At the official opening of the 12st Instituto Rouanet–Unicamp Colloquium, held this Wednesday morning (04/XNUMX) at the Cultural Center of the Institute of Language Studies (IEL), the director of the Institute, Adriana Rouanet, in a live broadcast direct from London (England), spoke about his interpretation of the event's theme “The particular and the universal in the thought of Sergio Paulo Rouanet”: “Safeguarding both the particular and the universal was a concern throughout my father's intellectual life. What he called particular is what can be seen as regional, as the legacy of a people or a community; the universal is when we open our horizons to a broader dialogue, where we can find ourselves in our humanity”, stated Adriana.
Focusing on discussion about the humanities, the event, which takes place from April 11 to 14 (Check out full schedule), inaugurates the partnership between Unicamp and the Barbara-Freitag and Sérgio Paulo Rouanet Institute (Instituto Rouanet). Also part of the program, as a joint activity, is the event II Black Voices in Philosophy, who started on Tuesday (11/04). Throughout the week, there is also a parallel film show and a musical performance.
Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1934, Sérgio Paulo Rouanet became best known for giving his name to the Culture Incentive Law, created in 1991 and nicknamed “Lei Rouanet”, but his work as a diplomat, philosopher, university professor, translator and essayist Brazilian also left an important intellectual legacy. He was the eighth occupant of chair 13 at the Brazilian Academy of Letters (ABL) and passed away less than a year ago, on July 3, 2022.
Professor Luiz Paulo Rouanet, from the Federal University of São João del-Rei (UFSJ), who participated in person at the opening of the Colloquium, believes that the event expands the ideals defended by his father. “Our intention as an Institute — me, my sister (Adriana) and my wife Lucy — is not just to focus on the memorialist aspect, but also to promote activities and study possibilities, supporting research projects and activities related to the fields of culture in general. My father passed away last year, it is still a very recent thing, but we are very satisfied with the event because it is a way of carrying forward his legacy”, said Luiz Paulo Rouanet.
The Institute's official headquarters in Rio de Janeiro is located in an 18th century house, where workshops are organized with children, exhibitions, hosting resident artists (intellectuals and researchers), among other actions. “The idea is not to just focus on the cult of legacy, but to promote actions that stem from that legacy.”
For the rector of Unicamp, Antonio José de Almeida Meirelles, Sérgio Paulo Rouanet's great virtue was to think “constantly about this conflict between the particular and the universal, updating and valuing the democratic spirit, which consists of the ability to build the particular by guaranteeing and preserving universal interests”, he said, during the official opening of the Colloquium.
Challenge
The rector recalled the recent threats to Brazilian democracy, with the polarization and fractionation of society. “We are living in difficult times in our society. Our great challenge is to combine the diversity of interests in the context of valuing what characterizes us as humans. We, as a university, with all the ups and downs, are building a society that can generate hope. But this places responsibilities on each of us that are not small, even if they involve different actions.”
For the organizer of the Colloquium, professor Marcos Lopes (IEL), remembering Sérgio Paulo Rouanet is evoking the republican spirit. “He was one of the most important Brazilian intellectuals of the second half of the 20th century, with intense participation in public life, especially during the period of redemocratization.”
When reading an excerpt from an article by Rouanet (1986, “Reinventing the humanities”, in The reasons for the enlightenment), Professor Lopes highlighted his definition of democracy: “Democracy, the most fragile of human constructions and the most valuable”. At that time, Rouanet called: “The time has come to reinvent the humanities.”
The colloquium set out to think with and against the Enlightenment tradition, said the organizer. “To me, it seems Today, the ability to dialogue with all aspects while maintaining an appreciation for a public reason is fundamental, a reason that is capable of dialoguing with various segments of society, and not an exoteric knowledge closed in a condominium", stated Lopes.
In addition to director Adriana Rouanet, professor Marcos Lopes and dean Antonio Meirelles, the director of the Department of Literary Theory at IEL, Orna Levin, also participated in the opening panel; the director of IEL, Petrilson Alan Pinheiro da Silva; and the Dean of Research, João Marcos Travassos Romano. For professor Orna Levin, talking about the favorable and unfavorable legacies of the Enlightenment “is timely and urgent in our society”. Professor Petrilson Silva recalled that Rouanet was Walter Benjamin's translator. “It is important to talk about how the law was attacked during the last government, because when you attack a law to encourage culture, you attack the means of cultural expression that are fundamental to the existence of any democratic society,” said Silva. The Dean of Research, João Romano, spoke of the importance of the event taking place at Unicamp, “a locus of humanist thought”.
Also participating in the organization of the Colloquium were professor Marcos Lopes, professor Isabella Tardin Cardoso (IEL), professors Luiz Paulo Rouanet (UFSJ) and Fernando de Sá Moreira (Universidade Federal Fluminense – UFF) and directors Adriana Rouanet and Flávio Garcia Rocha (Rouanet Institute).
Rouanet Institute
According to cultural producer Adriana Rouanet, the institute named after her parents, Barbara-Freitag and Sérgio Paulo Rouanet, was raised during the pandemic, with his father still alive. “It is a wonderful opportunity for the Institute to have this visibility with this event. I greatly appreciate the invitation from Unicamp. I hope it can be repeated and that this partnership model can continue in the following years.”
She recalled that her father followed the decline of Brazilian democracy in recent years “and greatly regretted a government that internally deconstructed our democracy”. On the other hand, she said, “his realistic side as a diplomat and intellectual interpreted this democratic decline as a phase that happens in our historical cycle, which he called lights and darkness,” she said.
Together with his father and mother, who is still active intellectually, they talked about the concern of safeguarding a legacy, not just physical — like the couple's library —, “but of safeguarding public and practical concerns”. According to her, the institute understands that culture has a practical component: “culture in its broadest sense, of knowledge and artistic expression, the heritage of a people and a community”. “Culture has a phenomenal power to empower human beings,” she adds. “Something that the Rouanet Law itself protects. It is at the same time an Enlightenment manifesto, a document that protects and safeguards both the particular and the universal. This is the Institute's mission, through actions and partnerships like this colloquium, to rethink a little the social, political and historical contexts in which we live. We must take advantage of what was positive about the Enlightenment, defending democratic causes such as social equality. The Enlightenment legacy need not be the legacy of the 17th century rooted in time and space; there are ideals that we can protect, rethink and recontextualize.” According to Adriana, gender and racial equality are issues that she is particularly committed to, hence the partnership with the event that is taking place at the same time with II Vozes Negras na Filosofia.
Psychoanalysis and Philosophy
The first panel of debates after the opening of the event was on “Psychoanalysis, Reception and Enlightenment”, moderated by psychoanalyst and doctoral student Danielle Barbosa (IEL), composed of professors Marco Heleno Barreto from the Jesuit Faculty of Philosophy and Theology (Faje) and Richard Symanke from the Federal University of Juiz de Fora (UFJF).
For Barreto, the debate on enlightenment is fundamental “within an era that is anti-enlightenment”. Recovering “lost or misinterpreted Enlightenment” ideals and celebrating a Brazilian thinker of the stature of Sérgio Rouanet are important initiatives of the colloquium, because they allow reflection to come closer to society. “We cannot have too many expectations regarding the immediate impact, but the important thing is not to let a valuable flame of reflection and diagnosis of our time go out.”
Professor Symanke highlighted the rare profile of Sérgio Paulo Rouanet within the Brazilian intelligentsia, as an intellectual who actively participates in public life, “not only with government positions, but in the dissemination of knowledge, writing in the press, participating in events in various sectors , such as psychoanalysis, literature, philosophy, arts”. According to the professor, Rouanet excelled at setting an example of how to make intellectual thought more accessible to a wider public, “so that ideas can have a social repercussion”. Another important initiative of the colloquium, said Symanke, is to discuss national philosophical production.
Watch Reporter Unicamp about Legado Rouanet:
