Foreword

Carly Barboza Machado

A Horizon of (Im)possibilities undertakes an exploration of the conservative turn and of Bolsonaro’s rise to power in Brazil. Bringing together a collection of excellent studies, the volume not only enters into dialogue with the urgency of the present moment, in which far-right movements and governments are emerging around the world, but is also able to make use of historical analyses and prospective exercises to think about how we got here and where we are going – two central questions that guided the editors’ structuring of the book.

The reader who begins this study thinking that, at the end, he or she will be able to find all-encompassing answers that attempt to explain the most recent events in Brazil may possibly get frustrated by this endeavour. Page by page, chapter by chapter, A Horizon of (Im)possibilities offers complex, multifactorial explanations, but also brings new questions to the political scene, which are often unexpected, and therefore disconcerting.

I have decided then, in this preface, to present the volume at hand based on the questions that its reading provoked in me. And this is also, in my understanding, one of the book’s main intentions: to present disconcerting questions. I will follow the style of the editors, and propose here two further questions and, through these, I will make a brief reflection on this work: who are we? and How do we move?

Who are we? Nearly every analysis of political processes deals with the formation of more or less fixed fields and positions. Starting from the question ‘How did we get here’, the volume points to a ‘we’ that projects itself on different scales. ‘We’, Brazilians: the nationality of many of the authors who contributed to the book, and who live today under the government of Jair Bolsonaro, performing the challenging task of making analyses while facing, on a daily basis, the effects of this harsh reality. Added to these, in this ‘we’ there are researchers who are dedicated to thinking about Brazil, and who therefore follow the political scenario of this country closely and are being impacted by its direct consequences. Another ‘we’ that is constructed with the publication of this book is one comprising a broader international community, which finds itself bewildered, facing a wave of far-right authoritarian governments around the world. Within this international collectivity, we can think particularly of the social scientists, historians and other researchers who have been following such processes, in part through their historical continuities (e.g. of inequalities, racism, sexism and authoritarianism), but also by being surprised by less predictable, articulated and, many times, unwanted facts. Certainly this ‘we’, like the others, is made up of non-homogeneous aggregates of people and ideas, but they are summoned by this book for a reflective conversation about the conservative turn in Brazil and Jair Bolsonaro’s rise to power, in an effort to understand what is happening in contemporary Brazil, but also on a global scale.

Everyday political life in Brazil is permeated by the question of what ‘unites us’, and how far the envelope can be pushed. The support for Bolsonaro in Brazil, after two years in office and a pandemic, mobilised resources of the most diverse orders which, on the one hand, consolidated him and, on the other, opened many fissures. The same is true of the opposition to his government. If the analyses that lead us to the year 2018 culminate in Jair Bolsonaro’s victory, and are guided by it in order to explain the convergence of events that yielded this electoral result, in 2021, the year of this book’s publication in anticipation of the 2022 presidential elections, the questions that arise are different. It is time to discuss the convergences that remain, the ruptures perceived so far, and how the field (or fields) of supporters of, and opponents to, Jair Bolsonaro are behaving politically. This volume already presents important pointers about this future moment, and hence alludes to (im)possible horizons.

Finally, still on the question of ‘Who are we?’, the present book offers a relevant analysis of the issue of difference. I highlight here two aspects of this discussion. The ‘problem of difference’ is at the heart of conservative turns, which represent efforts to ‘keep things as they have always been’, for ‘the same people’. Among other elements in common, the national ‘we’ of conservatism has a racial, gendered and social class profile, and ‘defends’ itself (through its attacks) from the public presence of those ‘different’ from itself, and their initiatives in the field of social rights. This is one facet of the debate. But, on the other hand, the long-term analyses presented in the book – and, in particular, in its afterword – point to the fact that the relationship between difference and inequality is a historical one in Brazil. Political confrontations with the ‘lost rights’ agenda, which have been accentuated for some groups under Jair Bolsonaro’s government, have already been faced by minority groups in the country over centuries. The ‘loss of rights’ has hit the Brazilian population unequally in recent years, given that the rights guaranteed and won have not been equally distributed. Even if we consider that the loss of rights in conservative turns and under far-right governments is sweeping, some always lose much more than others. The least impacted by this loss are either those so vulnerable that they did not have any experience of their rights in the first place, or those most privileged, for whom a set of rights is specially devised. In this way, the asymmetry and radical inequality that structure Brazilian society are being confirmed. The present book does not let us forget this fact.

My second and final question is: how do we move? In dialogue with the question ‘where are we going?’, formulated by the editors, I consider that A Horizon of (Im)possibilities contributes not only to thinking about the destination of political actions (where to?), but also about their forms (how?). The field of debate presented in this volume involves the moral, communicational and aesthetic dimensions of political mobilisation. In this domain, something new has happened in Brazil in recent times, and became more strongly visible in 2013, in the scope of street protests that took over the country and brought millions of Brazilians onto the streets.

The theme of political mobilisation has taken on new contours since then, based on some questions that work well when articulated, but which also present quite different qualities: what makes Brazilians take to the streets? Who has the capacity to organise protests? What is the place of social networks in this dynamic, and who operates them? How are political collectivities organised? What is the role of political parties and social movements in recent years? What new collective actors are emerging in the political field? How should we understand the relationship between electoral behaviours and political mobilisations today?

These and other questions are discussed through some overarching themes in the chapters that follow. One of them is the theme of communication. The production and dissemination of narratives about truth has arisen as a salient issue in the public sphere. The effect of the construction and circulation of images for political communication reached another level of complexity from the moment digital environments became its main realm of activity. Research in and on social media became the empirical field of study for social scientists around the world, and the political agency of algorithms gained relevance. Institutions that spent some years as invisible actors in this digital political field started to be named and studied, and their activities and strategies documented and discussed.

But the question remains: how do we move? Are the communication practices used by far-right conservative camps a model to be followed? Which political communication strategies makes people mobilise, and in what directions? Is it possible to disentangle form from content in political communication? Can communication strategies be shared by opposing camps, differentiating only their contents?

Thinking about communication and political mobilisation implies making ethical and ideological decisions about the objectives of these mobilisations: urging people to the streets, to the polls and/or to the formation of a long-lasting democratic field requires forms of political communication that are certainly very different, or at least very carefully and consistently combined.

We thus come to a second theme analysed in the volume, which is fundamental to thinking about political mobilisation: the centrality of the debate on moralities. Race, gender, sexuality, family and religion are recurrent themes in this book, and structure an arena of political debates that configure entirely different possible and impossible horizons for Brazil in the coming years. The future desired by a conservative far-right camp is radically different from that dreamed of, imagined and disputed by that part of Brazilian society that fights for a more democratic, just and egalitarian society.

Visions of the future move people and collectivities. Possible horizons are fundamental to political mobilisation. The absence of hope for the future is absolutely paralysing. A Horizon of (Im)possibilities insists, from beginning to end, on an approach to Brazilian political reality as constituted by people, collectivities and ideas in movement. The breadth of the movement may change: small steps, large actions, stops. Those who walk side by side may vary. The direction of the movement may be more or less uncertain. But there is movement. I conclude by underscoring the following value in the book you are here invited to read: the fact that A Horizon of (Im)possibilities does not necessarily present conclusive answers, but produces disconcerting questions, confirms that this work has as its central politico-epistemological positioning the movement of people, collectivities and ideas. And where there is movement, there are disputed visions of the future. And where there is dispute, there is hope.