The Past as Future?

The diversity, challenges, and major problems pervading contemporary Brazilian society, along with the colonial heritage that continues to reappear in its social and economic practices and its political relations, have become a favorable area for the development of Brazilian social thought, from the classics to current perspectives. They have also fostered the development of critical reflection on the classics of Latin American and world thought and made possible the emergence—alongside of false governmental or religious idiosyncrasies—of critical thinking based on the national reality, whose fundamental features are inequality and the economic, political, and social challenges of a racist, unjust, and utilitarian society. Despite recent progress, significant sectors of Brazilian society and the intelligentsia continue to ignore (or, worse, devalue) Latin America and its social thought, which has proliferated very fruitfully in countries such as Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and Cuba. Brazilian social thought in its various facets is recognized in the region, and Brazilian works by Celso Furtado, Theotônio dos Santos, Ruy Mauro Marini, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and others have achieved global scope through contact, joint production, and widespread dissemination of this thought in Latin American centers. Since at least the 1960s, Latin America has acknowledged and circulated Brazilian thought while, unfortunately, Latin American thought (classic and contemporary) continues to be disregarded or marginalized by the Eurocentric perspective of the Brazilian academy and society. Brengel and Brasil Jr.’s Antología del pensamiento crítico brasileño contemporáneo once again demonstrates Latin American interest in Brazilian social thought and constitutes an important effort in understanding the diversity, richness, and explanatory (and transformational) potential of the critical thought of the late twentieth century, which remains relevant in light of the country’s recent situation.

The undertaking was organized by Breno Bringel, a Hispanic-Brazilian who researches Latin American social theory at the Universidade Estadual do Rio de Janeiro, and Antonio Brasil Jr., a professor at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro who has devoted himself to the study of social thought and Brazilian sociological theory. It is part of the series Países in the Antologías del Pensamiento Social Latinoamericano y Caribeño collection of the Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales (Latin American Council of Social Sciences—CLACSO), which publishes essential texts on Latin America. ¹ The work is structured around seven central themes, assembling 30 texts that complement each other and involve “a historically oriented reflection that understands that the process of formation in a society of colonial origin organized around slavery and large rural landholdings generates long-term effects on the social dynamic still felt in the present” (14).

The first theme, “Cultura y poder en la (semi)periferia” (Culture and Power in the [Semi]Periphery), presents the Brazilian cultural debate, raising the issue of Eurocentrism in terms of the dichotomy between autonomy and (cultural) dependency or between (external) imposition and consciousness and (national) creativity with essays by Alberto Guerreiro Ramos, Antônio Candido, Silviano Santiago, and Darcy Ribeiro. The second theme, “Teorías, traducciones e innovaciones” (Theories, Translations, and Innovations), offers articles that deal with the creative application of critical thought in the country and the innovations and contributions that social thought has promoted for the analysis of social theories such as the unconventional reading of Marx (by Roberto Schwarz), the reinterpretation of Gramsci’s concept of passive revolution and its relation to Brazil (by Luiz Werneck Vianna), and the method, principles, and foundational notions of classic social thought (by Élide Rugai and Gabriel Cohn).

The third theme, “Cambio social, desarrollo y capitalism dependiente” (Social Change, Development, and Dependent Capitalism), the longest in the book, rekindles one of the central debates in contemporary Brazilian critical thought, questioning the nature and dynamics of capitalism in the country by analyzing and critiquing the modernization process and the concepts of dependency and (under)development. The first three essays in this section (by Florestan Fernandes, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and Luiz de Aguiar Costa Pinto) build an innovative critique of theories of modernization and evolving views (optimistic and universalizing) of modernity that fail to grasp the complexity and diversity of Brazilian society and its peripheral status or the persistence of the functional combination developing in the country of modern and archaic, past and present, development and (under)development, capitalism and slavery, industry and latifundio that prevents an effective and comprehensive development of the country and of Brazilian society. The contributions that follow (by Emilia Viotti da Costa, Ruy Mauro Marini, and Virginia Fontes) discuss the structure of Brazilian society and the social conflicts that arise from it, highlighting the inhibiting role of our elites at crucial moments and debating the issue of development, analyzing its basic obstacles and (according to the latter two writers) its paradoxical condition of being at once an object of imperialism and an agent of subimperialism.

The next theme, “Dualismo y modernidad en Brasil” (Dualism and Modernity in Brazil), revives and expands the debate just mentioned, indicating that modernization and modernity in Brazil are the result of the combination of the archaic and the modern and that Brazilian society is based on the plunder and massive expropriation of resources and rights. Along this line, the articles by Ignácio Rangel and Jacob Gorender return to the origins of Brazilian capitalism and the contradictory nature of development, while those of Chico de Oliveira and José Mauricio Domingues analyze the archaic/modern combination as a structural feature of Brazilian capitalism. They examine the scope and limitations of the democratizing tendencies of contemporary modernization in Brazil.

The fifth theme, “Entornos y transiciones entre rural y urbano” (Settings and Transitions from Rural to Urban), indicates that, despite the transition from rural to urban, the foundations of an agrarian society continue to be a basic explanatory code for the social and political contours of Brazilian society. The essay by Caio Prado Junior analyzes the meaning of Brazilian colonization and argues that the country maintains the logic of “an economy and a society for others.” Those of Moacir Palmeira and Maria Isaura P. Queiroz demonstrate how the traditional view is reproduced in Brazilian political action through appropriation by the state and in coronelist and clientelistic relations. Lastly, Luiz Antônio Machado da Silva proposes understanding the recent urban violence as one more feature of the incomplete transition from the rural to the urban and the use of force as an element associated with both the state and people’s daily lives.

The sixth theme, “Relaciones étnico-raciales, desigualdad y diferencia” (Ethno-racial Relations, Inequality, and Difference), provides a radical critique of the standardizing view of Brazilian society in the thought of the country’s elites and public policies based on a critical indigenism and an analysis of racism and racial inequalities and of sexism and feminism. Roberto Cardoso de Oliveira’s essay appears in this context with a reflection on interethnic friction. Carlos Hasenbalg examines racism as the source of the development of Brazilian capitalism. Lélia González discusses the intersectional significance of Brazilian racism, which affects black women, and Heleieth Saffioti the condition of women in Brazilian society and its relation to national capitalism.

The final theme, entitled “Ciudadanía, democratización y movimientos sociales” (Citizenship, Democratization, and Social Movements), is made up of essays that discuss the (limited) development of citizenship in Brazil, the political and social dynamics associated with democratization, and the rise of social movements. It presents writings by Wanderley Guilherme dos Santos on controlled (or “on hold”) citizenship, Eder Sader on the emergence of new players (contemporary social movements) on the Brazilian political scene, Ana M. Doimo on the recent transformations and challenges of these new players, and Evelina Dagnino on the creation of a nefarious confluence of neoliberal and democratic projects that, since the end of the past century, has generated tensions, ambiguities, and challenges to the strengthening of democracy, the democratization of the state, and the consolidation of citizenship in Brazil.

The work presents an important overview of critical contemporary Brazilian thought and a view of the country that combines structural and conjunctural elements to help us comprehend the shaping, dynamics, and dilemmas of Brazilian society. This perspective is reinforced by its multidisciplinary approach, which offers a provocative and deep understanding of contemporary Brazilian society and its past. Finally, by providing contact with Brazilian thought from a Latin American perspective, it helps reveal the originality, creativity, and importance of attempts at criticizing the Eurocentric or conservative viewpoints that limit or disregard the perception of the multifaceted, complex, and unequal national reality and its ethnic, socioeconomic, and regional aspects.

Despite its innumerable merits, the anthology has some limitations largely deriving from its being a collection, among them the exclusion of issues and writers, some of them outside the academy, that are essential to critical contemporary Brazilian thought such as Milton Santos, Celso Furtado, Theotônio dos Santos, Ricardo Antunes, Emir Sader, Frei Betto, Leonardo Boff, and João Pedro Stédile. Moreover, it might have included analyses of emerging issues such as the evangelical phenomenon, the new social media, the return to conservatism, the solidarity economy, the environment, and Brazil’s international integration. Finally, in view of the new Brazilian situation, which was already on the horizon when the work was being planned, it would have been interesting to include an article that critically reviewed this aspect of Brazilian thought.

In any case, considering CLACSO’s objective of producing independent and critical knowledge—in other words, Latin American knowledge—the endeavor constitutes a fundamental effort to comprehend Brazil and its Latin Americanness in that, as the organizers assert (31),

Directly or indirectly, all of the texts selected here participated thoughtfully in the social process they sought to describe, contributing to its transformation. Therefore, in the current context of multiple crises and social and political regression affecting Brazilian society, gaining perspective on the various existing modalities of critical thought over the past 70 years constitutes an urgent task for two basic reasons: on the one hand, because they guided the battles for democratization of Brazilian society in this period, serving as powerful intellectual resources for clarifying the present impasses; and, on the other, precisely because the current crisis forces us once again to test the available interpretive resources, their re-reading is essential for us to detect the blind spots and existing limitations in this complex textual material. . . . We hope that this anthology can make a contribution in that direction and, at the same time, serve to bring Brazil closer to the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean.