Cultural Citizenship

30/08/2024

Authors • Books • PT

By MARILENA CHAUI*

Excerpt from newly released book

Intellectuals and activism: the experience at the Municipal Department of Culture

I intend to make some comments based on the very generous speech by Amália Pie Andery and the conclusion she reached about our dissatisfaction and pessimism after the period in which we took over the Municipal Secretariat of Culture (1989-1992). I want to recall certain events not only restricted to that Secretariat, but related to the government of the city of São Paulo in general. And this is because I have some doubts as to whether the intellectuals in Luiza Erundina's government, in general, and in my case in particular, "ended a cycle," as Paulo Arantes generously put it.

Perhaps it is to avoid making a violent criticism that he prefers to place us in an enlightened tradition and say: “You are ending an illustrious tradition”. I do not know if the fact that Paulo Arantes places us as the end of an illustrious, committed and liberal tradition corresponds to what happened, although I think he does so out of generosity. Possibly it corresponds to the level of the image produced and which constitutes one of the great questions that we ask ourselves all the time – that of the image produced by the government and that of our experience, as such.

Before returning to this point that Amália raises, which is crucial, it would be important to ask: “How could we have imagined that some changes would have occurred in the city in order to guarantee the preservation, by the city government itself, of actions and policies initiated by us?” And, in sequence: “How can we analyze the confidence that many of the secretaries, and even Luiza Erundina, had that the population would defend the rights that had been conquered?”

That didn't happen! When Amália talks about our dissatisfaction, she is referring to the fact that we were in a Secretariat that was completely unrelated to the concerns of the PT. In other words, it never occurred to the PT, whether its leaders or its base members, that we could talk about cultural issues or cultural policy. This was considered nonsense and, in general, what was always expected of us was that we do something. shows. Culture was “stage, sound and light”, or rather, it wasn’t even that, it was “borrowing the stage, the sound and the light” (laughs).

And, possibly because we had an extremely marginal position within the Workers' Party – not in Luiza Erundina's government, but in the PT and also in the perception and understanding of the other secretaries –, it was perhaps more evident to us that there would be nothing left.

This awareness became increasingly clear for the following reason: all the other departments were linked to very strong social movements that, from an external perspective, gave them support and, within the city government, guaranteed that the PT members would do the same. In other words, there was widespread support for the policies that had been achieved. At least that is my interpretation. Now, since there was nothing like that on the cultural side, the image of permanence was not attributed to us. That is why our pain and dissatisfaction were stronger than for others.

The production of a text that is an analysis, an interpretation and an evaluation, if not of Luiza Erundina's government, at least of the Municipal Department of Culture, has been demanded of the team that worked with me and of myself, quite frequently. And what I have explained to people is that I am not yet in a position to do this. I am still moved by a very deep terror, when I remember what the experience was like, and by an absolutely gigantic anger, for having handed over the Department of Culture to Paulo Maluf. I could have handed it over to anyone else, to the PSDB, PMDB, PSB, PFL... But handing it over to Maluf is more than the soul can bear! And, in my case, handing it over to a last-minute Malufist, a former communist, former president of Amnesty International, a person with whom I have been fighting all over the world against violence and the issue of rights. I handed over the Department of Culture to him after he had written an article in which he stated: “I am tired of being a loser, now the Wall has fallen and I am with the victors”. Therefore, I don't have the ability to write anything, anything, anything! Who knows, maybe one day I'll write...

But I would like to tell you about some cases. I will start with one that has nothing to do with the Department of Culture, because I think it provides some measure of our experience. On the night that the Morumbi favela collapsed, and in addition to the injured, ten children were buried and killed, we were all called by Luiza Erundina to go to the area.

The story, as you know, has to do with a gigantic construction project by a contractor linked to Malufism. The contractor was prohibited from continuing the landfill work because, in fact, it was pushing the earth into the region where the favela was located. The contractor had filed a lawsuit against the city government (claiming that it had the right to do so since the favela was an invasion of land) and did not interrupt its work. The negotiation then was: “Wait, at least, until we remove the favela population. We will find another place for this population and then you can continue; otherwise, a catastrophe will happen here.”

Well, the contractor didn't want to know, didn't want to listen, and kept pushing the earth. The population resisted the idea of each person going their own way; quite rightly so, because in an emergency exit, everyone ends up being put in a different place. As they used to say at the time: "We're going to leave in an organized way." And they stayed... And the hill came down.

I will begin by reporting – because I think this shows that the place is different – that when we arrived at the site, Luiza Erundina and Aldaíza Sposati were already there and that, shortly after, Erminia Maricato arrived and I arrived, at the moment when it was reported that ten children had been buried. When I arrived, Luiza Erundina was receiving the news of the dead children. It was so rainy, so muddy… Erundina sat on the ground, in the muddy, and the mothers came and sat there; they hugged each other and cried together. They cried and cried, they couldn’t stop crying. And we arrived and sat in the muddy, in the rain, all crying.

I think that this crying means several things. First of all, we cry about our impotence. The fact that we have the government, the Executive Branch of the city of São Paulo, in our hands doesn't mean anything. We have a highly powerful bourgeoisie, powerful enough to override the power that the Executive Branch has. So, the first meaning of the tears was impotence. That is, we were unable to stop that bourgeoisie from throwing that land and killing those children.

The second point refers to the fact that Erundina cried so much that her mothers started to console her. And what she said to us was: “It’s my people, it’s my people; I let this happen to my people.” It was very clear to her, as mayor, that this could not happen “to her people.” In other words, there is a speech in which the language of class is immediate, the immediate perception is that of the class situation.

Another point that I think is very important in this event is the fact that, at a certain point, we had no coordinates of space or time. It was a community completely affected by plunder, pain, cruelty, impotence, and the impossibility of change. I think it is a very important episode because, in some way, it marks the place where this government intended to be, with whom and how it intended to be… And it shows why it lost on the day it took office. We lost in the very act of taking office.

I could multiply these cases; tell you ten, twelve cases a day, 365 days in four years. Every hour, it was about the impossibility of a government with leftist pretensions in São Paulo. With the Judiciary, as it is; with the Legislature, as it is; with the media, as it is, and with the middle class and the ruling class, as they are in São Paulo.

This was an experience that many of my government colleagues did not have. Their experience was that important and new things happened and caused a change in the city's appearance. That was not my experience at all. And I think that when Amália tells how I would transform a bottle of water into an entire table, in the hope that a project that came to us – for which we could provide the conditions – would expand and bring in many more people, it was the least that could be done.

But I never had the experience or the feeling of a change, of the implementation of something new in the city. This came to me very clearly, especially in those moments, for example, when (unlike the other secretaries, who were blasted by the media) I was spared by the media and even had them in favor. What was fantastic was the way in which the support appeared. When the public support, mediated by the media, appeared, it was in favor of everything we were against. The praise came for what was the “tail end” of the work, for what was the undesirable shadow of the work, for what was the irrelevant element of what we were doing.

What was fantastic was seeing how something that was intended to be a negation of what was established was immediately incorporated by the established, which praised what was either insignificant or a residue in the work, or even what we didn't want to do but had to put up with. So, everything that wasn't our work was recognized by the media.

That's why I have a bit of difficulty thinking that we've "ended a cycle." I think we had the illusion that a cycle would begin, but it wasn't possible to begin it. And why am I saying this? You see, when, in the case of the Secretariat, Cultural Citizenship was proposed, the proposal was the result of chance and accident. When Luiza Erundina invited me to be the Secretariat, I said: "I don't want to, I can't and I shouldn't!" And I explained why I didn't want to, I couldn't and I shouldn't. She was more persuasive than I was. And what happened was the following. The concrete world for me had always been the text. Where something comes to me through a text, it becomes very concrete. The world itself is very abstract. So, what happened? We were thrown into the world. Into the confusing, complicated, contradictory and adverse world; profoundly adverse. It was necessary, somehow, to tame this immense abstraction. And the way I found to tame the real, which for me was abstract, was to produce a text that I thought was concrete: the text of Cultural Citizenship.

Now, I think that the path we took in the Department of Culture was such that, at the end of the journey, we laughed about what we had done at the beginning. The need to have defined and specified guidelines and theoretical definitions of culture became laughable. This gradually became completely useless, because an action with all its problems was carried out, and carried out practically against the texts that had previously defined our action. In other words, at the end of the journey, the action that was carried out corrected the idealism, the abstraction, the generality of the texts that we needed at the starting point.

We need to give them an idea of what the Secretariat was for us; because, when Amália presents herself as the one who does everything, it is necessary to say that she made the Municipal Secretariat of Culture exist. Without Amália, absolutely nothing would have happened and I have three witnesses here and a fourth there, that without Amália nothing would have happened.

I can use an image to give you an idea of what was happening. As soon as we took over the Department of Culture, something that I consider fantastic happened. Things came that I later learned what they were: processes, orders, official documents. I would say “the text”. “Did you bring the text for me to sign?” Or, “I’m sending the text…” Well, you can’t imagine what was happening inside the Municipal Department of Culture with the fact that there was a new bureaucratic object that none of the employees could identify and that was something very important; after all, “the secretary talked about it 24 hours a day”. “She talked about the text”. It took them a while to understand that the text was the process, the order, the official document. What came out in the official diary, everything, I called the text. It took some time before I could distinguish one text from another.

The following happened: I would study a case – I would open it, examine it, read it; but, of course, with the mindset of a PT supporter –, but since most of the cases I had to read in the initial phase were from the previous administration, I would read them and say: “It’s a dirty trick; PT supporters only do dirty tricks. And how am I supposed to know that there’s dirty tricks here, so that I don’t do dirty tricks?” (risos). Because, obviously, it is indecipherable. It is an illusion to suppose that the bureaucratic text will reveal to you what the institution is. That is what the homogeneity of the text is for. In fact, there is no “text”, precisely for that reason.

So, in the first phase, what were the abstractions I dealt with? The first abstraction was the city of São Paulo. It is an abstraction. It was impossible to have any relationship with the city of São Paulo. And experiencing this is something so violent that I remember that, right after I took office, I was afraid to leave, I was afraid of the city. However, I have always been very comfortable in the city of São Paulo; I have always felt like a citizen of the city of São Paulo. And I was afraid to leave.

The city became deeply threatening to me because it was configured as an incomprehensible space and time in which I had to act. Well, that was the first reality. Then came the functioning of the city hall. I remember that in the early days I would say to my colleagues in government: “Don’t use the machine! That’s an abstract way of dealing with reality; there are people!” But the reality was the machine, the gigantic size of the machine – it was an enormous, gigantic machine (laughs). I just didn't understand.

It was only after some experiments that we began to understand the machine. I will give an example here. In the secretary's room, there is his staff meeting to decide on government policies and policies for the Department of Culture. The door opens at the end of the meeting and a group of employees come in saying: “Secretary, we heard that the Department is going to be painted red and white, we don’t think it’s a good place to work…”. And I said: “What?”. The reaction: “No; it seems like there was a meeting where that was decided.” In other words, in three or four situations, right at the beginning, there was a meeting to decide on some matter, behind closed doors, and when you left there was already a buzz on all floors of the Department about the decisions I had made.

Obviously, since it was a PT government, groups were already organizing to contest the measure that had been taken. “How naive of me!” So, I called a monster meeting to explain some things to the employees – who were completely astonished, with wide eyes, and who looked at me and thought: “I think she has to go to Juqueri; the place she came to is wrong!”

What did I say to them? I said the following: “This government intends to be a democratic government. It is a government of participation, etc., etc. Bureaucracy is antidemocratic; first, because it operates with secrecy and not with the right to information. Second, because it operates with hierarchy and not with equality. Third…” And then I listed all the reasons why bureaucracy was contrary to democracy and the reasons why we had to dismantle the bureaucracy of the Municipal Department of Culture.

Furthermore, this very long speech was to explain that rumor and gossip were a process of counter-information, antidemocratic, which prevented the democratic functioning of the Municipal Department of Culture. Believe me, I did this, and more than once! (risos).It took me a long time to realize that it wasn't that the employees didn't want to hear about those completely absurd things. It was that they didn't even understand why I was saying it.

This is what I am calling abstraction. The Municipal Secretariat was so abstract, so abstract in its powerful reality that I was able to hold a meeting with employees about democracy, to discuss the risk of counter-information in the form of rumors and gossip. And I thought that this was a gesture of cultural policy and that a cultural policy began with the agents of this policy. Either they understand it and participate in it, or there is no policy at all. Imagine!

This meant that the Secretariat's most important projects had to be carried out outside the Secretariat's framework, with society, with the population, and were therefore doomed to disappear. And, in the initial phase – and here I can agree with Paulo Arantes' interpretation, but only in the initial phase – I deeply believed in the need for another institutionalization, another institutionality, which, later, I saw that it was necessary to set aside.

And there are other examples or images that can give you an idea of the institutionality issue. A week after I took office as Secretary, I received a message from Lina Bo Bardi and Pietro Maria Bardi, who were very distressed because there were cracks in the ceiling and walls of MASP. According to them, they wanted to meet with me because the previous Secretary of Culture had promised funds for the repairs and they had not yet arrived. I went there, very excited. Imagine, Bardi, Lina Bo Bardi, this wonderful work that is MASP… Mário de Andrade, pure Mário de Andrade! (risos). What I found was the MASP Council (more laughter). And the MASP Council, among some of its members, housed the most brutal remains of the dictatorship: the people who financed OBAN, the people who ordered the killing and torture of half the people I was connected to, the owner of the Associated Diaries, who had just killed three of my father's colleagues, journalists, when he went bankrupt and left men over 70 years old unemployed who didn't know what to do.

When I saw the MASP Council in front of me – and this was very amusing – I saw the enemy, in its raw state, pure state, without mediation, without veils (laughs). The only thing I did was say: “I came here to tell you that the City of São Paulo has other priorities and that you will not have the funds to repair MASP. Look for help in the private sector, of which you are eminent representatives.” And that was a cold shoulder!

I can also give another example, regarding the renovation of the Municipal Theater, which was necessary for it to function the way Emilio Kalil believed it should. In order to raise money to get the orchestra and ballet up and running, and to buy instruments, ballet shoes, etc., the Biennale and Municipal Theater Boards decided to pay tribute to the beautiful Lyon City Ballet at a dinner. I am telling you this to give you an idea of the experience I had, since I was also a member of this Board. What were the expectations of the Biennale president and others who organized the dinner? A gala dinner, with flowers, candles, candelabras, and all the “peruagem” (laughs) that only Federico Fellini could handle (more laughter). The expectation was: “The Culture girl comes in a t-shirt, poncho and conga, of course!” (risos).

So my mother, my holy mother, bought me a fantastic suit (which became my suit for occasions when I knew I was expected in a “poncho, t-shirt and conga”) and I went. Well, I received the artists, I was introduced to everyone, I spoke in French to thank the Lyon Ballet (because in the case of artists, like those at the Biennale, I spoke to each one in their own language: English, French, Spanish, Italian), and I realized that they didn't know what to do with me. It was very complicated, because they knew I was the enemy and, at the same time, the enemy knows how to dress, speaks French (laughs). So what I mean is that, instead of speaking French being the condition for my entry and acceptance in favor, it was the use of French against them. There is a game in the choice of institutions, the Casa de Cultura is there on the outskirts…

In this way, I would say that “it couldn’t work!” And if, until recently, I thought that the fact that we didn’t leave any traces in the city was a very serious historical and political failure, today I no longer have that view. I think that the place where we left traces is not one where the city is accustomed to recognizing institutional signs. So, a lot of things remained, in many places. But not in the place of institutional visibility in the city itself. I also think that the fact that no traces were left in the institutional universe, on the one hand, proves our incompetence, our absolute inability to change the institution; however, on the other, it also proves that we were not swallowed up or crossed by it.

In this way, everything becomes more contradictory and more complicated. It is important to consider that I still have a very confused perception of all this. I was very close to Luiza Erundina. I followed almost every day of the government. There was the garbage problem, I would go to Ibirapuera Park to discuss with Erundina the garbage contractors… There was the transportation strike, I would go…

There was a time when I knew the city of São Paulo, its government and its problems, and the class struggles within the city like the back of my hand. Having been very close to the day-to-day running of the municipal government, I was able to talk to you about the legal city, the institutional city, the clandestine city, the informal city, and their movements, just as I was able not only to narrate what was happening, but to separate, distinguish, number, and state statistics. As for Luiza Erundina, I think her situation was dramatic, at times tragic, in the deepest sense of the word tragedy.

Anyway, I think that perhaps the proof of how much we remained against it is in the fact that we did not leave any visible sign in the visible city, in the institutional city. There was nothing left. And this could be either our political incompetence or it could be a counter so excessive that the city could not absorb it or did not want to absorb it. It fought against it; Maluf is not there for nothing. It was also a deliberate fight by the city, against it.

However, in terms of what is expected to be done in public cultural management, we not only did it, but we did three, four, a hundred times more. That was our problem. That is why I began by saying that when there was praise, it was because there was visibility; but it was related to promotions from the Secretariat that were not important to us. In other words, everything that appeared as action was something that for us was either residual or secondary, or something that we had kept because we could not get rid of it.

This is, in short, part of the analysis of the insurmountable limits of what I consider to be a completely different situation from that of the University, at least of certain sectors of the University (since in both cases different temporalities operate). In any case, the institutional parameters that I have at my disposal, those of the University and those of the Municipal Secretariat of Culture, are completely different.

But, my institutional experience was also very complicated by the following: the newspapers, both the Estadão as for Sheet, they insisted that I keep a column – and I had a column in Sheet – or that I wrote regularly. I said: “No; I can’t!”

Just as I initially gathered civil servants to discuss the role of civil servants as agents of democracy, I told the newspapers: “I believe that one of my battles is for the existence of a public space. And I think that one of the fundamental things is that the State does not occupy the public space as a social space. Therefore, I cannot write in a space that I consider to belong to society. Even if I express my opinion about something, I speak from a place that is the place of the State. So, I cannot do that, because it is undemocratic. It is contrary to all my political principles that, while holding a public office, I can claim to have on the radio, on TV, in the newspapers, a place that I had when I did not hold any office.”

This was incomprehensible to them. They were unable to understand what I meant by my statement that a speech that comes from the State is never a personal speech, never a speech that is properly an opinion; it is an official speech. Therefore, there was little point in explaining that, institutionally, I did not have the right to speak but rather the obligation to act. In that position in which I was placed, I said to myself: “It is up to me to carry out actions that are considered necessary, desirable, possible or impossible by society. I have to carry out actions that my party affiliation, the social movements that are linked to this Secretariat, require, demand and oblige me to do. My space is no longer that of speech.”

Therefore, I think that the activism I used to do (I don't know why I'm quiet now) didn't fit with my situation at the Ministry of Culture. However, I believe that I was a little more useful writing in newspapers, debating on television, on the radio, giving conferences, attending round tables, in short, traveling around the country, than holding a position.

I felt that the position was a profound limitation from a political point of view. Contrary to what is generally seen in intellectuals when they hold a position. They nurture the idea that they will achieve what they set out to do. I, for my part, experienced the position as a blockage and a brake.

*Marilena Chaui Professor Emeritus at FFLCH at USP. She is the author, among other books, of In defense of public, free and democratic education (authentic).

Reference

Marilena Chaui. Cultural citizenship: new cultural policy and political culture. Organization: Marinê Pereira. Belo Horizonte, Authentic, 2024, 392 pages. [https://amzn.to/3T98Ywk]