Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/2440/49423
Type: Thesis
Title: White hegemony in the land of carnival: the (apparent) paradox of racism and hybridity in Brazil.
Author: Cao, Benito
Issue Date: 2008
School/Discipline: School of History and Politics : Politics
Abstract: This dissertation argues that racism in Brazil is largely a product of the Eurocentrism that presides over the formation and formulation of Brazil(ianness). The ideological construction of the nation on notions of identity and difference rooted in a Eurocentric definition of modernity has translated into an epistemological division between modern subjects (the Colonial Self: the Portuguese) and subjects of modernity (the Colonised Others: the Indian and the African). That is, between subjects and objects. The objectification of the Others can be found within the realm of the social (the Other as social object: the Slave), the cultural (the Other as cultural object: the Exotic), and the biological (the Other as sexual object: the Erotic). This epistemological division enabled the hierarchisation of differences between the Civilised Self and the Savage Other(s) and the racist (re)invention of Brazil in the 19th century. This dissertation re-examines racism in Brazil by means of the analysis of the three historical events that have come to define the nation (Discovery, Independence and Abolition) as well as the so-called essence of the nation (Hybridity). The analysis reveals that the reinvention of Brazil as a hybrid nation has not eliminated the hierarchy of differences. On the contrary, the celebration of hybridity has served to obscure the largely exploitative character of the processes of cultural hybridity [mestiçagem or transculturation] and biological hybridity [miscegenação or miscegenation] and to mask secular prejudices and discrimination against the Indian and African Others. In Brazil, hybridity still operates within the Eurocentric discourse of Brazilianness that incorporated the Indian and African Others as objects or, at best, dependent subjects in the formation and formulation of Brazil(ianness). The corollary of this is that without unthinking and undoing the Eurocentrism that informs the national imagination there is little that hybridity can do to undermine racism and white hegemony in Brazil.
Advisor: McCarthy, Greg
Dissertation Note: Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Adelaide, School of History and Politics, 2008
Subject: Racism -- Brazil.
Hybridity (Social sciences) -- Brazil
Miscegenation -- Brazil
Hegemony -- Brazil
Brazil -- History.
Provenance: This electronic version is made publicly available by the University of Adelaide in accordance with its open access policy for student theses. Copyright in this thesis remains with the author. This thesis may incorporate third party material which has been used by the author pursuant to Fair Dealing exception. If you are the author of this thesis and do not wish it to be made publicly available or If you are the owner of any included third party copyright material you wish to be removed from this electronic version, please complete the take down form located at: http://www.adelaide.edu.au/legals
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