|
Northwestern University Law Review,
Summer 1987,
81 Nw. U.L. Rev. 832
Social Theory and Political Practice:
Unger's Brazilian Journalism
By William H. Simon
Roberto Mangabeira Unger is
a citizen of Brazil. While working on Politics, his large-scale
treatise on social theory, he has been active in his country's politics. Among
the fruits of these activities is a series of political and programmatic
commentaries on Brazil published in the Brazilian press. The commentaries apply
the style of political analysis and the general political program elaborated in
Politics to the recent circumstances of Brazil. Thus, they give an
extended illustration of Unger's general social theory. At the same time,
they exemplify a form of political writing that attempts to combine ambitious
critical social theory with popular journalistic policy discussion.
Unger's major journalistic efforts, on which I will focus here, are two series
of articles published in the largest Brazilian newspaper, A Folha de Sao
Paulo. The first is The Country in a Daze, a seven-part essay
published as part of a special supplement entitled Brazil After Geisel
in January 1979. The second is The Transformative Alternative,
consisting of fourteen linked pieces published separately on the paper's "oped"
page between December 1984 and April 1985.
Unger's journalistic style in Portuguese differs little from the style of his
theoretical writings in English. It eschews jargon, portrays abstract ideas with
high drama, resorts constantly to dialectical (thesis-antithesis-synthesis)
exposition, sweepingly and often ironically characterizes people and events, and
is occasionally unabashedly hortatory. If one compares this work to the
journalistic efforts of some of the classic social theorists, it resembles those
of Marx and Keynes in its flair for dramatizing current events by infusing them
with broad historical significance and in its ability to criticize contemporary
figures through pithy characterization. But Unger's journalism seems more
integrated with his social theory than that of Marx or Keynes. Unger makes more
of an effort to portray his general theoretical scheme in his journalism; much
of the two Folha series summarizes major sections of the argument of
Politics. In some respects, Unger's Brazilian writings seem more in the
style of The Federalist Papers and the eighteenth century pamphlet
literature from which it arose. Like The Federalist Papers, Unger's
articles quite explicitly and systematically expound a general social theory in
the course of addressing current political issues and events.
I propose to describe the analysis in Unger's Brazilian journalism, especially
the two Folha series, that addresses most directly the circumstances of
Brazil. What follows is partly interpretive summary, partly close paraphrase. I
have supplied a few basic background facts about Brazil, but otherwise the
account is drawn entirely from Unger's work.
[Click
here to download the full
article as a Microsoft Word document (138KB, 35 pages); click
here to download the full
article as an Adobe PDF file (125KB, 35 pages).]
|
