Private past, or deprived of the past? Nostalgy, in-difference and commemorations of the Brazilian September Seven

Abstract

I propose to address how, what kind of elements are displaced, erased or focused, and above all what kind of figurations are presented in the official (public) celebrations of the Brazilian past, in general, and in particular, in the official commemorations of Brazilian’s Independence Day (September 7th, 1822). Which kind of aesthetic is mobilized when the Brazilian “past” shows up publicly (and officially)? I argue that this set of figurations allows us to identify what I call the “Brazilian's aesthetic”: to promote an in-different and ethnocentric national (and historical) consciousness. The powerful historical imagination mobilized in Brazilian past performances recycle annually the stereotyped elements of this aesthetics, triggered by a modernist historical culture that does not throw new and promising futures, but a public celebration of a specific format of nostalgy.