THE 'CORDIAL MAN': A LATIN AMERICAN CONCEPT IN THE BRAZILIAN ESSAY
| Autor: | Pedro Meira Monteiro |
|---|---|
| Jazyk: | English<br />Portuguese |
| Rok vydání: | 2024 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | Revista Brasileira de Literatura Comparada, Vol 22, Iss 41 (2024) |
| Druh dokumentu: | article |
| ISSN: | 0103-6963 2596-304X |
| Popis: | This article analyzes Sérgio Buarque de Holanda’s Roots of Brazil (1936), a seminal book in the Brazilian essayist tradition. Discussion begins with the limits of Brazil’s search for national specificity, so as to consider Brazilian cultural formation as a projection of its colonial Iberian roots. In this context, the “cordial man” emerges as a metaphor for the lack of public space in Brazil. On the one hand, the cordial man is a product of turn-of-the-century debates on Latin American exceptionalism, a figure almost capable of withstanding the disillusions of the modern world. On the other hand, the cordial man offers Buarque de Holanda a window into the limits of democratic liberalism and the personalistic political traditions of Latin America: an impasse discussed at length but never resolved in Roots of Brazil. Ultimately, the book permits a deeper questioning of the collective pulses and individual desires that, together, form the matter to which populism would respond, a political form temporarily capable of meeting the people’s demands. |
| Databáze: | Directory of Open Access Journals |
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