Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Brazilian Postcolonialities PDF
Brazilian Postcolonialities PDF
POSTCOLONIALITIES
Guest Editors:
Emanuelle Santos
Patricia Schor
EDITORIAL NOTE
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
The quest ion of the localit ies of theory production is assert ive ly
elaborated in “F eminis mo e Traduçã o Cultural: Sobre a Colonialidade do
Gên ero e a Descolonização 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 American’s own Postcolonial Fem inism.
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.
Mapping
Mapa de Lopo Homem II, kindly made available by the artist Adr iana
Varejão, 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 arejão
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
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 Anzaldúa’s borderland and Nascimento’s 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.
Naming
Inviting
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.
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: Raç a, Cult ura e Política de
Identidade. Oeiras: Celta Ed itora, 2000. Prin t.
Anzald úa, 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 Varejão: Entre Carnes e Mares = Between Flesh and
Oceans. Rio de Janeiro, RJ: Cobogó: 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 América Lat ina. [Montevideo]:
Univer sid ad Nac ional de la República, 1971. Print.
Gomes, Heloisa Toller. "Quando os Outros Somos Nós: O Lugar da Crític a Pós-
Colonial na Un iversid ade Brasile ira. " Acta Sci. Human Soc. Sci. 29.2 (2007):
99- 105. Print.
Madure ira, Luís. 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 Pé 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 Razón Postoccidental." La
Reestructuración de las Cienc ias Sociales en Amé rica Latina. Ed. Santiago Castro-
Gómez. Bogotá: 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 Moraña, Enrique D. Dussel and Car los A. Jáuregui. Lat in America
Otherwise. Durham: Duke University Press, 2008. 459-75. Print.
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.
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 aspects of Postcolonial St udies is part of our new book
1
, 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.
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 mestiço – inevitably mestizo – but chooses, out of
racism, not to admit it. The right-wing’s vir ulent hatred of Obama, in this sense ,
betrays a fear of this mestizo character of the American nation.
2
Veloso, Caetano. Verdade Tropical. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1997. Print.
Shohat: Latin American intellect uals have been in the forefront of doing
mestiçage, métissage, 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.
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.
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
3
Shohat, Ella. "Notes on the "Post-Colonial"." Social Text. 31/32: Third World and Post-Colonial Issues (1992): 99-
113. Print.
4 Edward W. Said, Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978. Print.
Shohat: The point is that we can no longer segregate all the issues of anti-
Semitism, 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.
5 Shohat, Ella, and Robert Stam. Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media. London; New York: Routledge,
1994. Print.
6 Terra Em Transe. Dir. Rocha, Glauber. 1967. Film.
7 Buarque, Chico, and Gilberto Gil. "Cálice." Feijoada Completa. Philips, 1978. LP.
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 multi-
directionalitie 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, Aimé
Césaire.
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 cClintock’s
8
Abdel-Malek, Anouar. “L’Orientalisme en Crise.” Diogène. 44 (1963): 109-142. Print.
9
Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. New York: Grove Press, 1967. Print. [Originally published by Editions de
Seuil, France, 1952 as Peau Noire, Masques Blanc].
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 Fanon’s “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.”
10 McClintock, Anne. “The Angel of Progress: Pitfall of the Term ‘Post-Colonialism’”. Social Text 0.31/32 (1992):
84-98. Print.
11
Hall, Stuart. “When was the ‘Post-Colonial’? Thinking at the Limit”. The Post-Colonial Question: Common Skies,
Divided Horizons. Chambers, Iain and Lidia Curti, eds. London: Routledge, 1996. Print.
12
Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. Trans. Constance Farrington. New York: Grove Press, 1965. Print.
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 naïve 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.
Ella Shohat and Robert Stam. "Race in Translation. Cultural War Around the Postcolonial Atlantic." Utrecht
13
University Postcolonial Studies Initiative - Doing Gender Lectures. Utrecht. 8 June, 2012. Lecture.
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.
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
14
Stam, Robert and Ella Shohat. “Whence and Whither Postcolonial Theory?.” New Literary History 43.2 (2012): 371-
390. Print.
15
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. “Postcolonial Studies and the Challenge of Climate Change.” New Literary History 43.1
(2012): 1-18. Print.
Young, Robert. “Postcolonial Remains.” New Literary History 43.1 (2012): 19-42. Print.
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
Tropicália.
Stam: I think it is partly happening just through economics. The so-called “r ise
of the Rest” means that Brazil… Már 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, Brazil’s 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 zil’s current position vis-à-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
18 Hanchard, Michael George. Orpheus and Power: The “Movimento Negro” of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, Brazil, 1945-
1988. Princenton: Princenton University Press, 1994. Print.
19 Bourdieu, Pierre and Loïc Wacquant, “On the Cunning of Imperial Reason,” Theory, Culture, and Society 16, no. I
(1999) 51. Print. And Bourdieu, Pierre and Loïc Wacquant, “La Nouvelle Vulgate Planétaire,” Le Monde Diplomatique.
May 2000. 6-7. Print.
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 iática 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
Hanchard’s book, only North American sc holars, hardly acknowledging the long
tradition of Brazilian scholarsh ip on these issue s.
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
20Special issue on “On the Cunning of Imperial Reason” essay, Estudos Afro-Asiáticos January-April 2002. Print.
21Nascimento, Abdias do. O genocídio do negro Brasileiro: Processo de um Racismo Mascarado. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra,
1978. Print.
Shohat: It is in this sense that we quest ion Ali Kamel’s pop book Não So mos
Racistas. 22 He is a “Global, ” i.e. literally one of the important figures at
Globoand a Syrian immigr ant. It’s 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.
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 the Inquisition, the
22Ali Kamel, Não Somos Racistas: Uma Reação aos que quere nos Transformar numa Nação Bicolor. Rio de Janeiro: Nova
fronteira, 2006. Print.
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
23 Shohat, Ella. Taboo Memories, Diasporic Voices. Next Wave. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006. Print
24
Shohat, Ella. "Postcolonial Cinema Studies Conference Session: Forget Baghdad: Jews and Arabs - the Iraqi
Connection (Dir. Samir, 2003)." Organised by Sandra Ponzanesi Utrecht University, in collaboration with
Postcolonial Studies Initiative, Centre for the Humanities, Culture & Identities and the Gender Studies Programme.
Utrecht. 7 June, 2012. Film screening.
25 Exodus. Dir. Preminger, Otto. United Artists; MGM, 1960, Film.
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 mega-
genocide, some cause d by d isease but also by the massacres already reported by
[Bartolomé] 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
Darwish, Mahmoud. "The Speech of the Red Indian." Trans. Sargon Boulos. The Adam of Two Edens: Poems. Eds.
27
Munir Akash and Daniel Moore. Syracuse NY: Syracuse UP, 2000. 129-45. Print.
On October 17, 1961, when the French police – following the orders of
Police Chief Maurice Papon – and here again we see the link between anti-
Muslim 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 L’Express “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 Fanon’s 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, Fanon’s wife who still live d in A lger ia,
28 Shoah. Dir. Lanzmann, Claude. New Yorker Films, 1985. Film. 9 ½ hours documentary on the Holocaust.
29 Sartre, Jean-Paul. Anti-Semite and Jew. Trans. George Joseph Becker. [New York]: Schocken Books, 1948. Print.
30 Sartre, Jean-Paul. "Une Victoire." Situations V: Colonialisme Et Néo-Colonialisme. 1958 [L'Express]. Paris: Gallimard,
1978. Print.
31
The Question was first published in the UK. Soon after Sartre’s “Une Victoire” a new edition was published in French
by Les Éditions de Minuit.
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 “anti-
Israel” and even anti-Semitic posit ions.
ES/PS: Further within geopolitics, and back to Brazil, how do you see the
country’s 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 world’s sixth economy,
has a le gitim ate desire to be recognized as a global power. That was alread y
clear with Brazil’s desire to be a member of the Security Council in the UN. The
very fact that Sérgio 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.
32 On November 10, 1975 the United Nations General Assembly adopted its Resolution 3379, which states as its
conclusion: “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination”. After years of US and Israeli pressure, on
December 16, 1991 the UN General Assembly revoked Resolution 3379.
33 Comunidade dos Países Africanos de Língua Portuguesa.
34 Brazilian employee of the United Nations killed during an attack to Canal Hotel in Bagdad in 2003.
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-à- vis
“backward ” Afr ica? Lula’ s surprised reaction to African modernity – “nem parece
África! ” 35 is in this sense symptomatic. Apart from candomblé 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.
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 é preciso.
Stam: Not really. We tried so many tit les so it is almost an accident that race
ended up so foregrounded.
36
O Judeu. Dir. Azulay, Jom Tob. Tatu Filmes, Metrofilme Actividades Cinematográficas, A&B Produções, 1996.
Film.
37
Schwartz, Roberto. ‘Idéias fora do lugar,’ Estudos Cebrap, 3 (1973). Print.
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
Shohat: But the resistance to Postcolonial and M ult icultur al Studies sometimes
come from leftist Leninist radicals like [Slavo j] Žiže k, who attacks
multic ulturalism and identity politics in a very uninformed way. (He obviously
hasn’t read the kind of work we talk about). One has to wonder why the Right
(Bush, Cheney, Cameron, Sarkosy, Merkel) and some leftists all oppose identity
politics today, although not, obviously, fro m the same angle.
38
Ndi ay e , P ap. L a Condit i on N oir e. P ari s: C al mann-Lé v y , 2 0 08 . P ri nt.
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.
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 knew—which 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
39
Stam, Robert, and Ella Shohat. "The Culture Wars in Translation." Europe in Black and White: Interdisciplinary
Perspectives on Immigration, Race and Identity in the "Old Continent". Eds. Manuela Ribeiro Sanches, et al. Bristol and
Chicago: Intellect, 2011. 17-35. Print.
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 it’s
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, Sérgio
Costa, Abdias do Nasc imento are just as interesting as Fredric Jameson or
40Andrade, Mário de. Macunaíma, O Herói Sem Nenhum Caráter. São Paulo: Oficinas Gráficas de Eugenio Cupolo,
1928. Print
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. It’s not a matter of “getting r id of” but of
expanding to see the currents of the Atlantic feeding into the Pacific.
41 Veloso, Caetano. "Love, Love, Love." Muito (Dentro da Estrela Azulada). Universal, 2007. CD.
42
Veloso, Caetano. "Cinema Novo." Tropicália 2. WEA, 1993. LP.
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 Léry, between three
Tupinambá in France and Montaigne, all the way up to Lévi-Strauss – who
worked with the Nambiquara – and Pierre Clastres ( “Society against the State” 43)
and René Gir ard (who talks about Tupin ambá 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 peoples. Native intellect uals and media-makers c irculate
43
Clastres, Pierre. Society against the State: Essays in Political Anthropology. Trans. Robert Hurley and Abe Stein. New
York: Zone Books, 1987. Print.
44
Grande, Sandy. Red Pedagogy: Native American Social and Political Thought. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004.
Print.
45
Como Era Gostoso meu Francês. Dir. Nelson Pereira dos Santos. Regina Films, New York Films, 1971. Film.
Introdução
1
Gostaria de agradecer as recomendações de revisão dos/as pareceristas anônimos/as, bem como as
inúmeras leituras e sugestões generosas de Sonia E. Alvarez.
2
Veja, por exemplo, as discussões na antologia organizada por Clifford e Marcus.
3 Faço referência aqui aos escritos de Spivak (Critique of Postcolonial Reason) e de Bhabha (The Location of Culture).
4 Para as acirradas disputas sobre a adequação do termo pós-colonial no contexto da América Latina, veja a
Vale re ssaltar dois pontos sobre as citaç ões acim a. Pr imeiro, par a
Quijano (‘Colonialidad de l poder, eurocentrismo’), colonialidade e
colonialismo se referem a fenômenos diferentes, porém interrelacionados.
Colonialismo representa a dominaç ão político-econômica de alguns povo s
sobre outros e é (analit icamente falando) anterior à colonialidade que, por
sua ve z, se refere ao sistema de c lassific aç ão universal existente no mundo
há mais de 500 anos. Colonialidade do p oder, portanto, não pode existir
sem o evento do colonialismo. Segundo, e mais signific ativo para o
propósito deste ensaio, a colonialidade do gênero ficou subordinada à
colonialid ade do poder quando, no século XVI, o princípio da classific ação
racial se tornou uma forma de dominaç ão social. De acordo com Quijano
(“Colonialid ad de l poder, eurocentrismo”), a dominaç ão do gênero se
subordina, então, à hierarquia superior-infe rior da classific ação rac ial.
Apesar de Walsh não fazer nenhuma menção em seu art igo às teorias
feminist as que sur gem na América Latina como parte integrante do
movimento de descolonização do saber, de construção de “oppositional
6 Tomo emprestado de Emily Apter (“On Translation in a Global Market” 10) esta expressão. Zona de
tradução – uma apropriação do conceito de zona de contato, cunhado por Pratt (7) – significa um lugar
intersectado por várias fronteiras linguísticas em constante confronto e disputa. Qualquer zona de contato é
sempre já uma zona de tradução (Apter, The Translation Zone).
7 Walsh faz referência a vários intelectuais indígenas (infelizmente, seus exemplos são todos masculinos) que
estão redesenhando um pensamento crítico descolonizado a partir da própria América Latina.
8 Ver, por exemplo, os ensaios nos livros organizados por Gugelberger e por Arias.
9 Gostaria de relatar uma anedota pessoal. Quando comecei a lecionar na Universidade Federal de Santa
Catarina uma disciplina de teoria literária na graduação (cujo objetivo era o de introduzir o cânone literário
ocidental), optei por uma abordagem não ortodoxa. Líamos escritores canônicos ao lado de testemunhos
como o de Menchú (Burgos and Menchú Me llamo Rigoberta Menchú) e Chungara, mostrando aos/as alunos/as
que esses textos ex-cêntricos solicitavam outras formas de ler. Em reunião departamental sobre mudanças do
currículo, um colega, professor titular, expressou sem qualquer tipo de embaraço que textos de “mulheres,
indígenas, negros e paraplégicos” deveriam ser ensinados em disciplinas optativas, não nas obrigatórias. Após
essa nefasta reunião, continuei desafiando o currículo disciplinar em minhas práticas docentes.
10 Latinoamericanismo se refere à produção de conhecimentos sobre a América Latina, por latino-americanos ou
não, a partir das universidades e centros de pesquisa situados no Norte global (Europa e América do Norte).
11
Mujeres Creando é um movimento feminista autônomo criado em 1992, em La Paz, Bolívia, e formado por
mulheres de diferentes origens culturais e sociais. Enfoca a criatividade como instrumento de luta e
participação social.
As ide ias fluem, tais como os rios, de sul para norte e tornam-
se afluentes do grande s fluxos de pensame nto. Mas, como no
12Cusicanqui se refere aqui ao livro de Javier Sanjinés (El espejismo del mestizaje), discípulo de Mignolo, quem
realizou um estudo sobre mestiçagem na Bolívia sem fazer qualquer menção ao debate boliviano, inclusive
entre os indígenas, sobre o tema.
Com grande força retórica, a teórica aym ara nos mostra que para a
descolonização do saber não basta articular um discurso descolonial, mas é
preciso, sobretudo, desenvolver prátic as de scolonizadoras.
13 Christian (51-63) traz para esta discussão a importância do elemento racial, ou seja, como a teoria ganha
não apenas um gênero, mas também é sempre já racializada.
14 Para uma reflexão sobre os primeiros 15 anos da Revista Estudos Feministas na Universidade Federal de Santa
15
Para exemplos dessas críticas, ver Jasbir Puar e Kathy Davis.
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 metrópoles, tais
como São Paulo, que aspir am a fundar um a civilização moderna à imagem
da Europa, e o Norte e Nordeste brasile iro, culturalmente híbridos. Um
aspecto marcante nestes pensamentos da p ersonagem de Már io de Andrade
é a conceptualização d a nação. A sua visão da nação brasileir a em processo
de reformulaç ão cultural e identitár ia, aqui apresentada, é cr ucial par a
perceber o projecto nacionalista que o esc ritor propõe no seu diár io e, em
particular, a posiç ão do narrador – que assume vár ios papéis, tais como o
artista, o poeta, o fotógrafo, o jornalist a e o etnógrafo, ao longo da
narrativa 1 – frente ao mundo que o rodeia.
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).
3 A existência do património marajoara foi descoberta apenas em 1871 pelos pesquisadores Charles Hartt e
Domingos Penna e até ao final da década 40 do século XX os estudos arqueológicos na área foram muito
fragmentários. Só em meados do século, já depois da morte de Mário de Andrade, começaram estudos mais
sistemáticos. Veja-se a respeito, por exemplo, a dissertação de Denise Pahl Schaan A Linguagem Iconográfica da
Cerâmica Marajoara.
4
Nos tempos de Mário de Andrade, a zona de contacto entre índios e brancos no Norte do Brasil limitava-se
às margens dos rios, visto que o transporte fluvial era o único meio de contacto com o resto do mundo.
Note-se que a Rodovia Transamazónica foi inaugurada apenas em 1972. A sua localização remota e o difícil
acesso classificam o Norte do Brasil como uma região periférica, na acepção da teoria de sistemas-mundo de
Immanuel Wallerstein (2004). A periódica extensão e retracção de zonas de influência culturais ao longo da
História foi sempre condicionada pela facilidade de contacto entre centro e periferia (Braudel, 1993).
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 nation-
buildin 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.
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 Sérgio 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.
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 Brazil’s historical
experience. A key c leavage refers to t he idea of the “two Brazils”.
Generally associated with Jac que s Lambe rt’s 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
country’s politico-territorial unificat ion. Although offic ially completed
with the consolidat ion of Brazil’s 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.
2 Even though such works came to be associated with a genre – the ensaio – that partly deprives them os
scientific status, Caldeira and others have convincingly extended the nation-building claim to Brazil’s
contemporary social sciences. The nation-building drive is here contrasted with the empire-making
implications of central anthropologies (cf. Stocking, Cardoso de Oliveira “Peripheral Anthropologies”).
3The idea of “popular culture” is one way of framing these amorphous identities (Rowe and
Schelling).
95 P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 4 Fall 2012 ISSN: 1874-6969
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.
4 A partial exception was the independent foreign policy pursued during Jânio Quadros and João Goulart’s
short-lived presidencies (1961-64). Attempts at approximation with Africa would be resumed during the
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 Itamaraty’s (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 80’s under the weight of an economic crisis
that swept both sides of the Atlantic (Saraiva).
5 An important lacuna in Gilroy’s account relates precisely to technique (and technology). In the case of
African slaves brought to Brazil, this dimension of embodied knowledge includes fields such as metallurgy,
herbal medicine, construction, textiles, and the manufacturing of sugar (cf. Furtado, Cunha Jr.).
6 Candomblé is a modality of Afro-Brazilian religion akin to the Haitian Vodou or the Cuban Santería.
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.
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
(D’Ávila), 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.
1 Para uma discussão sobre a necessidade de um núcleo étnico nacional, ver Smith.
2 Para um exemplo desta leitura de Os Sertões, ver Santiago.
3 Como ilustração, ver a famosa expressão “desterrados em nossa terra” em Raízes do Brasil de Holanda, e o
4 Um exemplo está em trecho do primeiro capítulo de The Lettered City, de Angel Rama.
5 Sobre o caráter híbrido de Os Sertões, entre muitos outros, ver Ventura, Valente e Zilly.
6 Leopoldo Bernucci sugere que haveria no próprio escritor uma cisão. Euclides não deixaria de ter o
Romantismo como paradigma literário. Como assinala Bernucci, “A impressão que temos é que ele começa a
criticar a ideologia romântica. (. . .) Mas termina, no final, exaltando essa mesma ideologia ao criar um enorme
painel de vinhetas românticas para o festejar dos nossos olhos: a imagem da formação de uma nação através
do esforço de querer buscar a especificidade do brasileiro (. . .).” (33).
7 Para um desenvolvimento dessa questão, ver Johnson, Sentencing Canudos.
Não obstante, a sit uaç ão é dist inta: difere ntemente do que pensava
Euclides, os fave lados não ser iam retardatários à espera do progresso, mas
seus sinais mais vitais e xtremados. Eles representariam, assim, o
capitalismo, se guido por pratic amente todos os paíse s do mundo, no se u
momento mais avançado.
9 Para uma crítica que vê em Cidade de Deus um “quadro na parede”, ver Pelegrini.
Brazilian foreign policy’s literature indic ates that the deve lopment of a
“benign power” profile is not recent. Gelson Fonseca Jr. (356- 359) indic ates that
Brazil’s 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 country’s 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 Brazil’s “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 “soft-
power 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 Brazil’s 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.
In the next sections, I will exam ine how hierarchies persist in Brazil’s
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 Brazil’s two previous administrat ions, Fernando Henrique
Cardoso (1995-2002) and Luiz Inácio L ula da S ilva (2003-2010), as we ll as
authorities of other countries in response to Brazil’ s decisions 1.
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 Brazil’s main foreign policy decision-makers and institutions, but I will not obliterate differences
among domestic actors. Those differences will be discussed whenever they affect Brazil’s international profile.
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).
Since 2006, Ur uguay’ s and Paraguay’s 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.
Many would say that dec larat ions like those could demonstrate simply the
existence of an exclusionary vision on Lula’s 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 (“Balanço de Polít ica
Externa 2003/ 2010”, my translat ion).
Similar p atterns are visible in Brazil’s 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.
Amorim’s 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 “teacher’s” 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”.
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:
When talking about the Tehran Declarat ion, Amorim (“Let’s 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 lf-
righteous 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”).
Brazil’s 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 South’s 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
country’s identity as an emerging country.
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 state’s go vernments may be important, given that many
of these policie s are put in practice at leve ls below the national leve l.