Other Stories: dominant hitorical narrative and resistance

Abstract

Lélia Gonzalez, a black Brazilian feminist philosopher, in a text published in 1982 relativizes the dominant historical narrative, which she calls “official history”. According to this narrative, Brazilians are cordial and our history would be a model of peaceful solutions to conflicts. Lélia Gonzalez’s words resonate impressively with those of Marilena Chauí in a text from the same period. Brazilian society, Chauí said, is fundamentally authoritarian and violent. But there is a history of resistance, a history that has not been written. In this text, we want to reflect on this game between the domination of an official history and the resistance of an unwritten history, encompassing not only the black question, but also the Brazilian dictatorship of 1964-85 – in this case, from the recent reflections of Heloísa Starling, Newton Bignotto and Miguel Lago on the government of Jair Bolsonaro, direct heir of the dictatorship. If unwritten Brazilian history is a history of minority struggle and resistance, how can we understand this moment of crisis of democracy that we are experiencing today? Is passive cultural resistance strong enough to escape authoritarianism in its most brutal state?