>> Suzanne Schadl: My name is Suzanne Schadl,
I am the new chief in the Hispanic division here
in the Library of Congress.
I'd like to welcome the audience and thank you for coming.
I would like to say just real quickly a few words
about the Hispanic division and about Talia Guzman-Ganzalez,
who has organized today's event.
So, does everybody here know about the Hispanic division
and what we do for the most part?
So, I'll just reiterate.
I think one of the most -- this is from me --
I think one of the most important things that we do is
that we provide people who help people and you can see
when we're talking about corrections
that we have corrections in many different parts
of the Library of Congress.
So, here today you have rare books,
you have general collection, you have prints and photographs.
And they all deal with some extent with the topic
of our presentation today and that's brought together
by Talia, who has also brought in community members
and academics who are experts in this field.
So, one of the most important contributions we can make is
to bring resources and people and discussions
about those resources and topics together.
And I'm very grateful to Talia and many others of you
in the room to do that kind of work, so I'm going to turn it
over to her so she can introduce our speaker.
And thank you.
>> TALIA GUZMAN-GONZALEZ: Thank you, Suzanne.
Welcome, everyone to this event.
On behalf of my colleagues in Hispanic division,
I would like to welcome you all to the Library of Congress.
And especially to these book talk, State of Grace,
Utopia in Brazilian Culture, by Patricia Vieira
and it would be moderated by Professor Thayse Lina.
I'm going to introduce our speakers,
then Professor Vieira will come here and do a short presentation
of the book and then we'll move
to the moderate conversation with Professor Lina.
There's going to be time for questions, so, please, you know,
if something comes up, feel free to ask at the end,
and hopefully you'll also take advantage of seeing the --
some of the wonderful books that we have here today.
Patricia Vieira is a social professor of Spanish
and Portuguese at Georgetown University.
And Associate research professor at the Center for Social Studies
of the University of [inaudible].
Her fields of expertise are comparative literature,
literature and philosophy, literary theory, utopian studies
and environmental studies.
She is the author of, Seeing Politics Otherwise,
Vision in Latin American and Iberian Fiction.
Portuguese Film, 1930 to 1960.
The Staging of the New State Regime and States of Grace,
Utopia in Brazilian Culture and the coeditor of several books,
including, Existential Utopia, New Prospects
of Utopian Thought, the Language of Plants, Science, Philosophy,
Literature and the Green Thread,
Dialogues with the Vegetable World.
She is published numerous academic articles in her field
of expertise, as well as op ads in the New York times,
the LA Review of Books and the European, among others.
This conversation, like I said, will be moderated
by Professor Thayse Lina, who teaches in the department
of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Maryland.
Her areas of specialization include 19tyh century
contemporary Brazilian literature and culture,
modern Latin American literature and intellectual history,
transnationalism
and international literary circulation.
She's currently working on a book project
that traces the dialogues between Hispanic American
and Brazilian cultural
and literary critics during the second half of the 20th century,
focusing on the efforts
to integrate the two distinctly tried traditions
of Latin America.
I would also like to add
that Thayse has been here several times to work
on her book and I look forward to seeing you here next --
soon, to present that book here as well.
Her articles and book reviews have appeared in journals,
such as Hispania, Brazil, Brazil, Literature America
and Portuguese Literary and Cultural Studies.
Please join me in welcoming Thayse
and Patricia to this presentation.
[ Applause ]
>> Patricia Vieira: Well, good afternoon, everyone.
I'd like to first of all thank Dr. Talia Guzman
and the Hispanic division for the opportunity to be here
and to talk to you a bit about my most recent book.
And to thank Dr. Thayse Lina for accepting to moderate the debate
and to talk a bit about the book later on.
And I would like to start with a few words
about the Brazilian elections.
Those of you who are even a bit interested in Brazil,
probably have followed the elections
that took place this last Sunday and I think in the context
of those elections it becomes more important than ever
to reflect upon utopia and the two candidates
who will face each other in the second round of the elections
at the end of the mouth.
Jair Balsonaro and Fernando Haddad, they both, of course,
presents two almost diametrically opposed views
of Brazil.
One a very nationalistic and tradition
and even authoritarian vision of the country
and the other one the dream of a kind
of a more egalitarian Brazil that would be more open
to external influences.
That I would argue that both candidates go back to some
of the utopian themes that have shaped the history of Brazil
and Brazilian thought throughout the centuries.
And just as an example, Balsonaro draws heavily
on the messianic tradition that I discuss in the book.
I don't know if all of you know,
but his middle name is actually the Portuguese for Messiah,
[inaudible], and he often presents himself as this savior
who is going to come and lead the country to a golden age
of security and of stability, even if this comes at the cost
of embracing past racial and gender hierarchies.
And, of course, of cementing some of the economic disparities
that have plagued Brazil.
Haddad's platform on the other hand goes back to the promise
of social political and economic justice that has been one
of the key tenants of one Brazilian utopianism
as I discussed in the book.
And, so, even though they are both very different,
both of these candidates go back to utopian ideas of Brazil
that I think we need to really analyze in order
to understand what is going on today in the country.
So, the idea to write this book, I rose precisely
from this reflection that Brazil has throughout the centuries
been a repository for Utopian aspirations.
And so that was the goal of my project, to kind of go back
to these utopian aspirations
that have shaped what Brazil is today.
An Example of this is Thomas More's book, Utopia,
and you have the copy of I believe the first edition
of Thomas More's Utopia, from 1516.
And in this book and in Thomas More's utopia, of course,
the word utopia was coined,
right and in this book Thomas More, British writer,
he imagines an island that would be more perfect
than the England of his kind.
And use of this island supposedly was brought
to Thomas More by a Portuguese sailor called Raphael.
And you can see here he's alluding
to the Portuguese voyages to Africa, to Asia, and especially
to the Americas, right?
this is a map, of course, fictional map
of the fictional island of utopia from the end
of the 16th century based on Thomas More's book.
So, More he never really specified the coordinates
of his imaginary island of Utopia.
But he did write that it was located somewhere
in the New World.
And given that I was first visited by a Portuguese sailor,
we can imagine that maybe More had the land that is now Brazil
in mind when he wrote about this island of Utopia, right.
The Utopian drive became part of Brazil's cultural
and intellectual DNA from the arrival
from the first Portuguese sailors and settlers onwards.
The regions environment was often compared to paradise,
because it was so lush and bountiful.
And even Brazil's pre-Columbian inhabitants were first regarded
as very amicable and friendly.
Of course, this then this perception then changed
as colonization progressed.
But early Brazil was seen
by European explorers as utopia realized.
This is a painting called, The First Mass in Brazil,
by a painter from the romantic period.
I think it's from 1861, this painting,
and the painter is Victor Meirelles.
And you can see here some of the things I'm talking about.
So, the lush environment, the large trees.
You have, of course, the religious element,
you have the soldiers also there.
And then you have
in the foreground the native Brazilian population,
which looks on, they look on with interest
and without any sort of animosity
at the colonizers, right?
One of the most powerful utopian forces
that really led settlers --
well, that led settlers to establish themselves in Brazil
in the beginning was, of course, an economic reason, right?
Brazil at first there was lots of money made
through the selling of sugar produced in Brazil in Europe,
so the cane plantations were the first large scale economic
practice in Brazil.
Then there was the gold rush in Brazil, which was another seen
as an easy path to enrichment, right, so, again,
this utopian idea that if you go
to Brazil you'll get money easily
and you'll get rich easily.
This is a picture from the 1980s
by Brazilian photographer, Sebastiao Salgado.
And, so mining continues to be an important activity
in Brazil to this day.
This is in [inaudible], which is in the southern part of Prada,
so in the northern area of Brazil.
And then another moment where there was this idea
of easy enrichment in Brazil with the so called Rubber Boom
in the Amazon in the late 19th, early 20th century,
where the sale of latex in Europe,
because rubber was needed to produce,
among other things, tires for cars.
So, people extracted latex from the rubber trees in the Amazon
and that created prodigious wealth
in the Amazon reason, right?
So, my point is that various moments
in its history Brazil was seen of a kind of El Dorado,
where you could just go and get rich very easily
without too much work.
But, these economic considerations I think do not
exhaust the utopian aura of Brazil.
The idea that Brazil is an economic El Dorado goes hand
in hand with the idea that also social politically Brazil can
point the way to the future.
There is an Austrian author called Stefan Zweig,
who titled his book from the 1940s, Precisely Brazil,
a Country of the Future.
And in this book, which we also have therefore you
to see afterwards, he contrasts the racism that was prevalent
in Europe at the time he was writing during the Second
World War.
And so he contrasts the situation in Europe
that was engulfed in racial bigotry with the situation
in Brazil that he sees as the prototype for human relations
in the rest of the globe.
Of course, he might have a somewhat rosy picture
of what Brazil was, but he believed that the country
and this is a quote from his book, "Is destined to become one
of the most important factors
in the future development of our world."
And he continues by writing about Brazil,
"I knew that I had glimpsed the future of our world."
And he says, "Brazil gave me the feeling of living in a process
of becoming, in what is to come, in the future."
And, so, this idea of Brazil as being a country of the future
that points the way to how our future might look like remains
to this day and I think became very much a part
of the country's identity.
To this day Brazilian politicians, economists,
scholars and so on, speculate
about whether the country will be able to live
up to its promise of being a country of the future enough
and this is very much at play also in the electoral race
in the rhetoric of both candidates.
So, In States of Grace, in this book that I have just published,
I traced how this idea of Brazil as a utopian land was reworked
by Brazilian intellectuals at various moments
in the country's history.
And my first step was where the messianic writings
of Jesuit priest, Antonio Vieira, whom you can see here,
are preaching to Brazilian Indians, pointing, of course,
to heaven, right, which is -- it's very interesting that,
of course, the indigenous population is seen as close
to the ground and they have to somehow rise up spiritually
in the direction of heaven, right?
So, this was my first step in the book and the utopian moment
in his writings is that he believes that the colonization
of Brazil was the first -- not the colonization,
the colonization and the evangelization
or the Christianization of Brazil was going
to be the first step
of Christianization of the entire world.
And this conversion of the entire world
to Catholicism would herald the second coming of Christ,
who would establish a millenarian kingdom
of peace on Earth.
So, you can see the utopian undertones of his thought here.
Another moment I explored in the book was the perception
of the Amazon and you have here a beautiful image
of the Amazon during the time of the flood
when the river is very full, right?
So, the Amazon has also been perceived as a utopian space,
both by Brazilians and by foreign explorers who project
onto the Amazon their ideas of social and political justice.
I also discussed in the book the close relationship
between Brazilian culture and the environment
as a source of utopianism.
Brazil, as you all know, is rightly so associated
to biodiversity and Brazilian writers have often imagined
alternative relationships to animals and plants
that would not be predicated on just exploitation.
And then a final topic I discussed
in the book was the conception of Brazil
as a society of leisure.
And while colonizers often criticized the work ethics
of native Brazilians, Brazilian intellectuals have come
to imagine leisure and even laziness
as a positive Brazilian trait that distinguishes Brazil
from other countries in Europe and in North America.
And according to this view of Brazil, the country's laziness
or leisurely way of life, heralds a future time
when machines will do all the work and we will be able
to devote ourselves to leisurely pursuits, such as,
for instance, artistic pursuits.
Right? This is a clip from a 1969 film titled Macunaima,
by Joaquim Pedro de Andrade, and Macunaima,
who is said to be the hero of Brazil, the hero of our people,
as it is said in the book, he was defined by his laziness,
he was extremely lazy, didn't like to work at all.
And here you see him lying in a hammock
where he spends a lot of time.
And the film is in and of itself a rework of a novel published
in 1928 by Mario de Adnrade, modernist writer.
Also called Macunaima.
And also in the novel Macunaima is extremely lazy
and has his brothers do most of the work.
And this is again seen as something positive,
so it's not criticized in the book.
It's seen as a positive trait and it's almost
as if Brazilian intellectuals were embracing a criticism
that is also often leveled against Brazilians, right,
that Brazilians are lazy, they don't like doing too much work.
And, so, these intellectuals were saying, yes,
but this is a good thing that we resist doing work
that in fact leads nowhere.
Right, so, this is another moment of utopianism
that I explored in the book.
So, positing Brazil as this country of the future,
as some of these utopias do, creates a kind of a gap
between Brazil's present reality as a country
that has a certain set of limitations
and the utopian expectations that we place up on Brazil.
And this so called, we could call it even a cognizant
dissonance between reality as it is and reality as we would
like it to be creates a problem that Brazilians respond to,
I would think, in two different ways.
On the one hand the significance of utopia
for Brazilian identity contributes
to what has been called oofanista [phonetic
spelling] attitude.
Oofanista means just proud or self-congratulatory.
And, so, often in -- if you espouse this attitude,
you tend to disregard Brazil's problems and to believe
that Brazil is the greatest nation on Earth,
surpassing even the wildest utopian expectations.
This is the main argument of a book titled,
Why I Am Proud of My Country.
In Portuguese, [speaking foreign language], published in 1900.
And in this book by Alfonso Selsu,
the author really just lavishes praise on Brazil
as the greatest country on Earth and it says
if Brazil is really utopia realized.
And this mindset has resurfaced at several moments
in Brazil's cultural history.
For instance, during the period of modernismo,
which I already modernism, which I already talked about.
Some of the factions that emerged during this period,
they really had a radically nationalistic oofanista agenda
that advocated the superiority of Brazilian values
and of the Brazilian way of being in the world.
This segment of modernism was associated
with far right political movements, such as integralism
and this is a picture
of Brazilian integralists demonstrating.
And then some of these values of integralism then fed
into the nationalism
of [inaudible] totalitarian new states
in the late 1930s and 1940s.
And, again, the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil
between '64 and '85 went back to some of the oofanista values,
singing the glory of the Brazilian nation.
And I would argue to a certain extent current candidate
for Brazilian presidency, [inaudible] also goes back
to some of these ideas
of oofanismal [phonetic spelling] praising a certain
version of what Brazil is as opposed to --
as opposed to a more, let's say, horizontal view
of what the country could be.
So, I'm not saying that nationalism and allegiance
to one's country is necessarily something negative,
but this excessively nationalistic oofanista attitude
often entails a racist posture and it's ultranationalism
and it's exaltation of Brazilianess often goes hand
and hand with the --
at the debasement of other nations and cultures.
And even with certain groups within the Brazilian nations,
such as afro Brazilians.
All right.
So, this is one of the paths
that utopia can follow in Brazil.
So, this cognitive dissonance between the way things are
and the way things could be can lead to this overtly --
over nationalistic attitude.
The other attitude it can produce, this disparity
between how things are and how we would like them
to be is an excessively critical and even fatalistic view
of Brazil, according to which Brazil permanently falls short
of one's expectations, right?
at the very mundane level in Brazil and those of you
who know a bit about Brazil,
remember that Brazilians keep referring to the exterior,
to the countries that are outside
as if they were much better than Brazil.
And, so, Brazil always compares negatively
to other countries, right?
And the root of this self-debasement lies
in an interpretation of Brazil as plagued by a kind
of fundamental deficiency,
and this deficiency has been identified
by different intellectuals differently.
It can be racism, it can be the profound inequality
that plagues the country, it can be corruption, for instance,
I have a cartoon that says,
"Either Brazil finishes corrupt people
or corrupt people will finish Brazil."
And, so, you have all of the corrupt people eating,
eating away at Brazil.
And again, corruption was a key issue in this Sunday's election
and will be a key issue in the second round as well, right?
So, [inaudible] is justified, of course, in identifying --
in identifying the shortcomings of Brazil
or of any other country.
Many of these shortcomings that Brazilian intellectuals identify
as a shortcoming of their country,
they're not problems of Brazil alone.
I mean, they exist in most countries in the world.
And, so, I would argue that they do not warrant this permanent
feeling of inadequacy of Brazil when compared
to its utopian potential.
Nor do they condemn Brazil to somehow lag behind
and not be a better version of itself, right?
And as we know this critical impulse was part of utopia
from the beginning, that's why Thomas More wrote his book,
Utopia, was to criticize the England of his time
and to show how it could be a better country.
So, to conclude and then I would like to hear a bit from you,
but to conclude, In States of Grace I tried to showed
that utopia determines Brazilian history from the beginning
and it is and will probably remain a central element
in Brazil's collective identity.
And, as I was discussing just now, the very nature
of utopia is to create this gap between what is
and what could be, between reality
and a better version of reality.
And Brazilian intellectuals have responded to this tension
that is part of utopianism by hovering
between the two extremes of exalted nationalism
and excessive criticism of their country.
And I think that by giving in to either of these tendencies,
Brazil risk is never really embracing the present
and never really fulfilling its utopian potential.
I think these two tendencies, this excessive nationalism
and this fatalistic criticism are easy responses to utopianism
that fail to meet the challenge of utopia.
Because in one way or the other they end up subscribing
to the current state of affairs.
Either because it's already great
or because it cannot be changed.
Right? So, both of these tendencies lead us
to stay the way we are, so they do not prompt us
to change anything.
So, I think that Brazil should reject these two paths
of excessive nationalism or excessive criticism and continue
to be open to the utopian possibilities that are woven
into the very fabric of the nation's culture.
As Brazilians prepare to vote in the second round of elections
in the end of October, I hope that they will steer clear
of both this over nationalistic attitudes and also
of a defeatist stance that only foregrounds the negative aspects
in Brazilian culture.
The ultra conservative rights represented
by Jai Balsonaro I think has been able
to capitalize very well both
on the extreme nationalist oofanista sentiment
and on a defeatist outlook of an elector that is really tired
of corruption scandals and the social violence.
So, Balsonaro has been, I think, very savvy in capitalizing
on both of these attitudes.
He, of course, always presents himself with a background
of the Brazilian national flag or dressed
in the Brazilian national colors.
Again, in line with what I was talking
about this overtly nationalistic posture.
It remains to be seen whether the left,
represented by Fernando Haddad,
can mobilize another more constructive version
of Brazilian utopianism, one that would be predicated
on social and economic justice and on environmental harmony
as a path for Brazil to live up to its utopian promise.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> Thayse Lina: Hello, everyone.
Good afternoon.
Good afternoon.
Thank you very much for the Library and Talia
and also Patrice here for inviting me to discuss the book.
Personally it's been a pleasure to read the book,
because I've been wrapped around writing my own book,
so it's good to read somebody else's thoughts and ideas.
On the other hand, on the current context in Brazil,
which is to say the least is scary, it was also refreshing
to have contact with some --
with a book that is discussing something positive
for a change, which is utopia.
Even though we know that --
and I think that's what
for [inaudible] perspective is also very interesting
from your book, is that you refrain
from discussing negative utopias and you also disagree
with the idea that utopians will necessarily lead
into totalitarian systems.
So, that has been refreshing as well,
because I think very often we read books
that take a different position, which are necessary
and important to take a critical position in relation
to certain projects, right, certain national projects
in some ways you imagine the country.
But I think that the other way around has been discussed
and done to exhaustion, so I found the book very original
and very refreshing to read.
So, I'm very glad I was invited for this.
So, I think we were going to start with couple of questions,
then I'm going to open for everybody else.
One of the things that I found really interesting and new
to the book that I was talking to you before earlier
on today was that even though some of the projects
that you discuss are known and some are discussed,
they were never organized around the idea of utopia,
which I found -- it was almost this obvious thing that was
in front of, that this is permeating Brazilian history,
Brazilian intellectual history, but was never discussed
as such organized as such and I found it very interesting.
So, as you were explaining to everybody there's a lot
of utopian streaks that run through Brazilian history
and some of them are related to nature,
some of them are political, some of them are cultural,
there are messianic ones, and that is something
that it found quite new.
I never really thought about our intellectual history
through this lenses.
So, I -- one of the questions that I have for you is that,
how you went about organizing, it's such a long --
it's such a large theme and it runs through such a, you know,
basically the whole history of Brazil.
Everything, the discoveries.
How did you go about selecting what you were going to have
in the book and what you were not going to have in the book?
And I will ask you the question that I asked you earlier on,
which is, I found it interesting and I wanted to ask you,
one of the biggest, I think, the most discussed,
at least nowadays, utopians, Brazilian utopians
and also a failed utopian, right,
is the idea of racial democracy and was a tropicalism
that [inaudible] was writing in the 1930s.
[inaudible] is a Brazilian sociologist
who wrote [inaudible], I think is translated as.
Masters and Slaves.
Yeah, that's right.
so, I was wondering, I imagine the reason is
because it's been discussed to exhaustion lately, but,
I wanted you to talk a little bit more about this process
of what going about selecting what you were going to put
and what you were going to exclude from the book.
>> Patricia Vieira: Okay, that's --
it's actually a very good question and I struggled
with what I was going to include for a long time.
First of all, to the first half of the question, of course,
this utopian streak is not something that is part only
of Brazil, but it's really part of most American nations,
because the idea was that Europeans would come
to the new world and this very concept of the world being new,
of course, it was not new, there were people here before.
But the conception when the Europeans arrived with this
that they were arriving at kind of a blank slate
where they could start anew and avoid the mistakes
that they had made in Europe.
So, the idea that they could create a better society
in the New World and the every publication
of Thomas More's Utopia is indebted to this idea,
because finally you had a new world
where you could project all of these dreams of social,
political and economic emancipation
that you could no longer think of in Europe because Europe was
so corrupt and decadent and so on and so on.
So, the very concept of a New World is what made
utopia possible.
So, utopia became part of the makeup of American nations,
much more than it was of European nations.
And in the case of Brazil, as you were saying,
I think what struck me is that even though it's so much a part
of Brazilian history, it hadn't been studied systemically
and there were a few articles here and there about utopia
and especially the utopias in Brazil.
But there was not a systematic study
of how utopia had impacted Brazilian thought.
And, so, that was what I tried to do.
And I selected -- I didn't want to study books
that were utopias, in the sense
that they presented alternative visions of reality.
That was not my main goal.
My main goal was really to study utopian thought
as it presented itself, either in literature or in books
that were -- books of sociology, essays and so on
and that had become key to thinking what Brazil is today.
And, so, I went about studying this --
and selecting the key moments.
I wanted to key moments in Brazilian history
that on the one hand would be representative
of utopian thoughts in Brazil,
so I needed to include messianism, for instance,
as the root of utopian thinking in Brazil.
So, the -- like the theological base
from which posterior utopia is developed.
So, that was something I knew had to be there.
And then I tried to select other moments
that would be representative.
So, I wanted to have one chapter on the environment as a utopia,
so that was also for sure.
The part on leisure I was also absolutely sure I wanted
to write about.
Now, the issue of race could have been another chapter
in the book, but as you mentioned, it's something
that has been studied a lot in Brazil, so I thought
that I was not going to be able to say anything as new
on utopia, on racial democracy as I could say on other topics.
So, that's why I kind of bracketed it.
I also didn't mention, as we were talking before,
I could have written a chapter on the issue of the reworking
of messanism in the beginning of the 20th century
with [inaudible] writing about this issue.
But, again, I decided against it,
because so much scholarship has been produced on this
that in the end I thought I wouldn't be able
to add anything very substantive to the topic.
But, so, yes, I wanted to have key moments in utopianism
in Brazil and how it has changed and evolved,
especially in the 20th century.
So that was the rationale behind the choice of the chapters.
>> Thayse Lina: One more thing that I --
after your presentation I was thinking
about what you just said and how --
obviously as I was reading the book I couldn't help
but to think about the moment that we are going on right now
in Brazil and I was really glad that you brought it
up in your presentation.
I was surprised and I've never really thought
about Balsonaro representing somehow, like,
or I've never really thought about how he brings back some
of the utopias that you discussed or representing
or presenting some sort of utopian view for the Brazilians,
because so much of what he says is associated
with actually fear and, right, and he's running
through this fear and that's how constructed his platform
and his discourse.
But it's certainly something refreshing.
It made me think about something else.
What it made me think about is that most of the times
when you're talking about utopia we think about --
you're thinking with the intellectual lead of Brazil
and they dream of what the country could be
and the confrontation with the realities of it, right?
That since all of these actually fall short,
because these utopias are actually rethinking core
problems of the country, which are inequality, racial injustice
and so on and so forth.
So, we always feel like it's falling short
of fixing those problems, right?
But as I was thinking about it, I was thinking I had
to actually recheck my position on Balsonato, at least,
not on Balsonato, but on the people that are voting for him,
because I think in light of what happened two days ago,
49 million people voted for him.
You ask yourself, what people are thinking, like,
they really condone these ideas
and are they really supportive of this.
Or is actually what is moving them is something else,
it's that they believe
that somehow disregarding all the violent threats
that is coming from this candidate,
he somewhat offers a view of the country
that they actually think it's important possible.
So, my question, I think, is it has to do
with this disconnect perhaps
and if you think there is a disconnection
between what the Brazilian elites imagine about Brazil --
and I'm sorry I go back to [inaudible],
because I think it's kind of like a poignant example of that,
but you can see it in other ones as well.
I mean, and the idea of coming together that you see
in Macunaima, the ideas of community
and the [inaudible] community, it's also there.
So, if there is a disconnect between the dreams of the elite
and the dreams of the people out there,
the ones that we're not studying or reading or having access to,
but it's more your opinion about it, I guess.
>> Patricia Vieira: I think --
I think to a certain extent there is a disconnect,
but I think to a certain extent also the elites are responding
to something that is in the country.
Let me make this more concrete.
In the case of the current elections I don't think there is
so much of a disconnect between Balsonaro
and the Brazilian elites and the country.
I think he really embodies many of the ideas
that have been latent in Brazil throughout -- for centuries.
Again, the fact that he presents himself as a savior
of the country, who is going to bring stability,
peace, prosperity and so on.
This was a discourse, messianic discourse that has been part
of Brazil for centuries and is described very well
by [inaudible] in the Back Lands when he talks
about Antonio [inaudible] and why people voted for him.
I mean, it's shocking, but people in many
of the Brazilian slums or villas, he won, so the people
that are going to be more impacted
by his policies are voting for him exactly
because he has been very clever at appropriating some
of these cultural tropes, some of these cultural themes are
that are so much part of Brazilian history
and of the way Brazilians think about themselves.
And I think this is why he has been so successful.
And, on the other hand, he has also capitalized on this feeling
of discontent that is also, as I was saying,
also comes out of this idea that you're never able to live
up to the utopian promise as a Brazilian purpose.
And, so, you're always falling short
and he has capitalized on this.
He's saying, "I'm going to overcome this,
we will not fall short of Brazil's promise,
but we will tackle these problems
and we will overcome them."
Right? So, I think he has been a very smart politician.
I don't know if he has done this more or less without thinking
or if his team of advisors have really thought this through,
but the fact of the matter is he has used cultural elements
that have been very prevalent in Brazilian thought
and he has used them to his advantage in a way
that I think the left has been unable to do
and that's why he won.
So, it's not that he's the candidate of the elites
and the people didn't vote for him.
No, the people actually voted for him,
it was not just the Brazilian elite,
so I think this division here doesn't apply
because he has really been selected.
I mean, if anything, there is a geographic imbalance,
because I think the only region that did not vote
for him was the northeast for historical reasons,
Lula being very popular in the northeast and so on.
>> Thayse Lina: I think I was thinking more
about the enlightened midcentury elite and the dreams
of the country coming together and being more egalitarian.
And that's actually something
that is lacking on his discourse.
But I appreciate what you're saying
about how he actually has conquered the support
of the elites and in some parts of the population
that would be directly affected
by what he's bringing to his candidacy.
I don't know if I should -- we should open to questions now
or if I -- I want to give people the opportunity
to ask her questions too.
I have a lot of questions.
>> I have a question or two.
[inaudible].
First, thank you for the presentation.
Is it possible for me --
when you're talking about this [inaudible], for example,
of the [inaudible] we have in this [inaudible] of some sort
of utopia, you know, [inaudible].
First, I have a curiosity about [inaudible] and the role
that she plays in this utopian thought
and how do you use her book, particularly the [inaudible] GH
that we have here in this place,
I would like to hear your thoughts on it
and how you represent her in your book.
And another one is I wonder if in your studies
for this book you came across this idea
of utopian thought coming from indigenous [inaudible].
We've heard of how Europeans sort of rigged this idea
of utopia with them and then it's reworked
through other moments by Brazilians themselves, you know,
[inaudible] later on and the mid-19th century.
But I'm wondering if in your studies as a [inaudible],
the utopia from [inaudible]?
>> Patricia Vieira: Oh great.
Those are great questions.
So, first about the utopia from sources
that are not literature or essays and so on.
Of course, perhaps the most obvious one would be the
construction of Brasilia in the 1960s as this utopian moment
of creating a space that would be completely new and modern.
So, again, this attempt of Brazil to catch
up with the future, right, and utopia is very --
Brazil is very futuristic in its architecture as you --
those of you who know it can probably imagine the center
of Brasilia as this attempt really
to create the utopian space concretely, architecturally.
Then [inaudible], so I read her book
through what I call interspecies literature,
and this is my new project I'm working on, literature
and the environment and how we can think of literature
as a space where we give voice to non-human beings
and how non-human beings plants, animals impact literary --
literature and writings and also cinema.
So, that's how I try to read, The Passion According to GH,
how the animal in the story impacts the very writing
of the story.
So, that's through there.
And about the indigenous cultures,
whether utopia is also part of Brazilian indigenous thought,
I haven't read too much anthropological studies,
but there is the concept of the land without evil in [inaudible]
in indigenous Brazilian and throughout the Americas
and I forget, I don't know if any
of you are an anthropologist, there is even a group
of Brazilian indigenous peoples who used to go
on a pilgrimage every few years looking for this land
without evil, so they would just --
they were settled in a specific place
and they would just take off and go look for this land
without evil that has been compared
to the Christian paradise.
And, so, the idea is presence in indigenous thought.
I mean, one might argue that utopia in
and of itself is part of human culture.
That in one form or another, it might not be called utopia
because other cultures might not have a name for this idea,
which western culture did not have a name for utopia
until Thomas More published Utopia.
But the idea of something better than the current state
of affairs is very much a part of human cultures throughout,
so it would not be surprising that it exists, you know,
in Native American thoughts and, of course, in Asian literature,
it's full of utopia -- examples of what we call utopia
in the west, so, yeah.
Any other questions or comments.
[ Inaudible Speaker ]
>> I kind have a question, but I want to make sure
that if I ask it doesn't misunderstand your first part
of the lecture.
So, and also I want to reiterate what you just asked,
but you mentioned agriculture -- not agriculture,
but environmentalism and the connection with [inaudible]
and [inaudible] and this kind of view
that now Amazon is bringing us this [inaudible].
So, how do we reconcile the forced labor
that was brought upon by the rubber movement?
At least in my experience is studying Peru in the Amazon
and there was what be [inaudible] genocide
because of the rubber move,
so how does this utopian narrative kind
of reconcile itself with finding a better purpose
and better society when there's --
it's paved the way by [inaudible]?
>> Patricia Vieira: Right, right.
Yeah, so, what I was saying is that this utopian image
of Brazil has been very much connected with natural resources
that were very abundant in Brazil.
Of course, no one ever reflected how those were going
to be extracted, which was mostly by either slave labor
or later forced labor.
But, so, from a perspective of the outsiders who were going
to colonize Brazil, this was one of the main attractions
that you could go to Brazil and just get wealthy very quickly,
because that country was just so rich in natural resources,
so that was the utopian moment there.
In the Amazon, more specifically, in my chapter
about the Amazon, what I studied was really the myth
of the amazons, which are -- it's what gave the name Amazon
to the Amazon and these were just some female warriors
from classical Greece that when the first colonizers went
to the Amazon they thought
that they saw these women there along with the river.
So, they gave the name the river of the Amazons to the Amazon
and that's where the name comes from.
So, later on, in the beginning of the 20th century,
this group of women was -- there are several books of literature
that present this group of women as a utopian society.
And, so, there are stories such as, you know,
outsider enters the Amazon, gets lost, goes to the tribe
of the amazons and realizes they live a great life
where everyone is equal and people share the burden
of work and so and so.
They are presented as this utopian society that contrasts
with the inequalities of the rest of Brazil.
So, that's the utopian moment.
And, of course, this is located in the Amazon, because it's
that open space of possibility where anything can happen
because it's just so huge.
Yeah.
>> How is utopian is the [inaudible] and shared labor
and that sort of thing, how do you then [inaudible]
with authoritarian control?
I mean, how was he able to create this narrative,
is it simply just harkening back to the good old days or --
because I always thought it had to have this future goal?
How is this [inaudible] able to square [inaudible]?
>> Patricia Vieira: Yeah, no, I think you're right.
There are different strands of utopianism in Brazil.
So, one of them is this egalitarian horizontal view
of society that is present, for instance, in the conception
of laziness and leisure, Brazil as a country, that is able
to provide for everyone so people won't have
to work and so and so on.
So, that's one strand.
Now the messianic strands of utopian, which comes directly
from theology, always has an authoritarian streak to it.
even if we think about one
of the most famous messianic real life experiments in Brazil,
which was described, as I mentioned, by [inaudible]
in the Back Lands, famous book, which [inaudible] Brazil
where he describes a community living
in the back lands of Brazil.
The leader of this community, Antonio [inaudible],
he was what we would call today really an authoritarian leader
within this community, right?
So, I think that [inaudible] harks back
to that particular strand of utopian thought that goes back
to the messianic tradition and to authoritarianism
within the messianic tradition, right?
And what I was suggesting is that I think he has been able
to activate something that has been part of a Brazilian culture
for a very long time, which is this thinking of messianism
and the savior that will come and make everything right.
And this savior often has authoritarian characteristics.
I mean, historically.
And so people tend to accept his authoritarianism
because there are other examples in Brazilian history of this.
And, so, it jus t-- he falls back onto something
that already exists in the culture and that's why, I think,
he's so accepted and so popular really.
>> Maybe we have time for one more questions?
>> Thayse Lina: I do.
>> Patricia Vieira: One last time.
>> Thayse Lina: I think that I was talking to you about it
that -- and I think I'm going to kind of recuperate some
of your questions in a certain way.
It was impossible for me to read a book about utopianism and not
to think -- not about necessarily negative utopia,
which would be kind of like an apocalyptical thoughts and --
right, and it would fall into nihilism.
But mostly about this disconnect that you see between this dreams
of a better more egalitarian country, and the reality that --
does these authors were themselves experiencing
at the time that they were writing.
And what is interesting is that not only that I understand that
and you make it very clear in the introduction
that utopias are not necessarily to be --
to become a reality or to be, right, put to work in actuality,
at least not in the intellectual tradition that you are studying.
They are supposed to work as a north, right, to be aspired to
and that we are going towards.
But, to recuperating what people were saying is,
especially if you're looking at Brazil from the outside,
it always -- it doesn't only feel like a disconnection
between reality and thoughts and dreams, but it also seems
that this very reality, or the dreams
of this more utopian future are sometimes trying
to fix that reality, right?
Trying to create like another or to encompass that problem
or that they're seeing there and to do something else with it.
I think that it becomes really clear in the utopians
of leisure, which is in a way a revolt against, right,
or protest against the imposition
or the necessity of work, right?
So, I wonder if at any point
when you're writing these ideas were there with you, you know,
thinking about how there is this contrast?
>> Patricia Vieira: Yeah, that's a great question
and I think that's the main criticism against utopia
and the argument that utopia sometimes leads
to authoritarianism goes back to that.
That in order to achieve the utopian goal, anything goes.
So you can do anything politically
because you have a goal that you need to achieve.
That was the problem, for instance,
of communism as a system.
A political system that -- how is it --
the ends justified the means, right?
So, when I was studying utopianism in Brazil I worked
with a different notion of utopia that I called
in another book I co-edited a few years ago,
existential utopia.
And, so, by existential utopia, I mean,
utopia not as a goal that's somehow hovers above
and beyond society in the future, but as the utopia
as something that is imbedded in every day practices, right?
And that's why, for instance, I think utopia is related
to the environment are so powerful,
because the environment is something you encounter
on an everyday basis.
It's not something out there.
And, again, issues of leisure.
People work every day, they experience labor every day,
so utopias of leisure are not something
that somehow could exist in somewhere
in a very distance future, but they are something that speaks
to our realities in the present.
And I think that's the only way that a concept, such as the one
of utopia, can still be relevant today, is if we think about it
as operative on an everyday basis and not as something
that we should really try to reach sometime in the future
and that ends up being almost oppressive in the present.
So, to the country I think utopias should make us feel
uncomfortable in the present, but in a good way.
Showing us that the present can be better, but not as some sort
of an ideal that we always have to match and we can never match.
But as the kind of making us slightly --
how I should put this --
slightly uncomfortable where we sit knowing
that we could be a bit better, right?
So, I think that's the kind of utopia
that is valuable politically today, right,
a utopia that makes us see that things could be better,
but that doesn't dictate how they necessarily need to go
and how you necessarily need for them to be better, right?
>> Thayse Lina: Thank you.
>> Patricia Vieira: Okay, thank you.
>> Thank you.
>> Patricia Vieira: Thank you.
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