The Luso-Brazilian Enlightenment: Between Reform and Revolution

This chapter examines transformations of state–society relations in eighteenth-century Portugal in relation to Enlightened political debates of the time. It also explores how these transformations shaped the relations between Portugal and Brazil in the nineteenth century, the debate about the political form of independent Brazil, and the intra-Brazilian struggles over this form before and after independence. More importantly, it challenges the notion that the Enlightenment was absent from the Portuguese Empire as a result of the rejection of modern ideas by conservative world views and projects. It argues that there was a Luso-Brazilian Enlightenment that was plural and eclectic, supporting both critiques and defences of the absolute power of the king, endorsing simultaneously a secularisation process, the promotion of reason and Roman Catholicism, and fostering not only revolutionary projects but also conservative state reforms.

Introduction

This book examines the temporality of modernity by focusing on the relations between Africa, America and Europe. More specifically, it considers the extent to which the supposed arrival of modernity in Europe affects the ways in which human beings situate themselves in time and history worldwide. It also explores how institutionally entrenched interpretations of modernity based on inequality and oppression are transformed into novel forms that are shaped by the drive to inclusive–egalitarian collective self-determination. In linking the history of Europe to world history, the book shows that what is often referred to as ‘the rise of Europe’ was the creation of an Atlantic world region with increasingly dense but highly asymmetric commercial and communicative ties. This introduction discusses the debate over the relation between the history and the theory of modernity, the connection between the Northern Atlantic West and the origins of modernity, and novel interpretations of modernity in Africa and Latin America.

Indignation and Claims for Economic Sovereignty in Europe and the Americas: Renewing the Project of Control over Production

This chapter focuses on contemporary social movements in Europe and Latin America that are taking shape as forms of action that aim not only at defending some achievements of ‘reformed capitalism’ but also at exploring the possibility of forms of social and economic organisation that go beyond purely capitalist logics. More specifically, it examines the efforts of these movements as they try to regain control over production and distribution. The chapter first considers the meaning of the post-World War II ‘social deal’ as well as the actors, historical trajectories and societal self-understandings that contributed to its emergence. It then explains why, both in Europe and North America and in Latin America, the guarantee of degrees of socio-economic security went hand in hand with a decrease of collective economic sovereignty. It also analyses the effects of the neo-liberal turn on the working populations' socio-economic security and on the social deal.

The Student Movement in Chile 2011–12: Rearming the Critique of Capitalism

This chapter examines the critique invoked by Chile's student movement in 2011–2012 that challenges the premises of the current spirit of capitalism — that is, the mechanisms of accumulation and its specific justifications in terms of the common good. The chapter draws on the work of Luc Boltanski and Peter Wagner about modernity, capitalism, mobilisation, critique, and structural transformations. It first considers how the critique invoked by the student movement articulates itself by understanding how the educational system in Chile was built and identifying the premises that guided the profound transformation of Chilean society led by the dictatorship. It then explores how the discourse of neo-liberal capitalism emerged in Chile, and which structures or reality tests were built based on that discourse. It also discusses the different nuances contained in the social, artistic and political critique voiced by the student movement.

An Unsettled Past as a Political Resource

This chapter examines recent debates about transitional justice and argues against attempts at ‘overcoming the past’ or ‘settling the past’. Drawing on Cornelius Castoriadis's theory of the social-historical, it shows that engaging with the past is an inescapable dimension of societal existence and its self-creative process. It contends that such past is not necessarily a burden but can become a political resource in the (re)construction of political community. The resourcefulness of the past, however, is contingent upon standing or permanent political institutions and normative frameworks. The unsettled past, the chapter suggests, becomes a valuable political resource only if it remains unsettled and, as such, a vital part and live matter of everyday political processes through the interconnected workings of collective political responsibility and political imagination.

HIV/AIDS Policies and Modernity in Brazil and South Africa: a Comparative Critical Analysis

This chapter compares HIV/AIDS policies in Brazil and South Africa over the thirty-year history of the epidemic, focusing on the period between the mid-1980s and the early 2000s. The discussion lays emphasis on the largely divergent policy responses of the two states to the HIV/AIDS pandemic. The chapter begins with an overview of Brazil and South Africa's HIV/AIDS policies, along with critical factors that explain why, despite being two similar societies, they responded so differently to the epidemic. These factors include the nature and the timing of democratic transition and the relatively stronger Brazilian civil society. The chapter argues that Brazil acted far more aggressively than South Africa against the HIV/AIDS epidemic by implementing comprehensive prevention, treatment and care policies. As a result, the Brazilian government has been able to contain the spread of the virus across its population. In contrast, negligence, denial, delay and fragmentation have considerably exacerbated the HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Africa.

The Sublime Dignity of the Dictator:1 Republicanism and the Return of Dictatorship in Political Modernity

This chapter examines the historical and conceptual co-evolution of republicanism and dictatorship in modern political thought. It also analyses the self-professed normative commitments of political modernity, with an eye toward exposing its stato-centric nature and antidemocratic tendency. The chapter first considers how dictatorship became marginal, a minor presence throughout the development of medieval legal and political philosophy, and more specifically how the Roman model of dictatorship was displaced by the medieval theory of emergency. It then explains how the civic humanism of the Renaissance and the ensuing neo-Roman political revival retrieved the republican emergency institution from near oblivion and reintroduced it as a viable model of emergency power for modern republics. It also discusses the relationship between dictatorship and monarchy.

On Being in Time: Modern African Elites and the Historical Challenge to Claims for Alternative and Multiple Modernities

This chapter examines the ways in which African elites define their relation to the Europe with which they were confronted by the settlers in both appreciative and combative terms. It considers how scholars might use the idea of temporality — identified by both C. A. Bayly and Peter Wagner as being central to a subject's experience of modernity — to engage critically in debates about what Shmuel Eisenstadt has called ‘multiple modernities’ and Dilip Gaonkar has referred to as ‘alternative modernities’. Drawing on a specific historical case, involving a group of Christianised African elites in colonial South Africa from the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century, the chapter demonstrates the importance of temporality as a dimension of what it meant to be modern.

Injustice at Both Ends: Pre- and Post-apartheid Literary Approaches to Injustice, Sentiment and Humanism in the Work of C. Louis Leipoldt, Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela and the Film Invictus

This chapter offers an historical reading of injustices in South Africa. Drawing on South African fiction as well as the medium of film, it documents the injustice of the sociohistorical constellation after the South African War on to the one during apartheid. The chapter analyses C. Louis Leipoldt's novel The Mask, a depiction of perceived injustice on the part of early twentieth-century Afrikaners in South Africa, along with the book A Human Being Died That Night by Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela and the film Invictus for their contributions to the concept of African humanism. The chapter also discusses the legacy of Nelson Mandela's humanism, with its emphasis on the communal effort against mass injustice.

The American Divergence, the Modern Western World and the Paradigmatisation of History

This chapter reconstructs the conceptual, rather than geographical, separation of ‘the Americas’ into a North America and a South America with distinct sociopolitical connotations. More specifically, it examines what it calls the paradigmatisation of history and the emergence of the modern Western world, along with some aspects of what was regarded as America, the ‘New World’, before and after the modern ruptures that occurred in the liminal ‘age of revolutions’. It also discusses what became known as the ‘American Revolution’ with its notions of ‘manifest destiny’ and ‘American exceptionalism’. The chapter argues that what used to be understood as the New World went through a process of divergence during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and that this divergence was appropriated by instituting different significant categories by the narratives of the enlargement of the modern Western world in the twentieth century.