By SERGIO BRAGA*
Brief tribute to the professor of sociology and political science at Unicamp**
In the context of the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the PPGCP-IFCH, colleagues ask for a brief statement about the “Study Group on the Thought of Louis Althusser”, which operated at the institute, and of which I participated as a founding member, from November 1987 to approximately December 1993, before going to Curitiba, to take the exam to become a professor of political science at UFPR, a city where I remain to this day.
The group continued without my presence until I don't know exactly when, because after going to Curitiba, I stopped following the group's work as frequently, due to other activities and tasks.
First of all, I would like to commend the 50th anniversary commemoration committee for honoring Décio Saes. In my humble opinion, Décio Saes is one of the greatest Brazilian social and political scientists I have had the opportunity to meet and study his work, on a par with other great professors I have had classes with or who have studied at IFCH, such as José Murilo de Carvalho, Luciano Martins, Juarez Rubens Brandão Lopes, Bolívar Lamounier, among others.
Furthermore, in the 1980s and 1990s, Décio Saes dedicated himself intensely to the undergraduate course at IFCH-Unicamp, and together with Armando Boito Júnior, he was one of the great centers of attraction for students with a vocation for serious research in political science, who later became researchers and postgraduates at the institute. For this reason, many researchers who later had successful academic careers were advised by Décio Saes during their undergraduate or postgraduate studies.
I would like to highlight, from memory, the current professors Adriano Codato, Angelita Matos Souza, Francisco Farias, Paulo Roberto Neves Costa, Renato Monseff Perissinotto, among others. Therefore, the tributes are more than deserved, and I hope that they will be extended to other initiatives aimed at preserving the memory and scientific legacy of this great professor and researcher.
And no one is more qualified for this than Professor Francisco Farias who, in addition to being Décio Saes' former advisee, produced relevant works developing and deepening the problematic of analyzing the Brazilian social formation that he inaugurated, some of which were published on the website the earth is round.
I have already said something about the genesis of the group in my memorial for promotion to full professor, which is available on the internet. This group emerged in a context in which I was developing my Scientific Initiation project for Fapesp, and was heavily involved in reading the works of Nicos Poulantzas, in addition to being in the first year of my undergraduate degree in economics, since at that time it was possible to attend two undergraduate courses simultaneously.
As I was excited about reading Nicos Poulantzas, I suggested to two students who were closer to Décio Saes (with whom I was never very close on a personal level, always maintaining a relationship of respectful deference and distance towards our illustrious professor) that we organize a group and delve deeper into the study of Nicos Poulantzas' work, as I considered the readings we had of the author's work in undergraduate courses to be insufficient.
About two weeks later, Pedro and Valdir (these were the students' names) came back with Décio Saes' positive response, but reformulated: Décio suggested that we study “Althusserian thought” (an author who had a great influence on Poulantzas in his initial production), from the first texts written by Althusser, published in Pour Marx, focusing on his texts and those of his collaborators that dealt with the theory of history and historical materialism.
I did not consider myself mature enough to undertake a systematic reading of Althusser in the third year of the course, and having countless other simultaneous tasks, but even so I embarked on Décio's proposal, as I considered it an opportunity to carry out an extracurricular intellectual activity, outside the regular course activities, as well as having the opportunity to interact with an experienced researcher who could guide us more closely in our academic training.
Little did I know that a great intellectual adventure was beginning there, which would be my main activity in the following years. We held meetings every 15 days and/or three weeks, depending on the time of year and the group members' activities, and we discussed the texts selected for reading. In the first phase of the group, Pedro and Valdir attended the meetings, and later, Angelita Matos Souza, now a professor, joined the group.
Later, Luciano Martorano, Francisco Farias, and, surprisingly, the current “columnist” of Folha de S. Paul and journalistic celebrity, Celso de Barros, for a short period, which shows that the group's atmosphere was serious, but not somber.
From the beginning of the meetings, I recorded and transcribed the texts, and I even have the transcript or summarized notes of all the meetings and I had the recorded tapes, but these were lost in the changes or deteriorated, which is a shame because they revealed a little-known side of Décio Saes: his sense of humor, which sometimes targeted some of the most orthodox “Althusserians” as well as some of his most furious and notorious critics. These notes are contained in six handwritten notebooks, which I still consult today, seeking inspiration for new readings or interpretations of readings.
In fact, although it was mainly dedicated to studying the so-called “Althusserian” or structural-Marxist thought, as I prefer to say, we discussed several other authors, including those who were very critical of the thought of Louis Althusser and his epigones (Étienne Balibar, etc.), and even of Marxism in general, such as Raymond Aron, Edward Thompson, José Arthur Giannotti, Carlos Nelson Coutinho, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Jürgen Habermas, Perry Anderson, among others, due to the subsequent elaboration, by Décio Saes, in a second phase of the group’s functioning, of the article that was published in volume 2 of History of Marxism in Brazil, organized by João Quartim de Morais.
In addition to his enormous patience, I was impressed by the ease with which Décio Saes dissected and critically analyzed the foundations (and logical weaknesses) of classic texts by several renowned names in the indigenous human sciences. I duly recorded this admiration for our great master and undergraduate professor in the introduction to my master's dissertation, when it was published.
There are several episodes related to the group that I could discuss in more detail, but it is not feasible to do so here. For example, I always wanted to “open up” the group in order to include more people in the discussions, but Décio Saes always preferred to keep the group small and not very institutionalized. Décio also always had a preference for theoretical articles, and I would like us to maintain this standard by sending articles with a high theoretical profile to academic publications, especially the journal Marxist Criticism.
I have always been more modest, or realistic, and I tried to start my career by publishing empirical articles or comments on authors (reviews), where the risk of errors is lower and the short-term intellectual returns are greater. Décio Saes was also more “orthodox” in his adherence to and commitment to “Althusserianism”, while I have always been more flexible and influenced by other currents.
I have always been very fond of Bertrand Russell in philosophy, of systemic and pluralist theories in political science, of Hans Kelsen in law, etc., and I have always thought that structural Marxism could be enriched by critical dialogue with these currents, without smuggling in any of their limitations or ideological constraints, such as, for example, the apology of capitalist democracies (so-called “polyarchies”) or of North American imperialism or of Soviet-type bureaucratic-authoritarian states as ideal and ultimate models or forms of sociability of human social organization, thus breaking with the field of critical thought.
At the time, I was also strongly influenced by the work of economist Mário Possas and his trilogy on the dynamics of capitalist economies, in which the author sought to renew the Marxist analysis of the capitalist economic system by partially incorporating contributions from post-Keynesian, Schumpeterian and other heterodox currents of economic theory. Even today, I maintain a great admiration for the authors mentioned above, among others.
Unless I am mistaken, Décio Saes always noticed these “deviations”, but he never demanded loyalty or unrestricted ideological militancy in favor of a supposed “Althusserian” orthodoxy (or academic church, as some would say), always giving me a certain freedom, as well as other students of his, to follow our own paths. Hence the respect and consideration that Décio Saes has always deserved from researchers in other theoretical fields, as can be seen in statements that appear on the internet, always recognizing Décio Saes’ academic and intellectual integrity, as well as his exemplary scientific attitude.
The bulk of the theoretical discussions held in the group are in the articles published by Décio Saes during the period, with some fundamental texts standing out, such as “Marxism and history”, published in Vol. 1 of the magazine Marxist Criticism, is "The impact of Althusserian theory of history on Brazilian intellectual life”, published in the book History of Marxism in Brazil – vol. 3 (Campinas, Hucitec/Ed. Unicamp), edited by João Quartim de Morais (IFCH/Unicamp), pp. 11-122. 1998.
The discussions held in the Althusserian WG also had an impact on my intellectual production during that period, especially the first articles and reviews I wrote and the books I published (cf. especially Braga, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2002), although this was not made explicit. And, even today, I am still concerned about some of the issues we discussed in the group. In my aforementioned memorial, I detail some of the consequences of attending the group on my academic production, at the time and later.
Finally, Décio Saes's work on the influence of the Althusserian field on the theory of history sets a broad agenda for research and reflection for Marxists, which is far from being exhausted. The agenda established by Décio Saes in his studies on the theory of history and in his work analyzing the Brazilian social formation (Saes, 2024) and comparative analyses (Saes, 2007) can still inspire young Brazilian researchers in their investigations and proposals for policies and interventions in the public space.
It is clear that this is an open and developing theoretical field, and that there will always be two lines of tension in relation to Décio Saes' legacy: the more orthodox ones, for which "almost everything has been said", and it is up to new generations of researchers to appropriate his contributions by deepening and applying this theoretical scheme, and the more heterodox views, for which this legacy is a starting point for new investigations, and which must always have their theses developed and tested in a continuous work of new analyses and new designs of empirical and historical research that "realize" (to use Althusser's expression in the text) About Theoretical Work) the fundamental ideas of the broad research agenda and theoretical-methodological reflection developed by our great master, procedures that are still being carried out today by several of his former students and interlocutors.
*Sergio Braga is a full professor in the Department of Political Science at the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR).
**Image by Graham Joncas: Althusser – Philosophy of the Encounter, cover photo
Modified version of article published in NEPES Notebook, from the Department of Sociology at the Federal University of Piauí.
References
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BRAGA, S. A step forward in Marxist reflection on the State. Journal of Sociology and Politics,Curitiba-PR, v. 4/5, p. 202-206, 1995. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5380/rsocp.v0i04-05.39374
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