Language and the prison-house: the cultural rhetoric of Brazil's cultural memory wars

Miranda, Rui

Abstract

This chapter aims to explore the contribution of cultural rhetoric towards the critique of cultural memory, taking up as case study the discussions on the Brazilian military dictatorship (1964-1985). Partially as a backlash against the work of the Truth Commission set up to address crimes committed by agents of the state, competing cultural memory narratives came into sharp relief during the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff, and leading up to the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro came into the spotlight when he dedicated his vote to impeach President Rousseff to the person responsible for her incarceration and torture in the early 1970s. While supporters of President Rousseff used photos from her arrest and trial as a means to signal their support, those pushing for impeachment and, later on, Bolsonaro himself, taunted political opponents with threats of incarceration, denied that there ever was a military dictatorship in Brazil, and continues to poke fun at ex-political prisoners.

By departing from Victor Kemperer’s classic description of Third Reich's language as “address, exhortation, invective”, this chapter will both complement and circumvent discussions surrounding the categorization of Bolsonaro’s presidency (as “fascist”, “national-populist”; even if the one-time culture secretary did plagiarize a speech by Goebbels to the sound of Wagner’s music). A cultural rhetoric approach will stress the limitations of concepts such as “cultural backlash” or “culture wars” while allowing for a clearer understanding of the devices (linguistic and literary) underwriting the political discourses drawing significantly on Brazil’s contested cultural memory with a view to glossing over structural injustices and inequalities (while pandering to anxieties and deep-seated prejudices of sectors of Brazilian society). Concurrently, it will draw on the work of artists who have represented the experience of the political prisoner and have homed in on the extraordinary events of recent years in Brazilian democracy, namely the documentaries Democracia em vertigem (The Edge of Democracy, Petra Costa, 2019) and Narciso em férias (Narcissus Off Duty, Ricardo Calil and Renato Terra, 2020).

Citation

Miranda, R. (2023). Language and the prison-house: the cultural rhetoric of Brazil's cultural memory wars. In Culture and Society. Rhetorical Perspectives, Transferential Insights (133-154). New Vision University Press

• Online Publication Date: May 1, 2023
• Publication Date: May 1, 2023
• Deposit Date: Jan 10, 2024
• Pages: 133-154
• Book Title: Culture and Society. Rhetorical Perspectives, Transferential Insights
• ISBN: 9789941978050
• Keywords: Cultural Rhetoric, Cultural Memory, Brazilian Military Dictatorship, Political prisoners, Film documentaries
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/6611861
• Publisher URL: https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=9052012
• Contract Date: Aug 11, 2021