Abstract
This article takes issue with the common assumption that Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment proceedings should be blamed on the revolts of June 2013. Rather than taking the ousting of the former President as the point of arrival of a causal chain, I privilege the June uprisings as the truly unique event in contemporary Brazilian politics. After analyzing the singularity and the multiplicity of the June revolts, I go on to argue that they laid bare and accelerated a profound crisis of Lulismo, emblematized in the collapse of its three major rhetorical strategies: antagonism (the constant search for an antagonist in the body politic), contradiction (the successive alternation between compromise and radicalism), and oxymoron (the simultaneous maintenance of antagonisms and contradictions). Looked at from the point of view of the epochal events of June, Rousseff’s impeachment appears as a minor adjustment of the oligarchic pact, a charade that is fairly standard in Brazilian history. On the other hand, June remains open as a source of emancipatory impulses, as an event whose legacy is still in dispute.
Resumo
Abstract
This article takes issue with the common assumption that Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment proceedings should be blamed on the revolts of June 2013. Rather than taking the ousting of the former President as the point of arrival of a causal chain, I privilege the June uprisings as the truly unique event in contemporary Brazilian politics. After analyzing the singularity and the multiplicity of the June revolts, I go on to argue that they laid bare and accelerated a profound crisis of Lulismo, emblematized in the collapse of its three major rhetorical strategies: antagonism (the constant search for an antagonist in the body politic), contradiction (the successive alternation between compromise and radicalism), and oxymoron (the simultaneous maintenance of antagonisms and contradictions). Looked at from the point of view of the epochal events of June, Rousseff’s impeachment appears as a minor adjustment of the oligarchic pact, a charade that is fairly standard in Brazilian history. On the other hand, June remains open as a source of emancipatory impulses, as an event whose legacy is still in dispute.
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