Glass Skulls -

Glass Skulls

16/01/2025

Anthropology • Culture • Literature • Books

By LETÍCIA NÚÑEZ ALMEIDA*

Considerations on the recently released book by Luiz Eduardo Soares

What is reality? Do we produce it or are we produced by it? Is truth always relative? What are the boundaries between the conscious and the unconscious? Is there a collective (un)consciousness? Luiz Eduardo Soares' new book is the antithesis of Saint Thomas and is not recommended for those who only believe in what they can see, touch, or read. It is the reader in the middle of the electrical storm of the crossroads drawn by the author.

The fall is greater for those who expect a continuation in the literary tradition of novels that are now mandatory manuals for social sciences such as Elite Troop I and II, Justice, Espírito Santo, Pig's Head among so many. Pulled the rug out from under those who seduce with the phosphorescent cover with Mexican airs, the storm is internal and slow, it is not possible to identify the moment in which this disturbance occurs, like in a psychotherapy session, it is being worked through and suddenly the light of insightt of “realizing” the Gestalt.

The book is set in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, the cities are not characters and yet you can feel the smell of Copacabana, the tense luminosity of the streets of downtown Rio and the seductive and mysterious air of the central region. of from the capital of São Paulo.

The book begins by making us feel comfortable in our seats, a biographical novel? The author talks about his feelings, commitments, and political stories through his (mis)encounter with Mártin, a companion in the political struggle for democracy in Brazil. The guy discreetly reappears after thirty years at a public event and says he followed the author's work. It's 2013, without WhatsApp, frenetic followers and such. It's curious to be a "follower" of someone's trajectory, not a follower, not a fan, but an accompanier. And it's even rarer to think that this doesn't happen on the internet.

I confess that I immediately identified with Mártin. I have been following the work of Luiz Eduardo Soares since 2001. In my first class of my master's degree, the room was packed, everyone seemed familiar with him, the vast majority were doctoral students, they were there just to listen to Luiz Eduardo Soares. I had a photocopy of the book. The Rigor of Indiscipline (1994) on my lap, I had found the text difficult, I didn't even really know what a master's degree was, I was getting to know the habitus which for some reason enchanted me.

I finished my degree without ever having spoken to Luiz Eduardo. Years went by and I read a good part of everything he published, attended dozens of lectures and debates in Porto Alegre, São Paulo, Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, Brasília, Anpocs, SBS, and so on. I managed to be in the auditorium of the Jô Soares Program when he was interviewed, the day I hugged O Gordo. I fought with several professors because of him, and caused embarrassment that he would never dream of. In these last 23 years, Luiz Eduardo has been my professor, my boss, my friend, and I don't say colleague because I know my place in the world.

All this to tell you that the book Digital Savage Glass Skull makes us reflect on how connections between people occur, life stories, everything that will never be said, but rather, lived. The book makes us be affected by feelings that place us as part of this crossroads where there are no choices, it is a meeting of spheres and dimensions that form something new, which is us at the moment of reading.

And it releases a slow effect of something that can be called consciousness, as Ayahuasca does, which is a subject that permeates the entire book. The author takes us to experience something he is teaching about, without the narrative, a dialogic process where the reader participates so that the energy of the book follows its course, sensational.

Digital Savage Glass Skull presents us with our recent history from a decolonial, multidisciplinary, courageous perspective. It is possible to know more about Brazil and ourselves after this experience. We are all part of the same sea, but what is a sea for us?

* Letícia Núñez Almeida is a professor at the University of the Republic of Uruguay. Author of, among other books, Lua: a griot from Porto Alegre (Coralina Publisher). [https://amzn.to/3PAxa8N]

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