By LINCOLN SECCO*

Commentary on the book by Diogo Valença de Azevedo Costa & Eliane Veras Soares.

1.

Florestan Fernandes' intellectual biography continues. When it was believed that it was limited to the great intellectual who combined scientific rigor and revolutionary commitment, new challenges arose in the 21st century. The history of the University of São Paulo requires new considerations, given its transformation under neoliberalism; the Workers' Party underwent several political changes; the prospects for revolution became bleak, and postmodern interpretations challenged Florestan Fernandes' biography and academic legacy.

The book by Diogo Valença de Azevedo Costa and Eliane Veras Soares is decidedly sympathetic to its subject, but does not shy away from new challenges and proposes overcoming them, as we will see.

The book is divided into three parts. In the first, the authors analyze the sociological roots of Florestan Fernandes' theoretical thought. In the first chapter, they define Florestan Fernandes' "lumpen style of thought." In the second, they propose the reconstruction of the institutional sociability of the teaching of Social Sciences in São Paulo between the 1930s and 1960s. Finally, in the third chapter, there is a brief conclusion to the first part.

In the second part, the work focuses on the internal analysis of academic training work; the theoretical and methodological issues developed by Florestan and the elaboration of the categories of underdevelopment and dependent capitalism, recovering Florestan Fernandes' political involvement in national debates about "Brazilian educational dilemmas". The authors then turn to intellectual networks in Latin America. This part draws on new research in Florestan Fernandes' personal archive and library and examines his insertion in the international circulation of ideas, something still little explored in the existing bibliography.

The third and final part of the book addresses the period after Florestan Fernandes's compulsory retirement from USP: from his Canadian exile (1969-1972) to his time as a Federal Deputy for the Workers' Party (PT) (1987-1995). The book ends with a Marxist interpretation of Brazil and Latin America based on the “Brazilian racial dilemma,” which is seen as the starting point for his formulations on “underdevelopment” and “dependent capitalism.”

2.

The “lumpen style of thought” displays the strength and weakness of the reconstruction of Florestan Fernandes’ life and work. He linked himself to those below (those below in the words of the Mexican writer Mariano Azuela, whom Florestan admired) because he was not from a peasant or working-class family, but from a broken urban family, supported by a single mother, a washerwoman, having had the experience of living in another house for some time, wandering the streets at random, defending himself as best he could from adults and other stronger children, being a market porter, etc.

Florestan Fernandes' reflections at university would bear that mark, focusing on black people, indigenous people, favela dwellers, the poor (in the broad sense that medieval historians gave to the term) and, of course, also the working class and rural workers.

Florestan Fernandes' biographical reconstruction is based on his own accounts, since the main source of research is his personal archives held at the Federal University of São Carlos, in addition to unpublished interviews that Eliane Veras Soares conducted with Florestan. Some accounts were made at very different times and projected different questions into the past. The filter of his subjectivity in the autobiographical reconstruction has yet to be done. However, the author of this book consciously did not concern himself with “the accuracy of the historical truth of the facts,” which they attribute to positivism, but with the “subjective definitions” of the subject himself.

Thus, in the part entitled “From the Lumpen social environment to the University of São Paulo"the authors have re-presented Florestan Fernandes' biography from a new perspective: the lumpen style and its existential, psychosocial and sociocultural roots gave him a particular sensitivity to other ethical-existential dimensions. Thus, his work as an academic sociologist was not limited to reproducing the modus operandi of his French masters, incorporating theoretical methodological rigor and straightforward, straightforward writing, but displaying concerns with themes and elaborating on problems that were of no concern to European or American researchers.

Marxism itself was a foreign body at the university when Florestan Fernandes began his first research, but he maintained contact with revolutionary activists while rising in his career from a typical academic of the time. Antonio Candido recalled that Marxism persisted in Florestan Fernandes's thought like an underground river. In other words, there was always a tension between science and engagement.

Emilia Viotti da Costa also addressed the problem: “The engaged cultural practice that characterized the 1960s – and which survives with great difficulty in regions where the professionalization of intellectuals was late or incomplete – tends to disappear among us. Increasingly locked up in the ivory tower of academia, consumed by bureaucratization, struggling with reports and opinions, hunting for grants and invitations to participate in international meetings, forced to follow current trends, the intellectual of our day rarely fits into Gramscian models.” (https://aterraeredonda.com.br/florestan-fernandes-i/).

Were Florestan Fernandes' thematic elections a way to resolve this dilemma? Among his first choices were: children; the Tupinambá; immigrants; the Tupis; the favelas; and black people. Another sign of his militant inclination was his participation in the Campaign in Defense of Public Schools, launched in May 1960.

However, how many career choices do we make that are not subject to institutional constraints? The sociological investigations carried out by civil servants aimed to understand the mechanisms that guarantee the cohesion of society and to define the social facts that function independently of the will of individuals. To this end, indigenous societies could be chosen as the object of study, since they would more simply demonstrate the function of each element in a system. Likewise, the investigation into racial relations was a UNESCO project.

If it is possible to say that life experience and political and existential inclinations were translated into scientific work, it is also necessary to assess how much the methods and theoretical frameworks redefined those political choices.

The authors solve the equation by demonstrating that, despite this, what prevailed in research on the Tupinambá was Florestan's “rotation of perspective,” which captured the indigenous people's human reaction to the terrible process of colonization. This gives Florestan Fernandes' work a contemporary feel, according to the new perspectives of indigenous movements, without disregarding what has become outdated. In any case, the authors record a certain critical fortune in works by anthropologists produced since the 1970s.

3.

Another problem very well presented in the book is that of eclecticism. By combining Émile Durkheim, Max Weber and Karl Marx, Florestan Fernandes critically synthesized three traditions of thought respectively: positivism; neo-Kantianism; and Hegelianism..

As part of scientific analysis, the selection of some aspects of social reality to the detriment of others is fundamental. Empirical observation collects the essential, sacrificing the accidental, directing attention to certain layers of reality, according to the objectives of sociological explanation and theoretical orientation. The ideal type is a mental construct obtained through the selection of characteristics that cut across reality in order to better understand it, without losing sight of the interdependence of the elements that make up the whole.

Florestan Fernandes' early work is a classic of structural functionalist analysis in Brazil, noting that for him functionalism was not a theory (in this he coincided with Talcott Parsons) but rather a way to formulate “empirical propositions, test them and incorporate them into theory”. Likewise, the discussion about the objectivity of “social facts” or the consideration of social conflicts allowed Florestan Fernandes to become an intellectual very different from his counterparts in Europe or the United States.

This scientific basis, combined with political commitment, led him to develop long-term issues: dependent capitalism and bourgeois autocracy. It is in this work that The bourgeois revolution in Brazil that academic training and the dialectical method come together in a superior way. Was this an epistemological rupture, in the wake of Louis Althusser? The authors discuss the topic but, deep down, continuity and rupture feed off each other in Florestan Fernandes' intellectual trajectory, as this book clearly proves.

* Lincoln Secco He is a professor in the Department of History at USP. Author, among other books, of History of the PT (Studio). [https://amzn.to/3RTS2dB]

Reference

Diogo Valença de Azevedo Costa and Eliane Veras Soares. Florestan Fernandes' Critical Sociology: A Social Theory of Brazil and Latin America.‎ Routledge, 2023, 194 pp. [https://amzn.to/40bz2tl]

the earth is round there is thanks to our readers and supporters.
Help us keep this idea going.
CONTRIBUTE