The Bolsonarist Bloc: ethnographic notes on political performances and a parliamentary network in Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies

Abstract The article presents the first ethnographic notes from a research project on the performances of a group of parliamentarians in the Chamber of Deputies in the 2019-2023 legislature. As a starting point, I highlight a group of elected deputies associated with the universe of Bolsonarism. The latter is approached as a complex set of elements containing different ideas and whose main political reference is the figure of Jair Bolsonaro, though it also encompasses diverse elements from the so-called Brazilian “new right” and conservatism. I present two episodes to help situate this empirical universe. In the first, I assemble clues and traces from a complaint submitted to the Parliamentary Ethics and Decorum Council in order to analyse the formation of the Bolsonarist Bloc. The second episode centres on the debate surrounding a law bill on the Commission on Human Rights and Minorities. Setting out from these episodes, I analyse differences between the performances of Bolsonarist deputies and the parliamentary behaviour prevailing in the National Congress. I conclude the article by pointing to some analytical paths for the future development of this investigation.


Introduction
The victory of Jair Messias Bolsonaro in the 2018 elections represented more than his own rise to the highest office in Brazil's federal republic.It also demonstrated the regional diffusion and consolidation of a far right electorate.Swept along by the phenomenon of Bolsonarism -which has become a topic of some intrigue for Brazil's social sciences -representatives of this political upsurge were elected to the federal houses and state legislatures across the country.In the Chamber of Deputies alone, the Social Liberal Party (PSL),1 on whose ticket Bolsonaro ran as a presidential candidate in 2018, went from holding one seat in the preceding term to 52 seats in the ballot for the 56 th legislature.
In this groundswell, rather than presenting a centralized set of programs for government, the 'Bolsonarist wave' manifested an anti-party and anti-system political tendency (Solano, 2019).Voicing a political desire to annihilate the left, confront progressivists and reject conventional democratic politics, it won over an electorate that secured mandates for names until then unknown in the national political setting and received high numbers of votes in 2018, including the election of Eduardo Bolsonaro with 1.8 million votes, consolidating Bolsonarism as a powerful electoral force.In 2022, this potential was reaffirmed with the Liberal Party, now the new party ticket of Jair Messias Bolsonaro, which won the largest number of seats in the Chamber of Deputies and the Federal Senate. 2  Since 2018, a series of studies of the Bolsonarism phenomenon in Brazilian politics has emerged as part of an urgent and wide-ranging attempt to understand the multiple facets of this populist far-right movement, its specificities and vicissitudes. 3As a complex and fluid phenomenon, Bolsonarism can be understood as "a sociotechnical dynamic of continuous and performative mobilization" (Cesarino, 2022), linked to a set of emergent agendas and featuring a diverse array of actors, ranging from politicians to digital profiles, artists, YouTube channels, TV channels, activists, military personnel, lawyers, journalists and/or digital influencers.
Situated within this universe with its huge diversity of manifestations and actors, I am developing a doctoral research project focused on the presence of Bolsonarism in the Chamber of Deputies, more specifically a group of 34 federal deputies elected in 2018 who form what has become known as the Bolsonarist Bloc (Bancada Bolsonarista).At its broadest level, the research investigates how this grouping acts in parliament and interacts with the institution and its set of rules.A set of rules that, given the dynamic of the legislative chamber itself, is simultaneously consolidated and constantly placed in tension.The present text is the first publication deriving from this research.
In this article I present the first notes from an ethnography of performance of this set of lawmakers in the Chamber of Deputies in the 2019-2023 legislature.As a starting point, I foreground the group of elected deputies who operate and are associated with the universe of Bolsonarism.Participant observation began in exploratory fashion at the start of the 56 th legislature with in-person monitoring of meetings, sessions and events at the National Congress.After delineating the group of parliamentarians who would feature centrally in the research, the Bolsonarist Bloc, the ethnography intensified and began to consider the agendas and spaces that mobilized the group's activities.Commission meetings, public events and plenary sessions assumed a key place in the research as settings for the political performances and clashes.Although the observation is more extensive, here I have opted to analyse two social situations (Gluckman, 1987) where I deploy everything I learnt in the field in order to interpret these events.The specific period during which the two episodes occurred was prior to the interruption of my in-person research following the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.After this time, the Chamber of Deputies website and the transmission of its meetings and sessions on YouTube, previously auxiliary resources to review and reinforce what I had observed in person, acquired a much more significant role in the construction of my data.
The two situations and their controversies are used to situate the empirical universe of my analysis.In The attempt to understand this political grouping is later taken up in a discussion of the empirical and analytic challenges presented by the study of thematic blocs for investigations in diverse parliaments.
In the second part of the article, I explore the episode from the Commission on Human Rights and Minorities.As well as presenting the performance of different deputies, I include an analysis of social network posts and publications, chosen because they echoed the controversy or were mentioned by subjects during the event in question, thus making them relevant to reconstructing its wider setting.
Bolsonarism makes its presence felt in diverse spaces and utilizes different strategies to sustain itself and keep its base engaged, amplifying its influence on Brazilian politics in the process.The Chamber of Deputies was an important space of visibility in Jair Bolsonaro's 27-year career as a parliamentarian: comprehending the action of this political phenomenon in the institutional spaces of doing politics is thus one of the interests guiding this investigative enterprise.

THE CONTROVERSIES: on the formation of the parliamentary collective
We -deputies of the PSL, Laterça, Colonel Chrisóstomo, Jordy, Aline, Silva -belong to the outraged who until yesterday had no space here.Until yesterday, it was Pastor Marco Feliciano, Jair Bolsonaro, one or two from the Evangelical Bloc.Now you're all going have to put up with us!There's no use chanting slogans and saying that you present women because we've broken your hegemony.And here nobody bends over for the politically correct, no way.We're going to continue speaking, fine by you? (Chamber of Deputies, 2020)  Also according to the complaint, as part of the same series of reprisals, Deputy Eduardo Bolsonaro had incited a "virtual lynching" of the congresswoman, the most striking symbol of this attack being the publication of a collage with Joyce Hasselmann's face emblazoned on an obviously fake three reais banknote (a non-existent denomination).The document relates the construction of a "defamatory and libellous" campaign and the orchestration of an "odious chain reaction" against the "objective and subjective honour" of the congresswoman.
The complaint concluded with the formal request to launch a disciplinary procedure that would see Eduardo Bolsonaro disqualified from office.
The honour in question centres around two aspects: first, the honour of the person, on which the defence of Deputy Joice Hasselmann is based; second, the honour of the collective, where we need to consider that "dishonourable contact is not limited to the individual who committed it but compromises the entire collective to which this individual belongs," a political process being capable here of elucidating the "boundaries and conditions of political belonging" (Teixeira, 1998: 44) updated over time.Hence, the discussion of any complaint examined by the Ethics and Parliamentary Decorum Council also refers to an idea, here under dispute, about the type of conduct that parliamentarians should ideally manifest.
As a result of this complaint, Deputy Eduardo Bolsonaro, in just his second mandate, became the parliamentarian with the highest number of complaints referred to the Ethics Council, surpassing even his father, the former deputy and then current President of the Republic, Jair Bolsonaro.
It was not only Deputy Eduardo Bolsonaro who was subject to a complaint launched by his own party.
Carla Zambelli, Carlos Jordy, Filipe Barros, Daniel Silveira, Alê Silva and Bibo Nunes were also subject to complaints submitted on 11 November 2019, in the same context of internal tensions within the PSL and related to the name of the President, Jair Bolsonaro, elected by the Social Liberal Party but who spent a period of 24 months without any party affiliation.5Jair Bolsonaro's exit from the PSL was followed by the announcement of the plan to create the Alliance for Brazil (Aliança Pelo Brasil), a new party that was projected around the name of the head of the executive and sought to be eligible to compete in the 2020 municipal elections.On 7 December 2019, 26 federal deputies from the PSL6 filed a request for disaffiliation from the party, alleging internal political persecution.However, the requirement to obtain 500,000 signatures was an obstacle to the creation of the new party.
Controversies like these, involving lawmakers affiliated to the PSL, provide important clues for understanding the emergence and formation of a network of deputies, an action set, that I provisionally call the 'Bolsonarist Bloc.' Concerning the set of complaints made against this group of deputies, it is worth emphasizing that the overwhelming majority of the facts related in the documents refer to actions in the virtual domain, involving the profiles of the deputies, propagated on social networks and via instant messaging platforms like WhatsApp and Telegram.The complaint against Deputy Daniel Silveira is the exception: he was accused of recording a meeting of the PSL leadership without the consent of those present and then releasing it to the press. 7he Social Liberal Party was the standout success of the 2018 elections when it elected 52 deputies.The party obtained the largest growth in the Chamber of Deputies compared to the preceding 2015-2019 legislature, when it elected just one parliamentarian.Though the party with the second highest number of lawmakers in the Chamber of Deputies, the PSL is fragmented by internal tensions, the most visible related to Bolsonaro himself.According to declarations by party cohorts in posts shared on their social networks and in YouTube live streams, there exist two main poles in the split: the first group was led by Eduardo Bolsonaro; the second was concentrated around the figure of the party president, Deputy Luciano Bivar (PSL/PE).While in a multiparty setting with 24 separate parties represented in the Chamber of Deputies, the party structure already experienced limitations and difficulties in organizing legislative work, especially in relation to voting procedures (Araújo & Silva, 2016), the bloc formed by the Social Liberal Party,8 already in the first year of the legislature, confronted a major split that affected its internal cohesion and generated problems in terms of party loyalty.This fragmentation increased the visibility of what would become the collective at the centre of this article: the Bolsonarist Bloc.
The Portuguese word bancada -translated here as bloc -is a polysemic term denominating diverse types of groupings, whether in discussions involving parliaments among political analysts from journalism or academia, or in its use as a native category.The term bloc (bancada) can refer to: (i) groupings officially classified in the Chamber's internal regulations: parties, coalitions, government, opposition, majority and minority; (ii) the set of deputies elected by a particular federal state or the federal district; and (iii) groups of parliamentarians who mobilize around similar agendas.The Bolsonarist Bloc is an example of this latter type, an informal bloc (DIAP, 2018) or a cross-party thematic bloc9 (Araújo & Silva, 2016).
At the beginning of this legislature, the denomination linked to the name of Jair Bolsonaro was present in content published by the press and in parliamentary speeches, as the category classifying the set of deputies affiliated to the PSL.Over the course of the year, the term 'Bolsonarist' became increasingly centred on a specific group, spotlighted following the split in the party, and whose name was linked to the president of the republic.This change was a response to a series of crises and clashes, which influenced the behaviour of parliamentarians and changed how they were classified.This series of controversies would make the formation of this collective readily visible.
Contrary to a strategy that aims to identity convergences, consensus and similarities in order to understand an association, here I focus my attention on the contradictions and disputed elements to comprehend the formation of this collective.The strategy becomes one of seeking out the movements and traces left in the formation of this grouping to understand its existence and how it operates.Every crisis, dispute over meaning, manifestation, dilemma, innovation, document produced, YouTube video or meme shared on social networks becomes a potential component or mechanism in the identification and fabrication of the group.A trace to be followed: Group formations leave many more traces in their wake than already established connections which, by definition, might remain mute and invisible.(…) … every time a new grouping is alluded to the fabrication mechanism necessary to keep it alive will be made visible and thus traceable (Latour, 2012: 31).
Hence, the clues and traces left by the formation of this group can be sought in events, in the discourses of the subjects, and in the tangible and tangible productions over the period of the legislature.I use the term 'Bolsonarist' provisionally but from the very beginning of the legislature it was possible to observe two things.
First, a group of deputies, mostly affiliated to the PSL, engaged in their parliamentary performance in a joint and coordinated fashion, forming a block in constant defence of the Bolsonaro government and around a common agenda composed by a set of issues linked to Bolsonarism:10 advocating a relaxation of firearm controls, anticommunism, punitive sentencing, combatting "gender ideology," defence of the "traditional Brazilian family," culture wars, anti-feminism, anti-PT (the Workers' Party) and an anti-system emulation, among other issues fronted by Jair Bolsonaro.Second, this terminology also began to be employed by other politicians as an accusatory category and also by the media, including application of the label 'Bolsonarist' to a broader set of parliamentarians extending beyond the Chamber of Deputies. 11  As well as the group of deputies who requested disaffiliation from the PSL, this bloc also includes some members of other political parties.The construction of this list of members has involved the observation of the performances and associations of these parliamentarians on commissions, in the plenary session and on the Twitter social network by accompanying their profiles.
Among these 34 deputies, just Eduardo Bolsonaro and Police Chief Eder Mauro had held a mandate previously in the Chamber of Deputies, both elected to the 2015-2019 legislature.A total of 23 of this group were elected to a public post for the first time in 2018.Earlier, still under the influence of the institutional rupture generated by the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff, three were elected to municipal legislatures in 2016: Carlos Jordy (Niterói/RJ), Filipe Barros (Londrina/PR) and Otoni de Paula (Rio de Janeiro/RJ).These three already stood out by their adoption of a set of issues championed by a more radical sector of the right.In their performances, they had also already adopted a more belligerent approach, very similar to what they would act out as a collective in the National Congress.
As well as a common set of issues, this group shares a confrontational performance based on a behavioural repertoire that, as hypothesized in this investigation, is being produced and consolidated in the current 2019-2023 legislature.Initially, the performance in the plenary session, on the commission and on social networks is what most calls attention as the element common to this group.Accompanying the National Congress in the current legislature, it was possible to note which agendas and kinds of events allow the group's movement to be identified and the paths along which they usually leave their traces.
While in his 27 years as a federal deputy Jair Bolsonaro was seen as an isolated figure, an outsider with no clearly defined links to any group or bloc, this group, for its part, very much shares an agenda, a style of doing politics, and is consolidating both a discourse and a collective performance.But although dynamic, this repertoire lacks any kind of coherence between its practitioners for them to be readily identifiable as a group.
As emphasized earlier, this constant formation and transformation is part of the nature of groupings.The controverses that might otherwise hinder the identification of the group, contrary to what might be imagined, help shed light on the characteristics of the collective under study and its associations.

THE BATTLEFIELD: the parliamentary performance
20 August 2019.After mobilizing a network of acquaintances, I obtained the contact of an employee from the Chamber of Deputies who, two years earlier, had completed her doctoral thesis on the legislative production of groups of neo-conservative deputies.She greeted me in her office and explained the current configuration of the Commission for Human Rights and Minorities (CDHM), which, she suggested, was an ideal venue to observe the activities of conservative groups in the Brazilian parliament.Unlike previous legislatures, the left-wing parties have currently lost majority control on the commission and although the Workers' Party (PT) still chairs the board, they no longer enjoy any advantage in the composition of the plenary.Due to her official position in the Chamber of Deputies, she apologized and advised me right away that she would be unable to mediate in any capacity.She could pass me some contacts, however.At this first meeting, I was told that the CDHM was being targeted by groups of conservative deputies and that their activities on the commission were marked by this latent feeling of retaliation.
The tension on the commission precedes the 56 th legislature.One emblematic example took place in 2013 when the Evangelical pastor Marco Feliciano found himself at the centre of an episode widely reported in the media when he was elected president of the CDHM, nominated, at the time, by the Social Christian Party (PSC). 12  His election triggered a response from various groups campaigning for human rights, who staged a series of protests, hindering the start of the commission's work.Before this occurrence, the religious parliamentarians mainly acted in coordination behind the scenes (Antunes Filho, Mosca Pinezi & Jard da Silva, 2019; Barros, Also on 20 August, while accessing the profiles of the Bolsonarist parliamentarians that I organized on Twitter, I saw a post being shared about the publication of a video with a red background and the announcement: Using images transmitted by TV Câmara, 13 the video shows the deputy Otoni de Paula (PSC/RJ) on the pulpit of the plenary session of the Chamber of Deputies making an explosive speech and accompanied by a dramatic sound track worthy of a dubbed action movie trailer. 14The video carries the signature watermark of the politician's Twitter account.A decontextualized speech by the deputy Orlando Silva (PCdoB 15 /SP), author of the law bill for the Twenty-First Century Family Statute, in which he asserts that "incest is a centuries-old taboo," is the starting point for the narrative construction and a hook for the discourse of Deputy Otoni de Paula in which he rails against the left and contends that the proposed bill is a risk to the family as an institution.
The deputy Pastor Sargento Isidório (Avante/BA) emerges and stands behind Otoni de Paula with a copy of the Holy Bible held to his chest.The speech by the Rio deputy took place in the Ulysses Guimarães Plenary a few hours before publication of the video at 17:40: Madam President, Honourable Deputies, I wish to call your attention to the greatest aberration that perhaps this Chamber has ever witnessed.Deputy Soraya, chair of this Commission, you are a mother.A mother! Honourable deputies from the left, the right, the centre, I believe one thing unites us here: the family.Because all of us have a family.Deputy Orlando Silva's bill is the greatest aberration this Nation has ever seen.And this isn't a religious argument, it's the argument of one parent to the other parents present in this plenary.Article 2 of the Twenty-First Family Statute states: "All forms of union between two or more persons are recognized as families…" Deputy Orlando Silva wants to legalize group sex [suruba]!He wants to legalize group sex! Anyone who wants group sex can go ahead, but don't transform that into a family!And there's more.This iniquitous bill states: "…which for this purpose is constituted by and based on love, socioaffectivity, irrespective" -note how absurd this is!-"of 13 A Brazilian public TV network that broadcasts activities from the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies.
15 Communist Party of Brazil, Partido Comunista do Brasil.consanguinity, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, creed or race" -and pay attention to this bit!-"including their children or persons who considered to be such."So in other words, if this bill is passed, a father will be able to marry his daughter, a son will be able to marry his mother.In the name of love.Deputy Orlando Silva, you are a father to a daughter.I wish to appeal to your good sense because I do not believe you have your own personal interests in this wretched bill that you've set before us (Chamber of Deputies, 2019a).
On the same day, in light of the repercussions of the attack on the law bill, a "note of clarification" was published on the website of the CDHM, signed by the president of the commission, Helder Salomão (PT/ES).
This would be interpreted by the set of conservative deputies as a retreat by the left.A conservative victory.To the right of the table where the commission's work is organized are concentrated the deputies from the conservative end of the spectrum.In the middle and to the left, the other deputies mix.At the start of the proceedings, Filipe Barros (PSL/PR) calls for a point of order, which, as he certifies, "precedes the reading of the minutes," as stated in the Regimento da Casa. 20The deputy from Londrina, Paraná state, accuses the commission president Helder Salomão of failing to respect the agreements reached on the commission.According to his accusation, a pact exists concerning those bills that have failed to obtain a consensus among the commission's participants prior to the meeting: these should be officially withdrawn from the agenda with the aim of ensuring that voting on the set of law bills and motions occurs as smoothly and swiftly as possible.Barros accuses Salomão of failing to abide by this agreement.Sometimes, he claims, the president would re-present bills on which no consensus exists as a strategy for them to be passed with less resistance -a ruse intended to catch opponents of the bill by surprise.Having made his accusation, Filipe Barros tells the commission that the PSL 18 The election of the Executive Board and the presidencies of the commissions and the organization of their work have been carefully analysed in the doctoral thesis by Luiz Eduardo Abreu, "The Labyrinths of the Minotaur" (see Abreu, 1999).
20 The use of the regulations as a strategic political instrument in the National Congress is an essential part of a parliamentarian's apprenticeship: "as well as establishing rules for the use of words, their institutional effects and a set of activities where words can be used in accordance with these rules, it also creates (and use of this term is not fortuitous) 'institutional quantities' such as budget allocations and posts" (Abreu, 1999).It also creates institutional qualities with a lawmaker's intervention the result of combining their political action with the possibilities afforded by the rules established in the internal regulations.
will block proceedings and highlights the issue of the day's business, the bill for the Twenty-First Century Family Statute, the "absurd bill of Deputy Orlando Silva, which legalizes incest and other aberrations."The Londrina deputy makes clear her group's disposition for conflict: "We wish to be respected and heard on this commission."The 'we' here is an allusion to the deputies from the right-wing and conservative end of the spectrum, who, according to Barros, are not heard and are treated differently in the meeting, while the leftwing parliamentarians are favoured by the president and by the commission's proceedings.At this moment, a left-right polarization is articulated.The final accusation in the Londrina deputy's speech concerns the note issued the previous day.In the parliamentarian's view, the commission's president had taken sides in the clash over the law bill, which was inappropriate for the person responsible for organizing its work in a technical and impartial form.
The floor is handed over to the deputy Police Chief Eder Mauro (then affiliated to the PSD 21 /PA, today the PL/PA).He declares in a raised voice: "I fully agree in kind (gender) …and I mean gender in another sense 22 (…) everything here on this commission is about gender, it even worries me."The deputy Pastor Feliciano (PL/SP) contributes to the polemic and adds, speaking ironically in his deep gospel singer voice, "foodstuff " (gênero alimentício).Eder Mauro says that he is surprised about the withdrawal of Law Bill 3369/2015, introduced by the deputy from the PCdoB, "who isn't even present here," and who, according to the Pará politician, still in a raised voice, "is instituting the Orgy Statute of the Twenty-First Century Families, because this is an aberration brought before the Chamber of Deputies."The president Helder Salomão interrupts, asking for moderation in the use of language and suggests removing from the word suruba from the shorthand notes so as to "avoid lowering the level of the debate."Police Chief Eder Mauro, holding a printed copy of the bill, says mockingly: "What is the lower level is there than this bill, Mr President?The word I used, I think it was too polite even." He receives applause and maintains his strong and aggressive tone of voice.
It is unacceptable that a citizen such as this, if one can call this Orlando a citizen, wants the family… wants a father to be able to marry his daughter, the mother to marry her son, the sister to marry the dog… for the love of God, my brother.The entire Brazilian people need to know about this.And if that were not enough, now he has failed to turn up, certainly ashamed of what he did, he ordered the bill removed from discussion… ashamed (…) My people, we are here.Where are the left-wingers?Come here, let's vote on the bill!Put forward the bill, I want to see how this situation is going to play out.Those of you who like to raise the green, yellow, multicolour flag, come here and discuss the bill and we'll see who is going to triumph here, we'll see whether the people aren't going to win this issue of recognizing the family as a family and not as the absurdity he is suggesting here.(Deputy Eder Mauro at the meeting of the CDHM, 19 August 2019, my emphasis) Deputy Lincoln Portela (then belonging to the Republicans/MG, now the PL) takes the floor and argues that the word suruba can be used, recalling its inclusion in the Portuguese dictionary.Turning to his colleagues on the right, he advises them: "You can say suruba, it's not a swear word."The commission president Helder again asks for removal of the word suruba from the shorthand notes.

TN:
The idiomatic expression used here in Portuguese is quero concordar em gênero, número e grau, which literally translates as "I wish to agree in gender, number and degree," implying full agreement.The term gênero translates according to context as gender, genus, genre, kind or (food) product/commodity, hence the play on words in this reported exchange.
Lincoln Portela then takes the floor.From the Evangelical Bloc, a TV presenter, radio broadcaster and president of the Solidary Baptist Church.He calls himself a conservative.

First, I wish to praise the patience and kindness of the president (of the commission)… and praise the Orlando
Silva's amenable demeanour.Even though I disagree with him completely and he knows so, he has a very amenable demeanour and is a great comrade… he is a colleague of mine, a comrade here in this Chamber, who I respect and with whom, in my local church, we once watched a match played by the Brazilian volley team and with him in my office, in my pastoral ministry (…) (Deputy Lincoln Portela in the meeting of the CDHM on 19 August 2019, my emphasis).
The Minas Gerais deputy goes on to criticize the hermeneutics of the bill and makes some observations about its legislative technique.The parliamentarian's speech is serene in tone.Next up, Deputy Sóstenes Cavalcante criticizes the bill harshly and claims that the text allows room for paedophilia, incest and marriage between three or more people.Filipe Barros takes the floor again.He announces that they will maintain their obstruction and that they will be able to extend it for up to six months: We're going to obstruct the work of this commission until you finally respect people who think differently to yourself.(…) we have a majority on this commission and that's why we are telling you, Deputy Helder Salomão, that from today we want to be respected (Deputy Sóstenes Cavalcante in the meeting of the CDHM on 19 August 2019).
None of the bills or motions scheduled for the meeting were discussed; the contributions revolved solely around the bill removed from the agenda the day before, Law Bill 3369/2015, and criticisms relating to the organization of the commission's work and the left.The speeches continued until the Items on the Agenda were reached, when the deputies began to leave the meeting and head to the Ulysses Guimarães Plenary to register their attendance and take part in roll call voting.The presidency of the commission extended the meeting a little to hear the final parliamentarians listed to speak, Kátia Sastre (then PSL/SP, now PL/SP) and Chris Tonietto (then PSL/RJ, now PL/RJ).Neither woman is a member of the commission but they made use of their parliamentary right to speak and participate in the work of the commissions.Both made confrontational and aggressive speeches with the commission room already empty.
The São Paulo deputy is a serving military police officer and subsequently became known for responding to an armed assault at her daughter's school on her day off work, during a parent-teacher meeting, when she killed the assailant.A video of this killing was used at the start of her campaign to become a federal deputy, in 2018, until the Regional Electoral Court of São Paulo demanded its removal after determining that the electoral propaganda encouraged shooting people. 25On the commission, the parliamentarian attacks the 'disgusting'  Courteous treatment is a hallmark still mostly present in relations between parliamentarians.This dynamic is described in the inaugural ethnography dedicated to Brazil's National Congress, Os Caminhos da Casa, by Maria Cecília Costa, where the author presents the idea that "the politician's ability in legislative technique is directly linked to their ability to establish personal relations" (my emphasis) with their peers: this, she wrote, was an important element of the parliamentary art (1980).Although disputes in parliament are severely unequal and the clashes and debates frequently contain doses of animosity and aggression, most parliamentarians seek to establish a courteous familiarity.Indeed, it is common for their declarations to affirm friendship and fraternity among themselves.Although Pastor Marco Feliciano is one of the deputies who has most often campaigned against the left in diverse ways and hoisted the conservative flag in discourses in the plenary over the two previous legislatures, second only to then deputy Jair Bolsonaro (Quadros & Madeira, 2018), the lawmaker's approach differs from the behaviour repeatedly pursued by the Bolsonarist deputies: the latter maintain a more latent and constant tension in the interactions observed during their parliamentary performances on commissions in the National Congress.Returning to the analysis of the meeting, Feliciano's pattern of behaviour also applies to the deputies Lincoln Portela and Sóstenes Cavalcante, both from the Evangelical Bloc, known as fervent defenders of conservative agendas with a party history linked to the electoral base that ensured the coalition presidentialism after the 1988 Constituent Assembly (Abranches, 1988).By contrast, the behaviour of the deputies from the Bolsonarist group exhibits a markedly disruptive performativity (Rocha 2018, Warner 2002).This is nonetheless somewhat adapted and dampened by the relational pattern of the Chamber of Deputies, which, in addition to the hallmark of courtesy, contains many elements of formalism, some set out in its regulations. 27t is important to think of the National Congress as a privileged space for the propagation of messages and images.Although, in the meeting analysed here, no advance had been made in the agenda and no voting had taken place on any bill or motion, the clash that afternoon had a series of repercussions: parliamentarians engaged in doing politics, produced content, connected with their public and maintained latent controversies that feed into their agendas.Although considerable prominence is given to parliament as a space for voting on and approving laws, the everyday world of the elected women and men is mostly taken up with many diverse engagements, whether public hearings, formal sessions or deliberative meetings, which leave traces and form part of the stages on which ideas are propagated and parliamentary performances are reiterated.
Luiz Eduardo Abreu stresses that these activities, especially those of the commissions, acquire importance in the Legislature's routine by connecting with broader conflicts and alliances, whose interested and implicated parties are not limited "to the elected politicians, bureaucrats and/or technical staff, but involve diverse sectors of civil society, public opinion, other countries, foreign investors and so on" (Abreu, 1999).Thinking about actions in the National Congress invites us to think about the wide scope of the events that mark the agenda of parliamentarians, including apparently less productive moments that are full of doing politics, even when deliberative sessions do not conclude with voting or with any progress being made in the legislative business at hand.

POSSIBLE PATHS
Isabela Kalil in "Who are Jair Bolsonaro's voters and what do they believe in?" (2018)28 points out that the electorate that prevailed in 2018 is wide and diverse, not limited to a single profile or corresponding solely to the set of issues backed by the PSL's candidate for the presidency.This observation helps us in a reading of the Bolsonarist Bloc, which also interacts with a broad and segmented public.These deputies are related to a wider range of elements than those represented by the now former president.Indeed, there are moments when, to maintain consistency vis-à-vis Bolsonarism, it may be necessary to ignore a presidential guideline on voting in the National Congress.In the name of governability, the Bolsonaro government was forced to negotiate with other political actors, principally members of the (in)famous Centrão or 'Big Centre.'29These situations would seem to work against the anti-system image30 promoted during the election campaign and that remains an important element for some of the public/supporters of Bolsonarism.
On 21 July 2020, a second round of voting approved Constitutional Amendment Proposal (PEC) 15/2020, 31which introduced alterations to the Basic Education Development Fund (FUNDEB). 32The leader of the government in the Chamber of Deputies at the time, Deputy Major Vitor Hugo (then PSL/GO, now PL/GO), and the Secretary of Government, General Ramos, campaigned against approval of the proposal throughout its passage through National Congress.Realizing they were set for defeat, however, they changed tack in an attempt to associate themselves to the victorious side.There were 499 votes in favour.The next day, the newspapers reported that the only votes against were from some Bolsonarist parliamentarians.
On the evening of 21 July, the deputies who, at that moment, called themselves "PSL / Alliance for Brazil" -namely, Bia Kicis (then PSL/DF, now PL/DF), Chris Tonietto (then PSL/RJ, now PL/RJ), Luiz Phillippe de Orleans e Bragança (then PSL/SP, now PL/SP) and Márcio Labre (then PSL/RJ, now PL/RJ) -held a live stream on YouTube called "WHY DID WE VOTE AGAINST THE FUNDEB PEC?" The crux of their argument was that voting in favour of the proposal would mean favouring a stronger State.As a group that advocates less state presence in people's lives, these parliamentarians identify the public power as a real threat to the institution of the 'family' and 'freedom.'In terms of the educational agenda, the risks identified by this group are part of a broader set of concerns relating to the alleged indoctrination of children in schools.This theme lies at the core of the intentions of conservative lawmakers when it comes to projects like the 'Party-Free School' (Escola sem Partido) and regulations on home-schooling.Accompanying the range of arguments advanced by the set of parliamentarians on their social networks, they all reinforce the idea that ultimately the group's position was to remain consistent with the set of ideas defended by Bolsonarism, which included the assertion that Jair Bolsonaro had voted against the PEC when he was a federal deputy.
Although Jair Bolsonaro kept his electoral base engaged and received more than 58 million votes in the second round of the 2022 presidential elections, the inconsistencies between the discourses and the actions demanded by the paths of governability ended up generating negative reactions from sectors of the Bolsonarist voter bases.Diverse episodes left them feeling obliged them to take a stance in response to the inconsistency between the government's stated positions, actions and voting.One example of this sort of tension occurred with Deputy Carla Zambelli (PL/SP), who was questioned about using resources from the Electoral Fund, which she had pronounced against during the first years of the legislature.In the corridors of the Chamber of Deputies, it is common to hear the idea that a politician replying publicly to a criticism is a sign that he or she felt the blow.
Just as -based on the segmentation of Jair Bolsonaro's voters presented in Isabela Kalil's work (2018) -we can infer that Bolsonarism is a broader, more segmented and more complex political force than the set of issues defended by Jair Bolsonaro himself, so we can surmise that the Bolsonarist Bloc is linked to a symbolic universe with some autonomy from the existence of Bolsonaro and his government.Hence, deputies can create distinct connections with the different sectors of the large Bolsonarist voter base, enabling one parliamentarian to act focus more on radical groups of ruralists, while others maintain a stronger connection with pro-gun lobbies or with religious fundamentalists in their war against abortion under any circumstances, to cite some of the issues that mobilize them.
This more extensive character of Bolsonarism opens a range of possibilities for the future evolution and fate of this collective, leaving it for us to discover over the next few years whether the group will continue to thrive after the electoral defeat of Jair Bolsonaro in 2022 and, if so, whether it will carry on under the same label.Irrespective of the name it goes under, all the signs are that the far right occupied a space in Brazil's parliament, a fact we will be left to deal with for some time to come.

THEMATIC BLOCS
The existence of cross-party thematic blocs in the National Congress is a phenomenon little investigated in Brazil's social sciences.The Evangelical Bloc, the Pro-Gun Bloc (Bancada da Bala) and the Ruralist Bloc are the most famous and have been the subject of investigations in doctoral theses and masters' dissertations. 33In these studies, a recurrent ambiguity can be discerned in the use of two different typologies for the distinct groupings: the frentes parlamentares (parliamentary fronts or coalitions) and the bancadas temáticas suprapartidárias (crossparty thematic blocs) or bancadas informais (informal blocs).Nonetheless, crucial differences exist between these two types: the parliamentary coalitions are registered and possess a specific bureaucratic process for their recognition. 34The thematic blocs, on the other hand, function without being formally registered and commonly refer to groups of parliamentarians who act in conjunction, while the coalitions are officially calculated using the signatures obtained for their creation and registration.It is worth stressing that although these groups work together, the degree of mobilization varies depending on circumstances.Moreover, within this associated set, the particularities of its members imply a heterogeneity in the group's internal composition.Accustomed 33 See Duarte, 2011;Faganello, 2015;Lacerda, 2018;Quadros & Madeira, 2018;Santana, 2016 ;Santos 2018.

Tiago de Aragão
Vibrant v.20 to working with information produced by institutions or through the use of surveys, political science tends to perceive an "absence of public and widely available data" as an obstacle to the study of thematic blocs (Araújo & Silva, 2016).The dynamic and informal nature of these groupings implies a less rigid and less institutionalized object of study than, for example, the political party, an important and traditional topic in political science.
In response to this difficulty, ethnography can offer an approach with the flexibility and precision needed to produce information on these types of collectives.Questions that can be investigated through field research include how these blocs emerge and act in political processes, considering their dynamics and their constant formation and transformation, whether in response to their internal dynamics or as a result of their relations with other groups, actors and institutions.
Another aspect that appears to be an obstacle to the examination of these phenomena of parliamentary organization -both the coalitions and the thematic blocs -is the fact that the questions and analyses of political science sometimes require verification of the effectiveness of the actions of these configurations vis-a-vis the decision-making of the National Congress as a whole.This confusion, linked to the search for generalizations, models of predictability that conceive of parliament as one big game, and a normative posture vis-à-vis the analysed political models of what democracy should be, seem to distance these kinds of investigations from the dilemmas experienced and confronted by the actors within their actual political contexts.These hallmarks of the analytic process become obstacles to understanding the everyday experience of parliamentarians in responding to challenges, which manifest in their experience as practical problems that are always contextualized: "As a result a problem is always a practical problem, never a universal problem mattering for everybody.Problems of the ecology of practices are also practical problems in this strong sense, that is problems for practitioners" (Stengers, 2013: 113).Following this idea, rather than seek to understand the effectiveness of strategies and organizations, it seems to make sense to follow the traces of the question that Suely Araújo herself poses in her article, where she reviews past studies and proposes a new agenda for research in the Brazilian parliament: "if the parliamentary coalitions and thematic blocs matter so little, which would seem to be implied by the scant attention given to them in legislative studies, why do the lawmakers insist in forming them?" (Araújo & Silva, 2015, 2016).

FINAL REMARKS: Parliament as a source of practices
This article is part of a wider ethnographic investigation along the paths taken by the performances and practices of Brazilian federal lawmakers, which sees their activities as a key element in doing politics, taking a group of associated deputies as its starting point.Setting out from this group, the work involves accessing a network with heterogenic elements, focusing attention on the quality of these connections and the types of flows in which they are enveloped in particular circumstances and over a specific period of time.This investigation takes the Bolsonarist Bloc as both a starting point and as its main analytic focus.
This aim in mind, it is important to work with a concept of network that allows this complexity to be approached, comprehending it as a set of heterogenous elements, which remain associated through social interactions that occur amid a range of events and circumstances (Strathern, 1996).In the case of this collective of Bolsonarist deputies, it is important to consider the elements that make a difference in their specific way of doing politics, in their parliamentary activities, and that have impacts in the Chamber of Deputies.Among the components in action are: public workers employed in the National Congress; commissioned office-holders, party structures and party leaders; activists and mobilized groups; emoticons, memes and GIFs; executives at municipal, state and federal levels; the judiciary; regulations for the Chamber of Deputies and the National Congress; agendas for the commissions and plenaries; law bills and motions; and the press -here initially represented by the professionals, communications media and published reports.These and other potential mediators -again using Bruno Latour's term (Latour, 2012;Latour & Woolgar, 1997) -are all present in the parliamentary exercise and, in the case of the Bolsonarist deputies, can take on singular forms in terms of how this set of associations is realized and concretized as a collective practice.
In an approach to this network and these sets of action that considers power relations, it is important to understand how power is realized, how it happens, how a group manages to ensure its actions prevail against those of rivals, or how a group resists its actions being successfully countered.For this reason, it is interesting to extend the mapping of the network repercussions, describe these connections, and catalogue the elements associated in these actions.
As part of the search to understand and describe what makes a difference in this set of associations, this investigation deals with a diverse range of elements, believing that one possible way forward is to analyse this concatenation in flux, without organizing it in sections or categories, such as document analysis, social network analysis, discourse analysis and analysis of the deputies' performance… The ethnographic challenge here is to shape the descriptive choices that best potentialize the exposition of the connected elements over the course of events and actions and best relate them as a continuous experience,35 like the one we have seen in the day-to-day work of Brazil's parliament.
Received: June 30, 2022 Approved: December 01 st , 2022 Translated by: David Rodgers the first case, I assemble clues and traces based on a complaint submitted to the Parliamentary Ethics and Decorum Council of the Chamber of Deputies in order to analyse how the Bolsonarist group coalesced.Its formation can be observed primarily through the controversies.The setting for the second situation is the clash over a law bill on the Commission on Human Rights and Minorities.Through this case, I analyse differences between the performances of the Bolsonarist deputies and the parliamentary behaviour predominant in the National Congress.Next, I indicate some analytic paths for the future development of this investigation and the research agenda.

4
March 2020.Ethics and Parliamentary Decorum Council of the Chamber of Deputies.Reading of the preliminary report of Deputy Eduardo Costa (PTB) 4 referring to Complaint n. 12 of 2019, submitted by the Social Liberal Party (PSL), against Deputy Eduardo Bolsonaro (affiliated at the time to the PSL, currently linked to the Liberal Party (PL)) and formulated by Deputy Joyce Hasselmann (at the time PSL; today Brazil Union).The complaint is read by the rapporteur: over its seven pages are set out the fatos (facts) against the deputy.The document is based on the texts of the Federal Constitution (Article 55), the Internal Regulations of the Chamber of Deputies -RICD (Articles 240 and 244) and the Code of Ethics and Parliamentary Decorum of the Chamber of Deputies (Article 5).Briefly, the conflict emerged from a dispute over the post of leader of the PSL, a position occupied in the first year of the 2019-2023 legislature by the deputy Police Chief Waldir.According to the complaint, the President of the Republic, Jair Bolsonaro, was keen to see Deputy Eduardo Bolsonaro, his son, assume the post of party leader.Opposing this move, Deputy Joyce Hasselmann -then leader of the government in the Chamber -publicly declared her support for Police Chief Waldir to remain as leader of the PSL.The complaint alleges that the parliamentarian Joyce Hasselmann was removed from the post of government leader -a position that, according to the document, she had performed with "diligence and dedication" -as part of the government's retaliation.

Figure 1 :
Figure 1: Collage of fake banknote with Joyce Hasselmann's face

Figure 2 :
Figure 2: Post on the Instagram profile of Deputy Daniel Silveira

Figure 3 :
Figure 3: Post on the Twitter profile of Otoni de Paula (PSC/RJ)

Figure 4 :
Figure 4: Image published on the Twitter profile of Deputy Carla Zambelli

Figure 5 :
Figure 5: Screen capture of the post on Deputy Daniel Silveira's Twitter profile bill, labelling it in favour of paedophilia and an attack on the 'family.'Next, Chris Tonietto, a 'pro-life' (anti-abortion) Catholic activist, attacks the left and the bill.The following day, a video is published on a YouTube channel under the title "Conservative deputies quarrel with leftists who are in favour of INCEST between parents and children."The content features the Rio deputy and her colleague, Police Chief Eder Mauro.The video highlights the following part of the former deputy's speech, made at the end of the meeting in question.26We know perfectly well what strategy they adopt.They want to manipulate semantics because they make use, for example, of the schools of Judith Butler, Jacques Derrida, who talk very well of the manipulation of semantics, changing the meaning of words, and it's exactly what they say (…) so through semantic manipulations they impose Tiago de Aragão Vibrant v.20 their interests and we know very well what these are, hidden interests, obscure even, intended to betray the good faith of others, and the families that assist us are being exposed to depravity right now (…) and this type of school of Judith Butler, Jacques Derrida, post-structuralism will be buried here, we will make sure to unmask this moral garbage (Deputy Chris Tonietto at the meeting of the CDHM on 19 August 2019).

Figure 6 :
Figure 6: Screen capture of the video posted on the Política 100 Censura YouTube channel

Figure 7 :
Figure 7: Screen capture of the post on the Twitter profile of Deputy Carla Zambelli