Álvaro KASSAB

Nthe presentation of In search of the Brazilian people - artists of the revolution, from the CPC to the TV era ( Editora Record), sociologist Marcelo Ridenti compares the book's introductions to household appliance manuals: despite the manufacturer warning that reading is essential, the The user ignores the instructions and the device does not stop working. "It is known that the introduction serves not only for the author to explain what he intended to do, outlining a reading guide, but also to justify what he was unable to accomplish."

The example does not apply to the work of Ridenti, professor at the Institute of Philosophy and Human Sciences (IFCH). In the six chapters that make up In search of the Brazilian people, the professor examines a theme present in more than 400 pages of the book: the importance of the national and political identity of the Brazilian people in the ideas of artists and intellectuals who, in the 1960s and in the first half of the 1970s, they sought popular roots and a break with underdevelopment. The author, however, is not at the mercy of the dated. He advances in the following decades, makes some projections and points out developments, even recognizing that the end of the century is a period that needs to be better investigated in light of recent events.

Ridenti lists historical references to support his work, starting with the constitution of revolutionary romanticism permeated by the utopia "of the integration of the intellectual with the simple man of the people", in vogue from 1960 until the mid-1970s and a guiding thread "to understand the contradictory movement of the diverse political actions of artists and intellectuals, inserted in left-wing parties and movements, rooted mainly in the middle class". There are the CPC, Arena, Oficina, Cinema Novo, the "guerrilla artists", the protest songs.

In this context, the professor describes the trajectory of left-wing parties - especially the PCB and its dissent - and the insertion of their activists in the cultural and artistic upheaval of the time. "They looked in the past for a genuine popular culture, to build a new nation, anti-imperialist, progressive - at the limit, socialist", writes the author, who in addition to searching archives, interviewed more than 30 characters fundamental to the movements of the time, among them Antonio Callado, Ferreira Gullar, Dias Gomes, Capinan, Carlos Nelson Coutinho, José Celso Martinez Corrêa, Moacyr Félix, Nelson Pereira dos Santos and Sérgio Ferro.

Two of the reference artists - in the scene of the period and today -, Chico Buarque and Caetano Veloso, deserved separate chapters. From the first, Ridenti analyzes the novel Benjamim, the starting point of an assessment of the carioca composer's work as a whole between 1960 and 1990. In Ridenti's assessment, the novel "replaces and updates nostalgic lyricism and social criticism, in parallel with the emptying of utopian variant of Chico Buarque's work, expressing the perplexity of left-wing intellectuals at the door of the 20th century".

As for Caetano Veloso, Ridenti comes to the conclusion that tropicalismo had the mark of the political-cultural formation of the 1950s and 1960s and, contrary to what most critics claim, it was far from being a rupture with the models previously established in the fields of art and politics. Ridenti prefers to see it as a "differentiated fruit" of the "general rehearsal of cultural socialization." However, "at the end of the participant cycle, tropicalismo already indicated the developments of the empire of the cultural industry in Brazilian society, which would transform the promise of socialization into massification of culture, even disfiguredly incorporating aspects of the contesting cultural movements of the 60s", he assesses Ridenti.

A contestation that, in the opinion of the author of In search of the Brazilian people, was diluted throughout the 1980s and 1990s due to many factors, including the flight of intellectuals and artists to the cultural industry, globalization and the end of communism. Ridenti also mentions his academic peers, who would choose this career path, ignoring the public sphere and the field of alternatives. But does revolutionary romanticism still have a place today?
Rident responds in the following interview:

Ridenti - Let's say that in the 1950s, 1960s and a good part of the 1970s, a model of intellectual committed to various aspects of Brazilian reality was established, among them the rupture with underdevelopment and the creation of a fairer society, with the affirmation of political-cultural identity of the Brazilian people. This disappeared from the 1980s onwards, at the end of the military dictatorship. Especially because in military times there was a great common enemy to be defeated. Afterwards, the political projects of the former oppositions diversified greatly. But, particularly, the change of direction of the intelligentsia was marked by a process marked by several factors.

JU - What would they be?

Ridenti - The advancement of the cultural industry was one of them. In A Moderna Tradição Brasileira, our colleague Renato Ortiz [professor at Unicamp] shows that a cultural industry that deserves the name - that is, that produces cultural merchandise on a large scale in an advanced system - only fully developed in Brazil from the 1960s onwards. I include the recording industry, publishing, television, the press, etc. This is an important fact. The production of intellectuals and artists from the 1960s onwards became increasingly determined by this market. Another aspect is that, in the same period, in which a conservative modernization of Brazilian society was consolidated, a new system of universities was also developed in Brazil - whether public or private.

JU - To what extent does academia fit into this context?

Ridenti - Even in the postgraduate system, with master's and doctorate degrees, which was widespread during the years of the dictatorship and generated a standard of professionalization. Intellectuals, inside and outside academia, until the 1960s had a voice in the public sphere, in the press, in the arts, on the stage. They participated in a series of debates that did not necessarily have an institutional place. After this period, these intellectuals begin to settle in universities on a large scale. An interesting process then occurs of a certain dissociation of intellectuals from broader collective life. There is an interesting book by Jacoby in which he shows how this process happened in the United States, how the loss of intellectual space in the public sphere occurred. He begins to live almost isolated from society on university campuses.

JU - How so?

Ridenti - The institutionalization of intellectuals and artists would neutralize the freedom that they theoretically enjoy, so that eventually the dream of revolution would coexist with investment in the profession, in which the daily reality of bureaucratization and employment would prevail. The professionalization of intellectual life within the confines of the university campus would lead to privatization or depoliticization, the transfer of intellectual energy from a broader domain to a narrower discipline, in which the pressures of career and publication would intensify the fragmentation of knowledge.

JU - Was it a process prior to the one registered in Brazil?

Ridenti - Yes. Sometimes today you have heated and apparently very critical discussions, but they do not cross the borders of university magazines, of the academic environment. Something that was very different in the 1960s. If you take, for example, the city of São Paulo at that time, there was a geographic space that concentrated what was then the Faculty of Philosophy, on Rua Maria Antonia, next to Mackenzie, the Faculty of Law (São Francisco), the Polytechnic, the Faculty of Economics. They were all very close. And it was still a university not marked by this, let's say, contemporary aspect. They were pioneers of public universities in Brazil, with a clear mission of commitment to breaking with national underdevelopment. And in that same space you had the Teatro de Arena, the Teatro Oficina, the Bar Redondo, the Cine Bijou, the Teatro Municipal. There was a spatial/geographical concentration of intellectuals, university students, artists. And at that time Brazil was a country with few people who achieved higher education. It was effectively a minority that could be at university.

JU - Was the insertion of the intelligentsia much greater at that time?

Ridenti - Undoubtedly. The coexistence between university professors, filmmakers, playwrights, visual artists, architects, students and journalists was very concentrated in geographic space. At the same time there was an interrelationship between the various fields of knowledge. Something that, with the development of society, with specialization and the formation of more specific fields of activity, ended up fraying this unity.

JU - How did this rupture happen?

Ridenti - That project of bringing the intellectual closer to the simple man of the people, which was published, for example, in the Revista Civilização Brasileira, famous in the 1960s, was fading away. It brought together intellectuals and artists from various fields. There was a certain utopia that appeared in cinema, theater, literature, etc. There was a commitment on the part of the intellectual to elevate the mentality of the simple man. Over time, this attempted rapprochement came to be seen critically by some sectors of the intelligentsia, who began to accuse the intellectuals of that time of intending to transform their knowledge - a privilege in an underdeveloped society - into an instrument of power over the people. . They were accused of not allowing the people to express their own voice. For these critics, intellectuals imposed a project of Brazilian revolution, of social transformation that did not actually pass through the very agents that would constitute this people. This type of criticism was very strong, especially in the 1980s.

JU - What was the consequence?

Ridenti - On the one hand, it generated an attempt to advance this process and say: "look, it is not up to the intellectual to say the desires of the people, but it is necessary for the groups and classes that make up these people to express their voice". It is no surprise that the PT emerged in the 1980s, for example. He tried to give expression to his bases, which were formed mainly by new trade unionists, by sectors of the base ecclesiastical community of the Catholic Church, of the social movements that were emerging and by some intellectuals who had been from left-wing groups in that scenario of the end of the dictatorship.

JU - Was this new left different from the one that prevailed until then?

Ridenti - This "left" project advocated a certain rupture with the previous moment, so the role of the intellectual would not be to say what would be good for the people, but to help create democratic conditions for the people or social classes themselves to express themselves.

JU - What's wrong with this proposal?

Ridenti - This tendency had a counterpart, which was the fact that many intellectuals, under this allegation, felt uncommitted to linking their existence to the people's problems and the country's own destinies.

JU - What did this type of stance result in?

Ridenti - The figure of an academic intellectual, a scholar, dissociated from or above national problems begins to emerge. He had a supposed neutrality, a lack of commitment supposedly necessary to do science, which involved distancing himself from major national problems and social struggles. Intellectuals were much more concerned with developing their individual careers. The development process of the cultural industry - newspapers, publishers, record labels, advertising agencies - also generated enormous employment potential for these intellectuals. Many of them also ended up employed in governments that were democratizing. The demand became enormous... This accommodation of the intellectual and the artist is well portrayed in the recent film The Prince, by Ugo Giorgetti.

JU - Do you believe that this type of revolutionary romanticism can still germinate in Brazil today?

Ridenti - For a study of the weakening of political art in the 70s and especially in the 80s and 90s, Jameson's analysis of the problems involved in the production of political art in our days, in which capitalism would practically make any group activities that could support socially a subversive art, in an era of almost complete occupation of cultural space by mercantile logic. There would be a reified atomization, imposed by today's capitalism. Jameson admits, however, as a social foundation for a new political art and an authentic cultural production to be created, the constitution of a new and organic group, through which the collective would pave the way in the reified atomization of social life, based on the struggle of classes. The need to break submission to the iron circle of the market has appeared, for example, especially in theater, but expanding to other arts. From 1999 onwards, we saw the development of the Art against Barbarism movement in Brazil, which has mobilized artists and intellectuals committed to the "social function of art" and to criticism of the "marketing vision that transforms the work of art into a product". cultural" and creates a series of illusions that mask the reality of cultural production in Brazil today". Internationally, we have the example of the Dogma movement in cinema, which produced a political film that was one of the most expressive of the world's dilemmas at the end of the 20th century: the masterpiece Dancing in the Dark, by Danish Lars von Trier.

JU - But, with the political pendulum shifting to the left after the 2002 election, what about the "iron circle of the market"?

Ridenti - In the current Brazilian political scenario, new perspectives can open up with the next government. But the paid participation of artists in the campaign could be a sign of the PT's integration into the logic of showbusiness. I hope that policies more in tune with the alternative spirit of the Porto Alegre World Forum prevail in the government. That is, I think we must find better alternatives for inserting Brazil and its culture into today's world than fighting for a share of the market, which implies passive skepticism, submission to the logic of the market and the new world order (which at this point it's already getting old) of the "Washington consensus". There is no point in reliving the past of the 60s, but in resuming our hopes, investing in new collective projects of social transformation - including in the arts - instead of each person's individual career in the market. I sympathize with the long-standing position of Walter Benjamin, who advises the questioning artist or intellectual to refuse to merely "supply the apparatus of production, without modifying it, as far as possible, in a socialist sense." It remains to be seen whether - and how - this is possible. The next few years in Brazil will be an interesting laboratory to test our capacity for invention.

JU - To what extent does globalization influence the cultural identity of a people?

Ridenti - As is known, the generalization of the market, of the cultural industry, tends to reduce any artistic manifestation to a mere commodity, a process that is enhanced by the so-called "globalization", which also calls into question the national cultural identities of people. The process of cultural internationalization is not necessarily conservative: for example, the excerpt from the Communist Manifesto in which Marx and Engels imagine, for the free society of the future, the end of literatures tied to national narrowness and exclusivism, which would give way to a universal literature. It turns out that today we are very far from this healthy utopia, on the contrary, globalized internationalization implies submission to the quantitative and (low) quality demands of the market, under North American cultural hegemony.

JU - The indicators of the national cultural industry are superlative for a developing country. How do you evaluate this contradiction?

Ridenti - In the 1960s, at least two projects for the development of capitalism in Brazil were being fought. One that was defeated in 1964, which was the project of building mass capitalism, as economist Celso Furtado preached. In other words, using State investments for the country's development and promoting a popular market, with products accessible to the majority of the population, with a relative distribution of wealth. This project was defeated. I don't know if it would be viable or not.

JU - What triumphed?

Ridenti - Another project, which was in the direction of what has been the development of capitalism on an international scale. This project created a gap between a tiny minority of capital owners and the dispossessed majority of the population. But it knew how to develop a powerful and important middle class - perhaps 20% of the Brazilian population, with high consumption power, durable goods, market goods. On the other hand, practically half of the Brazilian population is excluded from any possibility of consumption. But look, 20% of 170 million people is a market of more than 30 million, it is a market more than enough to handle production and certain economic development. Now, 50% remain who are practically excluded from the market, living in subhuman housing, health and education conditions - creating fertile ground for crime, for example.

JU - In the 1960s was this difference much smaller?

Ridenti - These inequalities that divide Brazilian society have always been enormous. It is interesting to study the 1960s because there was a utopia of breaking this gap, which was smaller. This gap is currently not only material, but also existential.

JU - What is the role of the artist and intellectual as they are absorbed by this market that, in a certain way, ends up spreading inequality?

Ridenti - There is a skeptical position, those who think there is no way out. But it's very comfortable to say "since it's not up to the intellectual or the artist to solve these problems, let me settle down and get the best place for my career within this system". This is a cynical position. It is impossible for a society to live in these conditions for so long. I would say that the commitment of university professors, artists, intellectuals in general, and students themselves, to social changes that make it possible to reduce this gap - not only material but also existential - is very important. It is necessary to create alternatives for social solidarity. As I said, we may be able to move in this direction in the coming years, with prospects opening up after the last elections.

JU - Which young artists today preserve the "romanticism" of revealing the identity of Brazilians through art and trying to break with underdevelopment?

Ridenti - Cultural nationalism in the style of the 50s and 60s, of recovering national roots considered authentic, despite being out of fashion, today finds expression in several prominent artists, such as Ariano Suassuna, Antonio Nóbrega, Quinteto Violado, Zé Ramalho, in the works of theorists such as José Ramos Tinhorão, in the theater and popular music activities developed by the CPCs, recreated without much fanfare in the student movement, etc. But the recovery of Brazilianness - in diverse ways, which developed creatively from the 60s onwards, as I highlight in the book - can also be found in the heirs of tropicalism and in almost all artists of the time still active today, in the most diverse areas. The new generations seem to outline innovative responses to old dilemmas, such as mangue-beat, rap, hip-hop and other alternative movements that synthesize, in their own way, external cultural influences and Brazilian popular expression, with a socially engaged bias. In the field of literature, a correlate of these musical movements appears, for example, in the novel City of God, by Paulo Lins, which has now been the basis for a very successful film. But this is a topic that I do not deal with in the book and it seems to me that it requires a different explanatory key than the one I used to think about the artistic and political movements of the 60s and 70s, "revolutionary romanticism".