Remaking Brazil: Contested National Identities in Contemporary Brazilian Cinema (Iberian and Latin American Studies) - Softcover

Heise, Tatiana Signorelli

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0708325092 ISBN 13: 9780708325094

Publisher: University of Wales Press, 2012

Synopsis

This book explores conflicting conceptions of Brazilian national identity as they are expressed in contemporary Brazilian cinema, especially those revolving around the long-standing claim that Brazil is a racial democracy.

About this title

About the Author

Dr Tatiana Signorelli Heise is a Professor of Hispanic Studies at Manchester University.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Remaking Brazil

Contested National Identities in Contemporary Brazilian Cinema

By Tatiana Signorelli Heise

University of Wales Press

Copyright © 2012 Tatiana Signorelli Heise
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-7083-2509-4

Contents

Series Editors' Foreword, 
Acknowledgements, 
Introduction, 
PART I: Constructions of Brazilian National Identity, 
Chapter 1. Forging the Nation, 
Chapter 2. Modernity, Exclusion and Inclusion, 
Chapter 3. Identity and Hegemony: The Authoritarian State and Nation-Building, 
Chapter 4. Resisting the Hegemonic Discourse, 
PART II: Brazilian National Identity in Contemporary Films, 
Chapter 5. The Brazilian Film Industry in the 1990s and 2000s, 
Chapter 6. Celebration: The Brazilian Way of Being, 
Chapter 7. Reform: The Land of Samba, Football, Violence and Discrimination, 
Chapter 8. Opposition: Visions of Disorder and Regression, 
Chapter 9. The Rise of Alternative Social Identities, 
Conclusion, 
Glossary, 
Notes, 
Select Bibliography, 

CHAPTER 1

Forging the Nation

The debate on the emergence of nations and the ideological movements that accompany it can be broadly divided into two main camps: the modernist paradigm and the 'anti-modernist' critiques. The modernist paradigm emerged in the 1960s when a new body of theories for understanding the rise of nations and nationalism established a contrast with a number of assumptions which had prevailed until then, mainly in the field of history. While previous theories tended to assume that nations were ageless and persisted over immemorial time, the new approach claimed that nations were a product of the specific historical conditions associated with modernity. Modernists also attacked the tendency of earlier works to conceive of the nation as a community of common ancestry, rooted in a historic homeland. In their view, the nation was a civic community based in a particular territory, consciously and deliberately built by its members. Yet another idea contested by modernists was that of the nation as a seamless whole with a single national character. Instead, modernists suggested that nations were divided into various social groups (linked to region, class, gender and religion), each of which maintained its own interests and needs. Finally, the modernist paradigm rejected the concepts of 'ancestral ties' and 'authentic cultures' as the underlying principles of the nation, asserting instead the significance of ties of solidarity, citizenship and social communication.

Anthony D. Smith and John Breuilly claim that the modernist paradigm took shape with the accelerated process of decolonization and the rise of new nation states in Africa and Asia. This is the moment when the study of nationalism, previously dominated by historians, opened up to a variety of disciplines, mainly political science and sociology. Smith recalls the climate of optimism surrounding the new theories, inspired by the struggles for independence in former European colonies and by the rise of social movements in the 1960s. Such optimism was coupled with an interventionist politics which aimed to see the Western notion of the 'civic participant nation' replicated in the former colonies through such strategies as social communication, mass education, urbanization, political participation and other recipes for national development. Above all, the modernist approach envisaged the nation as the ideal agent and framework for social development, and this is one of the reasons why the nation-building model, which focuses on the political nature of nations and th

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Wales Press
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0708325092
• ISBN 13: 9780708325094
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224