Encontros com a civilização brasileira: Ênio Silveira e a transição democrática brasileira (1978-1982)

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on the editorial project organized by Ênio Silveira, materialized in the political-cultural magazine Encontros com a Civilização Brasileira, published by the Civilização Brasileira publishing house between 1978 and 1982. The research seeks to understand in wich way this editor intended to intervene in the processes of political liberalization, between the late 1970s and the early 1980s, as well as in the new disputes within the Brazilian left that marked the period. These disputes involved the emergence of new political actors critical of the nationalist and PCB-aligned tradition that had previously shaped the publisher’s projects in the period before 1964 coup, and the debate surrounding the democratic question—central themes in the discussions developed in the magazine, which ones are analyzed throughout the dissertation. A central axis of the analysis is the relationship between Ênio Silveira’s ecumenical editorial practice—his openness to intellectuals from diverse political-ideological currents and institutional spaces—and his militant engagement with the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB). In contrast to studies that identified a lack of a defined editorial line or interpreted the eclecticism of Encontros com a Civilização Brasileira as its very project, this dissertation argues that Ênio Silveira, with the support of poet Moacyr Félix, the magazine’s editor-in-chief, upheld the PCB’s guidelines for re-democratization. Through Encontros, he sought to reinsert the party into the new political landscape, contending for hegemony with segments of the “new left” while also intervening in the internal party debates, defending the theses of Eurocommunist intellectuals—but without turning the magazine into an organ of the party or of any of its internal factions. Editor Ênio Silveira, acting as an intelectual mediator, occupies a central place in this research. The political project that guided the editorial line of Encontros, the core subject of this dissertation, can only be fully understood when situated within Silveira’s personal and political trajectory. Theoretically and methodologically, this work lies at the intersection of the history of intellectuals, intellectual history, and studies on cultural and political magazines.