Viva o povo brasileiro: revisitações críticas e diálogos com o pensamento social brasileiro

Abstract

This paper aims to discuss some critical perspectives on the Brazilian society’s historical process, and the dialogue between Viva o povo brasileiro (1984), by João Ubaldo Ribeiro, and different theoretic interpretations of Brazil, developed in the realm of Brazilian Social Thought. Using an ironic and critical language, the novel establishes a discoursive network that threatens official discourses about Brazilian society’s configuration. To that, studies from different fields of knowledge, such as Anthropology, Economics, History, Literary criticism, and Sociology will be considered. Along with the novel, this study intends to investigate the conservative and elitist project beneath Brazilian national-Estate building in the XIXth century, as well as the impact derived from interpretations based on theories and experiences of modernity proper to countries arranged at the center of the capitalism. This later concern perpetrates some pieces of consideration regarding Brazilian society’s miscegenation as much as about the weight of Brazil’s material and cultural “delay” on the country’s practical life.