-given
polarization between "advanced " and "bac kward" countries, societ ies that are "fit for development" and "unfit for deve lopment", opens the possibility for a crit ical reflection of Brazil s act ions and the ways it internalized liberal proposals. It may also highlight way s to redefine policie s aimed at reducing ine quality with a denser and more precise knowle dge of suffering of other societie s, the recognit ion of common aspects between these experiences and the intensific ation of dialogue in new terms in order to overcome oppression. When it is possible to identify elements of exclusion similar to other societies in its own political, socioeconomic and cultural experience the "Other within" , Brazilians may re inforce dialo gue with other societies and have more comprehension of their own society. This dialogue would be implemented through the analysis of domestic and foreign mechanisms that reproduce oppression an d marginalization of peripheral societ ies in the international sy stem and the development of better responses to such problems. Such efforts wh ich would be taken not only in relat ions with developin g, but also de veloped countries can be carried out through different ways. One first step could be the increased interaction of Itamaraty with other ministrie s to develop programs with foreign counterparts, aimed at strengthening technical cooperation in t acklin g problems related to issues such as he alth care , educat ion and public safety, for example . Brazilian authorities can le arn from mistakes and successe s of its partners in implementing these program s domestically. Parad iplomacy and the invo lvement of subnational actors such as municipalities and federal states go vernments may be important, given that many of these policie s are put in practice at leve ls below the national leve l. I do not assume the immutability of the international system as an arena of conflict in wh ich foreign polic ies are determined with the consideration of relations between se veral se lf- interested st ates. So it is possib le, according to the main ar gument de veloped in this artic le, to develop multip le ways to recognize practices of exclusion and share experienc es of sufferin g and oppression in order to replace them with new proposals that critically re invent international relat ions as intercultural relations of sharing and un derstanding.
Works Cited Almeid a, Paulo R. Mercosul em sua prime ira dcada (1991-2001): uma aval iao pol tica a part ir do Bras il. Buenos Aire s: INTAL-ITD, 2002. Print. ___. Problemas conjuntur ais e estrut urais da integrao na Amric a do Sul: a trajetria do Mercosul desde suas origen s at 2006. RelNet (2006). Web Amorim, Celso. Entrevist a ao Jornal V alor Econmico. Mundorama (December 16th 2004). Web. 17 Jan 2012. ___. Lets He ar From the New Kids on the Bloc. The New York Times 14 J une 2010. Web. 17 Jan 2012. ___, The Soft-Power Po wer. Interview by Susan Glasser. Foreign Policy (2011). Web. 17 Jan 2012. Azevedo, Re inaldo. Lula tenta elogiar os afric anos. Veja 9 Jul 2010. Web. Bandeira, L uiz Alberto M. A Venezue la indispensve l. Revista Espao Acadmico, V.56 (2006). Web. 17 Jan 2012. Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culture. New York: Routledge, 1994. Print. Blandey, David L. and Inay atullah, Naeem . International Relations and the Problem of Differe nce. New York: Routledge , 2004. Prin t. Bouzas, Roberto. Mercosul, dez anos de pois: processo de aprendizado ou djvu? Revista Brasileira de Comrc io Exterior 13.68 (2001): 1- 16. Pr int. ___. El nue vo regionalismo y el rea de Libre Comercio de las Amricas: un enfoque menos indulgente. Revista de la CEPAL 85 (2005): 7- 18. Print. Balano de Polt ica Externa 2003/2010 Brazil ian Foreign Ministry. (2011). Web. 17 Jan 2012. Celso Amorim diz que Chvez late mais que morde. Veja 6 Dez 2010. Web. 17 Jan 2012. Cervo, Amado L. Insero internacio nal: formao dos conceitos brasile iros. So Paulo: Saraiva, 2008. Print. Cheibub, Zairo B. D iplomacia e construo instit ucional: o Itamar aty em um a perspectiva histric a. Dados 28. 1 (1985): 113- 131.Pr int. Cortes, Mara J. O Brasil e a Alca. Um estudo a partir da Argentina. Co ntexto Internacional 26.2 (2004): 355- 389.Pr int.
Fonseca Jr,. Gelson. A legitimidade e outras questes internac ionais: poder e tica e ntre as naes. So Paulo: Paz e Terra, 1998. Pr int. Gerchmann, Lo. Uruguai e Paraguai querem mudar Mercosul. Folha O nline 4 May 2006. Web. 17 Jan 2012. Grugel, Je an G. New regionalism and modes of governance: comparing U.S. and EU strategies in Lat in America. Euro pean Journal of Internatio nal Relatio ns 10. 4 (2004): 603- 622. Pr int. Herz, Monica. An lise Cogn itiva e Poltica Externa. Co ntexto Internacio nal 16. 1 (1994): 75-89.Pr int. Hirst, Monica. The U.S. and Braz il: a lo ng road of unmet expectations. New York, London: Routledge, 2005. Pr int. Hurrell, Andrew. The U.S . and Brazil: comparative reflections. In: M. Hirst. The U.S. and Brazil: a long road of unmet expectations. New York, London: Routled ge, 2005. Print. Hurrell, Andrew and Nar likar, Amrita. A New Politic s of Confrontation? Brazil and India in Mult ilateral Trade Negotiatio ns. Global Society 20. 4 (2006): 415433. Print. Krishna, San karan. Globaliz ation and postcolonialism: hegemo ny and resistance in the twenty-first century. Lanhan: Rowman & Littlefie ld, 2009. Print. Leite, Iara C. Brazilian engagement in international deve lopment cooperation: thinking ahead. The South-So uth Opportunity 10 Dec 2010. Web. 17 Jan 2012. Lima, Luciana. Embaixador do Brasil no Egito apoia disso lu o do Parlamento. Agncia Bras il 13 Feb 2011. Web. 17 Jan 2012. Lima, Mar ia Re gina S. and Hirst, Monic a. Brazil as an intermediate state and regional power: action, choice and respo nsibilit ies. Internatio nal Affairs 82. 1 (2006): 29-33. Print. Lula: Nuc lear We apons Make the World More Dangerous, Not Agreements with Iran. CAS MII: Campaign Against Sanctions and Mil itary Interventio n in Iran 29 May 2010. Web. 17 Jan 2012. Lula d iz que Namb ia limpa e no par ece frica. Terra website 7 Nov 2003. Web. 17 Jan 2012.
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Brazilian Postcolonialities

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Brazilian Postcolonialities

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POSTCOLONIALITIES

Adriana Varejo. Mapa de Lopo Homem II, 2004

Guest Editors: Emanuelle Santos Patricia Schor

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Emanuelle Santos and Patric ia Schor.

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BRAZIL IS NOT TRAVELING ENOUGH: ON POSTCOLONIAL THEORY AND ANALOGOUS COUNTER-CURRENTS

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

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the Inquisition, the

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Ndi ay e , P ap. L a Condit i on N oir e. P ari s: C al mann-L v y , 2 0 08 . P ri nt.

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CLAUDIA DE LIMA COSTA

FEMINISMO E TRADUO CULTURAL: SOBRE A COLONIALIDADE DO GNERO E A DESCOLONIZAO DO SABER 1

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Para exemplos dessas crticas, ver Jasbir Puar e Kathy Davis.

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O TURISTA APRENDIZ E O OUTRO: A(S) IDENTIDADE(S) BRASILEIRA(S) EM TRNSITO

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