Still in a climate of institutional tension, Brazil continues to follow the developments of the coup attacks at the headquarters of the three powers in Brasília last Sunday (8). In addition to the widespread destruction of the invaded buildings, deliberate vandalization of works of art and historical heritage were highlighted in the repercussions of the attacks. The Minister of Culture, Margareth Menezes, declared that the government is considering building a memorial so that the episode is not forgotten. For the coordinator of the Unicamp Memory Center (CMU), André Paulilo, the initiative is right and necessary.
"It is necessary to adopt a policy of memory from the Ministry of Culture, especially at this moment, when fake news, half-truths and criminal historical revisionism have catalyzed the destruction of heritage in Brasília. The creation of a memorial to remember this assault against The political will of the majority of the population will be fundamental to give adequate scope to the repudiation that acts of depredation of culture, history and politics deserve", says the historian and professor at the Faculty of Education.
Last Thursday (12), the Ministry of Culture released a preliminary report with an overview of the damage caused to public property, prepared by technicians from the National Historical and Artistic Heritage Institute (Iphan). The report points out that, in general, the damage found is, for the most part, repairable.
André Paulilo analyzes that the attacks were aimed at what the works represent culturally: a connection with history and national identity in the way they were created by State policies. “The depredation manifested contempt and political hatred towards a cultural tradition that those people seemed to want to condemn to eschatological damnation, a trait that, in addition to intolerance and fanaticism, also reveals ignorance. These are actions that attest to the reach that the war of narratives about the past and national memory currently has in Brazil. From this point of view, democracy is the main target”, he explains.
Delocalized Future
When evaluating the proposal to create a memorial to the attack on democracy, Paulilo mentions some recent reflections by the German academic Andreas Huyssen, a reference in studies on the relationship between cities and the arts and memory, for whom "the culture of memory fills a important role in the current transformation of temporal experience that took place following the impact of new media in human perception and sensitivity".
"As a social construction, memory provides guiding frames for reading the world, and this, it seems to me, makes it a central element of any plural and democratic cultural policy. I emphasize Huyssen's perception of the role of memory in this current context of a reductive presentification of social experience", he says. Paulilo also adds that, according to the German author, our concerns about memory currently result from the "dread of a delocalized future", that is, without references to identity.
Originally published article on the website of the Coordination of Interdisciplinary Research Centers and Nuclei.
