This dissertation argues that racism in Brazil is largely a product of the Eurocentrism that presides over the formation and formulation of Brazil(ianness). The ideological construction of the nation on notions of identity and difference rooted in a Eurocentric definition of modernity has translated into an epistemological division between modern subjects (the Colonial Self: the Portuguese) and subjects of modernity (the Colonised Others: the Indian and the African). That is, between subjects and objects. The objectification of the Others can be found within the realm of the social (the Other as social object: the Slave), the cultural (the Other as cultural object: the Exotic), and the biological (the Other as sexual object: the Erotic). This epistemological division enabled the hierarchisation of differences between the Civilised Self and the Savage Other(s) and the racist (re)invention of Brazil in the 19th century. This dissertation re-examines racism in Brazil by means of the analysis of the three historical events that have come to define the nation (Discovery, Independence and Abolition) as well as the so-called essence of the nation (Hybridity). The analysis reveals that the reinvention of Brazil as a hybrid nation has not eliminated the hierarchy of differences. On the contrary, the celebration of hybridity has served to obscure the largely exploitative character of the processes of cultural hybridity [mestiçagem or transculturation] and biological hybridity [miscegenação or miscegenation] and to mask secular prejudices and discrimination against the Indian and African Others. In Brazil, hybridity still operates within the Eurocentric discourse of Brazilianness that incorporated the Indian and African Others as objects or, at best, dependent subjects in the formation and formulation of Brazil(ianness). The corollary of this is that without unthinking and undoing the Eurocentrism that informs the national imagination there is little that hybridity can do to undermine racism and white hegemony in Brazil. / Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Adelaide, School of History and Politics, 2008
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/264560 |
| Date | January 2008 |
| Creators | Cao, Benito |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Detected Language | English |
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