Luto, representação histórica e imaginário republicano em Redescobrindo o Brasil: a festa na política, de Marlyse Meyer e Maria Lucia Montes

Abstract

This paper approaches themes such as mourning, republic imagination and history representation through the analysis of the book Redescobrindo o Brasil: a festa na política by Marlyse Meyer and Maria Lucia Montes. Published soon after Tancredo Neves’s death, their book has a unique interpretation of this politician’s funeral. Mourning representation, which was turned into a festivity, was a kind of paradoxical inversion of tragedy. Through it, the final act of the plot became an inaugural moment, a kind of catharsis that did not work as a rebalance of things or as a return to an oppressive situation after punishment by destiny. As a representation of the beginning of a new cycle, Tancredo’s death emerged as a rediscovery of Brazil. It was reified as a festivity of a people who became subject of its own history and whose identity was identical to that of Minas politicians.