International symposium "Democracy in Brazil - Violence and politics", June 28-29

Colloquium organized by the Centre d'études en sciences sociales sur les mondes africains, américains et asiatiques - CESSMA (Inalco-Université Paris-Cité-IRD), the Institut des Amériques, the Laboratoire d'études de genre et de sexualité - LEGS (Université Paris 8), the Laboratoire d'études et recherches sur les logiques contemporaines de la philosophie - LLCP (Université Paris 8).univ-paris8.fr/">Laboratoire d'études et de recherches sur les logiques contemporaines de la philosophie - LLCP (Université Paris 8).

With the scientific collaboration of CAPES-COFECUB USP (University of São Paulo, Brazil), UFF (Federal University of Fluminense, Brazil), the Institut Convergences Migrations and the PAUSE program.

The symposium will be broadcast live (streaming) and held indifferently in French and Brazilian Portuguese.

Tuesday June 28 and Wednesday June 29, 2022 - 09:30-20:15 - PLC - Auditorium / and online
Inalco, PLC (65, rue des Grands Moulins - 75013 Paris
Registration required.

From Democracy to Brazil - Violence and Politics

In 2018, following the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, former president Lula having been removed by the courts, Brazil's general elections brought a far-right president to power. With the surprise effect behind us, an analysis of the multiple economic, social and political "crises" that Brazil had been going through since 2014 only partially explains this result (S. Souchaud, 2018). Indeed these crises, when their mechanisms are deconstructed, do not necessarily show flaws but also social aspirations and political options. The neoliberalism promoted by Bolsonaro's government, together with the nullification of social rights and the democratic state, leading neglect as a policy regarding environmental issues, defines a policy of destruction of the country.

The regime is based on a conservative "moral economy", stemming from a military conception of social order, which relies on religious values and powerful evangelical affiliations and disdains the rights of part of the population. Black, indigenous and LGBT populations are seen as non-citizens. The pandemic has largely aggravated a mortifying environment, marked by growing inequality and poverty. This politics of class, race and gender will have made Brazil under Bolsonaro the intersectional laboratory of neoliberalism (Fassin, 2019).

Four years later, on the eve of new general elections, does Brazil have the means to engage in "memory work" on its recent history marked by episodes of populism and authoritarianism? What do recent forms of violence (Cusset, 2018) - social oppression, ecological destruction, but also mass killings orchestrated by police forces (Jacarezinho massacre, May 6, 2021) or lynchings (murder of young Congolese Moïse Kabagambe, January 24, 2022) - say about the profound undermining of democratic institutions?

The aim of this colloquium is to bring together researchers and players from the French and Brazilian intellectual worlds, some of them in exile, and to engage in a reflection on the Brazilian political and moral crisis. Organized by three major French Brazilianist laboratories (LEGS, LLCP, CESSMA- mondes américains), organized by three researchers who work on and with Brazil, supported by the GIS Institut des Amériques, it has the particularity of federating a very large proportion of Brazilian intellectuals, all the French institutes working on contemporary Brazil and offering a visible event at a key moment in Brazilian political life.

The colloquium will be broadcast live (streaming) to enable links with colleagues in Brazil, before depositing the recordings on HAL. A publication is planned.

Organization in France :
Marie-Caroline Saglio-Yatzimirsky, Professor of Anthropology, Inalco, CESSMA, Institut Convergences Migrations
Marcia Tiburi, Professor of Philosophy, artist, writer, Université Paris 8- LLCP, PAUSE program
Eric Fassin, professor of sociology and gender studies, Université Paris 8-LEGS, IUF, Gênero ameça(n)do, CAPES - COFECUB

Scientific partner in Brazil:
Renata Costa Moura (psicologa, UFF, Núcleo Gestor da Cátedra Sérgio Vieira de Mello de UFF)