Page 92 - ARTE!Brasileiros #58

ENGLISH VERSION DEMOCRACY AND REPARATION

eDitorial [PAGE 8] After years of dictatorship, voting, of course, was an artiCle dEMoCrACy ANd rEPAIr [PAGES 10 to 14]
achievement, but it doesn’t seem to be enough. It is
TOWARDS THE VII necessary to create control tools for the participation AESTHETIC MOMENT
INTERNATIONAL SEMINAR of people, to suggest systems and debates on the
importance of creating economic mechanisms for a AND ETHICAL TIME OF
“CULTURE, DEMOCRACY more egalitarian society, to create restoration tools.
One of the greatest Latin American essayists and DEMOCRATIC REPARATION
AND REPARATION” thinkers, Beatriz Sarlo, who turns 80 this month, spoke From different historical occurrences and
in an interview with Ñ rEvIStA dE CUltUrA, 964, of the
Argentine newspaper Clarín: concepts of psychoanalysis, the author
By PAtrICIA roUSSEAUx discusses the idea of infinite mourning –
The trial of the three Military Juntas, which was
toDay, there is a Challenge for Culture faced by very few countries after the military common to cases of collective losses – and
dictatorships, was a fundamental moment of great talks about the need for reparation
as a whole, which we understand involves deepening ethical strength for democracy, and required great
the discussion on how culture can advance in Brazil and in civic, ethical and subjective value. By CHrIStIAN dUNkEr
the world, within the scope of a democratic environment.
Because, what democratic environment are we The function of testimony has a reparatory dimension, in I dedicate this text to João Pedro Mattos (17)
talking about? What democracy do we defend after so far as it verbalizes and produces the social recognition
having confirmed that a “democracy” prevails that of a traumatic history. In Brazil, after ten years, it was we are useD to thinking about grief
continues not to recognize the devastating role of shown that the creation of quotas at the universities were as a finite process, limited and circumscribed in
centuries of racism, oppression and authoritarianism, successful, allowing large sectors of the black population time. When they go on for a long time, they become
and where the results of colonialism continue to exclude to achieve improvements in education,employment suspicious and flirt with the pathological. Even so,
only with new masks? and in salaries. there are mournings that span generations around
What kind of democracy is this that allows institutions At the same time, a movement began in several slavery, political disappearance, state violence.
to be equipped with repressive groups, that makes a European countries restoring works that were taken There are traumatic mournings that touch entire
point of curtailing culture and speech and encourages from their countries of origin: cities like Mariana or Santa Maria. There are
certain religious groups to install themselves in positions mourning for the loss of land, of the body and of our
of power, in a supposedly secular state. “Last November, for example, 26 works of art from way of life, such as the one that affected indigenous
In the past ten years, debates have intensified on the former Kingdom of Dahomey, which were on and riverine people such as those affected by the
several of the identity struggles and major minorities in display at the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris, were Belo Monte dam in Altamira. For Freud, grief is a
our country and in the world. The increasingly relevant returned to Benin. Since 2020, on the initiative of symbolization device and a normal affect. But what
participation of the role of women in society, in defense French President Emmanuel Macron, a law has exactly is normal affection?
of the inalienable right to her body, whether in defense been in force that facilitates the return of works Wouldn’t it be better to reserve the notion of infinite
of abortion or against harassment; their right to equal seized in the colonial period.” grief for certain irreparable situations? Recognizing that
economic recognition and political participation. Its “Paris, restoration and the culture of memory”, in them the loss is indefinitely non-individualizable, non-
increasing empowerment has been widely debated edition 57, arte!brasileiros. symbolic and non-replaceable? In Freud, such incurable
and reported. All this raises the need for a greater mourning is marked by the violation of the generational
presence of women in the different levels of society. The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. has order of disappearances, for example the mourning of a
Exhibitions such as Mulheres Radicais na Pinacoteca agreed to return most of its Benin bronze collection to child. Mournings that cannot be overcome by the force
(Radical Women, in the USA), representatives in literature Nigeria as part of a major restitution agreement, pressing or intensity of pain, but by deliberation, more or less
such as Paul Preciado and Judith Butler; Constitutional other museums around the world to follow suit. conscious, that in this case, in this mourning, there will be
gains in defense of abortion in several countries have arte!brasileiros starts then, to encourage this no end. He will perpetually and deliberately link himself
made enormous advances in the defense of this role debate in Brazil. In this edition, we have chosen a special to other endless, disembodied, graveless mourning. A
possible. cast of thinkers, art critics, historians, psychoanalysts finite mourning becomes infinite for many reasons: a
The discussion in defense of the freedom of choice of and journalists who bring, from different perspectives, lost life elevated to the dignity of a thing, common value
gender, led by the lGBtQIA+ communities, environmental elements to this discussion and whose objective is for future lives, heroic ideal, saint, sage or warrior that
issues, the struggle for the autonomy of indigenous to convene our vII Seminar: Culture, Democracy and mimics immortality as a figure of the infinite.
communities and the recognition of their lands and, Reparation, to be held in the third week of September. But there are also bereavements that are pathologically
finally, a true acceptance by society about the need finite. In fact, this is the neurotic response in the face of
to face The debate, in Brazil, on the brutal history of Collaborators [PAGE 06] loss: to individualize the culprits, to hate to forget them,
racism – denied and erased for centuries in the past and to issue rules in the illusion of “unhappening” them,
persistent in our colonial, capitalist present – brought a issue 58 march april may 2022 finally, to make it simple to share, collectively, the reasons,
very strong parallel movement to traditional institutional artebrasileiros.com.br causes and motives for the loss. After that, all you have to
and corporate governance. do is wait for another evil from the Other, or for another
Museums were pressured into the hiring of black Cover image: Abdias Nascimento, “A Criação vacillation on the part of the subject.
professionals, curators and thematic studied artists n. 2: Obatalá e Exu”, 1973. Collection Museu Losing a person, a nation or an ideal makes a
and writers. The collective exhibitions Histórias Afro- de Arte Negra | IPEAfro. Photograph: Fabio difference, even if grief applies to all three cases without
Atlânticas at the Instituto Tomie Ohtake and MASP were Souza/MAM Rio distinction. When we lose people and lose the spirit of a
exceptional. nation, we have often resorted, throughout history, to a
Publishers began to publish true literary gems that name for what was lost: democracy. Some will say that
had been forgotten, such as the books by Carolina Maria CHRISTIAN DUNKER is a full professor in the idea of democracy originated in antiquity was realized
de Jesus, which was also shown at the Instituto Moreira Psychoanalysis and Clinical Psychopathology at the in institutions of modernity. Others will argue that this
Salles, in São Paulo. Black Skin, White Masks, by French- Institute of Psychology at the University of São Paulo (USP), is an incomplete realization, as democracy remains an
Caribbean psychiatrist and writer Frantz Fanon are also with a postdoctoral degree in language pathologies. He ideal, that is, the idea of a community to come, capable of
examples; Becoming black, by Neusa Santos Souza; or is the author of a series of books, among them “Lacan e being-for-all and including all [1]. Still others consider the
Torto Arado, the novel by the writer Itamar Vieira Junior a democracia”, released this year by Boitempo. application of the idea of democracy to people and ideas
that has just been adopted by the Bahia Department to be a falsification of the term. Democracy never existed,
of Education. MÁRCIO SELIGMANN-SILVA holds a PhD from the therefore it never will. It’s just a name we give to certain
The art market, of course, “discovered” the importance Free University of Berlin, a post-doctorate from Yale. non-autocratic political regimes. The Brazil of the years
of black Brazilian art and began to pay attention to He is a professor of Literary Theory at UNICAMP and a 2013-2020 has been described as a country in regressive
exceptional national artists who were quickly recognized researcher at CNPq. He is the author of award-winning democracy, that is, marked by the precariousness of
when discovered by the international public and today books such as “Ler o Livro do Mundo” and “O local da institutional functioning, retraction of the free use of
are in collections such as Inhotim, in Minas Gerais, or diferença”, among others. the word and violation of human rights. Losses that
Pinault. in Paris. demand local mourning, but that are connected with the
Professor and writer Márcio Seligmann-Silva states RENATO ARAÚJO DA SILVA is a researcher and curator. chain of infinite mourning that organizes and defines a
in his article in this issue: Graduated in Philosophy in the University of Sao Paulo certain symbolic unit.
(USP), he belongs to the contemporary art criticism group There are artists, such as Anselm Kiefer, Alfredo Jaar,
“There is no physical violence that is not at CCSP. He is the author of books such as “Africa, mãe Nazareth Pacheco and Itamar Vieira who have dedicated
accompanied by symbolic violence. Studying de todos nós”. themselves specifically to the work of mourning and
the history of Afro-Brazilian art implies becoming reparation, as well as there are ethical witnesses of
entangled in centuries-old continuities of DERECK MAROUÇO is a researcher, art critic, curator unspeakable disasters, such as Sojourner Truth, Primo
histories of symbolic and physical violence. It and translator, currently studying for a master’s degree in Levi or the compilation of dreams made by Charlotte
also implies the possibility of clearly envisioning Curatorial Cultures at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Leipzig, Bernhardt , but its message really becomes a commitment
not only the “dialectic of colonization”, which Germany. Lives and works in São Paulo and Berlin. to the future when it implies a kind of deal between the
the playwright and theater director from São living, the dying and the beings to come. This commitment
Paulo José Fernando Peixoto de Azevedo tells SIMONETTA PERSICHETTI is a journalist and goes beyond and beyond legal forms and economic
us in the epigraph, but the very “dialectic of photography critic. Master in Communication and exchanges. Just as there are lives that appear to us as
enlightenment”, which Theodor Adorno and Max Arts (Mackenzie), PhD in Social Psychology (PUC-SP) not entirely finished, like Marielle Franco, and worlds
Horkheimer sought to describe how Europe went and post-doctorate at ECA-USP, she is a member of the that have not yet been created, the ethical-aesthetic act
up in flames in the first half of the 1940s” (Adorno Editorial Board of arte!brasileiros. She has published seems to fill the infinity of what is priceless and surpasses
& Horkheimer 1986). several books and won the Jabuti award. our system of finite values.
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