REVIEWS

CAMPOS, Maria Inês Batista. A construção da identidade nacional nas crônicas da revista do Brasil. São Paulo: Olho d’Água/FAPESP, 2010, 274 p

Ana Lúcia Trevisan

Profesor at Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie – UPM, São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil; [e-mail]

Maria Inês Batista Campos’ work, "A construção da identidade nacional nas crônicas da Revista do Brasil" [The national identity construction in the chronicles of Revista do Brasil], proposes a critical study of the discursive formulation implicit to the chronicles published in Revista do Brasil, from 1922 to 1925. This research comes from the author’s PhD thesis, defended at Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil and, transformed into a book, performs a very engrossing and pleasant reading, which instigates reflections about Brazilian culture representative voices’ effervescence at the beginning of the 20^th century. Besides, it constructs a solid analysis of a hybrid and inexhaustible genre: the chronicle.

Using the works concerning discourse (conceptualized by M. Bakhtin and his Circle) as a directive, the author creates a clearing panorama about Revista do Brasil’s cultural and historical context. By accompanying the editorial course of the magazine, which was directed by Monteiro Lobato from 1918 to 1925, and by Afrânio Peixoto, Paulo Prado and Sérgio Millet in other periods, it is possible to identify the right trajectories and puzzling of writers and intellectual people who used to translate the national identity’s various faces. The study of the twists and turns of time and discursive space announces, in a gradual way, the reflexive extent that will be subsequently developed in the analysis of the 17 chronicles – selected as forming part of Brazilian culture, which has many different voices. It is important to point out that the way we found to present the corpus, as well as the criteria of the accurate selection, refer to the construction of the discourse’s dialogic senses, for, in the context of language, the historical subjects are revealed by quotations, erudition marks, allusion and irony; that is, by words that gather the individual experiences, composing a plural and discursive scene of identity, inside a very instigating historical time.

The political opinions and cultural commitment of the main editors of Revista do Brasil are also discussed concerning the nationalism concept, which is explored as a directive of Revista do Brasil and understood in its significant scope, marked by the sociological, anthropological, linguistic and literary aspects. The nationalist project, personified in the magazine editor’s ideological complexity, gets a deep dimension from the dialogism concept, since the referred and exhausted voices inside the chronicles keep a kind of relation sometimes balanced, other times conflicting with the voice that distinguishes itself as an aegis of the editorial projects incorporated by the magazine. The analysis of the consonant chronicles with the perception of the several Brazilian nationalisms grants ampleness to Maria Inês de Batista’s work. The readers can find the richness of a work which understands and demonstrates the multiplicity of time, space, humor and mistakes of people who are distant from each other chronologically, but become alive on their ideological points, exactly for revealing the subtlety of the discursive analysis about what is between lines.

The collection of the chronicles that compose the study’s corpus and the theoretical pomp which supports this study makes this work a noble reference for those who study Brazilian culture and the relations between History and its different manners of discursive expression. Chronicles, understood as an ambivalent genre, potentially hybrid and having several possible meanings, are presented as a kind of privileged discursive space, propitious for the analytical exercise that owns the idea of chronotope as centripetal force.

The work builds an analysis that starts on the act of reading the vehement and shrewd discourse of the chroniclers, who have revealed in their texts snips of the debate about national identity. In the contemporary interpretation of the past, done by the author, the period of the chronicles gets revitalized, for they resurge in a dialogue with the 21^st century. In this sense, themes such as identity, nationalism, literate culture, universalism, are present and past, are reason and consequence, are origin and archaism. Little by little, the author’s academic discourse also incorporates some of the senses that are most intrinsic to a good art or cultural chronicle. After all, how to enter in a genre and not to get involved by its contours and accents? The readers, who only gain with this insertion in such a hybrid environment, are able to immerse in the different periods updated by analysis and follow the track of a modern Chronos which allows the intersection of the pertinent theoretical lights with the diffuse tones of a time that was inclined to crown dogmas.

In the debates about the identity, accomplished in the chronicles of Revista do Brasil, or the ones concerning culture and nationalism, there is nothing better than studying the discourse in order to disestablish consolidated truths and read differently the implicit dialogues, beyond quotation marks. The work goes on the winding path of the cultural debate from the 20^th century beginning by the tangents, in between lines, reviving voices that are hidden inside the parenthesis and indirect references. The study of the discourse contemplates several images that mark the chronicle’s "time" and also are a kind of entrance to the ambivalence of the past, which appears in the, apparently, unpretentious descriptions of cities, art exhibitions, pieces of news and impressions about foreign countries. The reflection that is widespread in the chronicles is settled in a gap of almost a century; every day is dated, however, when the analysis explores the cultural relation, and the dialogue with the present is fruitful. When perceiving the dynamic of the national and foreign voices which permeates the texts, it is possible to understand that there is a permanent link in the debate about Brazilian identity formation. It is about the dialogue between personal and universal, a burning theme at the beginning of the century and which may be revisited in current debates, although it may be in an updated manner or even silenced.

Inside an interpretation of Brazilian culture, the author uses the foreign look in order to add impressions concerning the national. Thus, when analyzing chronicles written by João Ribeiro, Sérgio Millet and Rodrigo Andrade, she emphasizes the dialogue with French culture. On the other hand, the Brazilian presence is consolidated in Martim Francisco, Gastão Cruls, Câmara Cascudo, Frederico Villar and Orlando Machado. Within this subdivision of the looks in contrast, there is a special place reserved for the specific study of Mario de Andrade’s chronicles. This study is about an annex with six chronicles from the writer. In the chapter where she performs a very well detailed analysis of the corpus, readers experience the direct contact with the texts’ peculiarities and details; by reading these chronicles with the author’s critical look, they can unveil the senses of parodies, imitations, the mixing of genre used by the writers and, this way, come to understand how the national memory is built by words’ echoes. The memory rescued by words deepens the idea that in the act of transiting through the senses of language, the possibility of understanding what is genuinely human is recovered.

The aesthetic panorama of the period, the intellectual profile of the chroniclers, the various nationalist projects, that is, the immersion in the mixing of information that can be learnt by discourse analysis, compose the themes of the well articulated chapters, which make Maria Inês Batista’s critical study a nice opportunity to ingress the order of Brazilian culture and history by means of an involving and lucid text.

Received February 06,2012

Accepted May 09,2012

Translated by Rafaela Quesada – [e-mail]

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  07 Aug 2012
• Date of issue
  June 2012