Intellectuals and the Search for National Identity in Twentieth-Century Brazil

Abstract

This book discusses twentieth-century Brazilian political thought, arguing that while Rio de Janeiro intellectuals envisaged the state and the national bourgeoisie as the means to overcome dependency on foreign ideas and culture, São Paulo intellectuals looked to civil society and the establishment of new academic institutions in the search for national identity. Ronald H. Chilcote begins his study by outlining Brazilian intellectuals' attempt to transcend a sense of inferiority emanating from Brazilian colonialism and backwardness. Next, he traces the struggle for national identity in Rio de Janeiro through an account of how intellectuals of varying political persuasions united in search of a political ideology of national development. He then presents an analysis by São Paulo intellectuals on racial discrimination, social inequality, and class differentiation under early capitalism and industrialization. The book concludes with a discussion on how Brazilian intellectuals challenged foreign thinking about development through the state and representative democratic institutions, in contrast to popular and participatory democratic practices.

The Defense-Development Nexus: Brazilian Nuclear Policy under the Workers’ Party Administrations

“…Though the inception of systemic research in the nuclear field dates back to the 1930's in Brazil, during the Juscelino Kubitschek administration (1956Kubitschek administration ( -1960, the investment in nuclear power was especially encouraged. In a message to the Congress in the first year of his administration, Kubitschek said that "the era of atomic power plants, for whose use the country should prepare 6 For the relation between building "national identity" and development in Brazil, see Chilcote (2014). 7 As Bielschowsky (2000) discusses at length, there has never been a consensus regarding the kind of intervention that the state should be in charge of -a debate that is far from being unique to Brazil, for sure.…”

Bolsonaro’s Subservience to Trump, 2019 and 2020: A Demanding Agenda and Limited Reciprocity

“…In the multiple interpretations of Brazilian foreign policy, there are contrasting analyses of its position with regard to the United States in the course of history. Autonomy (Bandeira, 1973;Hirst, 2008;Chilcote, 2014;Ricupero, 2017) was significantly greater in the Goulart and Lula da Silva administrations (Amorim, 2015;Soares de Lima, 2018) and even in the military government of Geisel, albeit for different reasons (Spektor, 2009), while in the administrations of Dutra (Malan et al, 1980), Castello Branco (Loureiro, 2019), and Collor de Mello (Veiga, 1994) there was a closer alignment with the United States. This alignment was hardly unconditional.…”

The integral field spectrograph for the Gemini planet imager

“…The estimated H-band Strehl ratio of early images was 89% and a 5-sigma contrast of 10 -6 was achieved at a separation of 0.75 arcseconds. A complete H-Band spectrum is also present in these data and is being published separately by Jeffrey Chilcote [21] .…”

“…The panel on the right is the reduced image of the field around the star showing the companion planet Beta-Pictoris b located 0.434±0.006 arcseconds from the host star. A complete H-Band spectrum is also present in these data and is being published separately by Jeffrey Chilcote[21] .…”