Revisiting brazilian modernism:

a counter-assessment of the centenary

The Living Commons Collective Magazine, n. 2, June 2023

Throughout a 2-day symposium, the Brazilian modernist project was examined through a critical perspective by considering the canonical character of modernism in its expression in São Paulo and Southeastern Brazil in the country’s literary historiography, the exclusion of other regional expressions, the relationship of modernism with racial discourses and institutional aspects of Brazil and its peoples. How is it possible to think about Brazilian modernity based on productions from other regions outside the hegemony of the Southeast? In what ways has modernism contributed and contributes to the discourses of racism and machismo in Brazil? What links can be found between the discourses of modernism and social structures of power and hegemony in the country? What potentials did modernism open up and was unable to realize, and how could its limitations and possibilities be rescued, thought, and critically practiced?

The symposium, held at UC Irvine in May 2022, brought together artists and academics who engaged with the proposed questions, among many others, through a deep critical engagement with Brazilian literature, popular aesthetic practices, philosophy, established artistic production, and social-political-economic issues. Through its multidisciplinary approach, we hope that these and other lines of inquiry become available for the ongoing project of reviewing and rethinking modes of domination, especially in Brazil, in order to arrive at justice.

Editors: Pedro Daher and Rodrigo Octávio Cardoso