Intellectuals and the Search for National Identity in Twentieth-Century Brazil

This book focuses on changing political thought in twentieth-century Brazil.

Ronald H. Chilcote (Author)

9781107071629, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 8 September 2014

306 pages, 2 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm, 0.56 kg

'This book reflects the breadth of engagement with the progressive intelligentsia of Rio and São Paulo by a passionate US observer committed to national and social liberation. Drawing on a half-century of interviews and dialogue, Ronald H. Chilcote's survey nicely complements and extends earlier works by Carlos Guilherme Mota and Daniel Pecaut. Spanning seventy-five years in coverage, the book underlines a point made by Portuguese Nobel Prize recipient José Sarmago: for far too long 'the error of the Marxist left has been to think that the weapons of the past will always serve to win the battles of the present'.' John D. French, Duke University, North Carolina

This book discusses twentieth-century Brazilian political thought, arguing that while Rio de Janeiro intellectuals envisaged the state and the national bourgeoisie as the means to overcome dependency on foreign ideas and culture, São Paulo intellectuals looked to civil society and the establishment of new academic institutions in the search for national identity. Ronald H. Chilcote begins his study by outlining Brazilian intellectuals' attempt to transcend a sense of inferiority emanating from Brazilian colonialism and backwardness. Next, he traces the struggle for national identity in Rio de Janeiro through an account of how intellectuals of varying political persuasions united in search of a political ideology of national development. He then presents an analysis by São Paulo intellectuals on racial discrimination, social inequality, and class differentiation under early capitalism and industrialization. The book concludes with a discussion on how Brazilian intellectuals challenged foreign thinking about development through the state and representative democratic institutions, in contrast to popular and participatory democratic practices.

Introduction: the intellectual in theory and practice
1. Intellectuals and political thought in twentieth-century Brazil
2. Developmental nationalism and the Rio movement
3. Nationalism and Marxism in the São Paulo movement
4. Capitalism and the bourgeois revolution: understanding development and underdevelopment
5. The pursuit of democracy
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], History of the Americas [HBJK]