The enigma of hegemony: Gramsci and the place of politics in Francisco de Oliveira's thought

• Grant number: 21/07189-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: October 01, 2021
• End date: January 31, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Political Science
• Principal Investigator: Bernardo Ricupero
• Grantee: Camila Massaro Cruz de Góes
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 22/07547-4 - The enigma of hegemony and the crisis of contemporary politics: the tense relationship between neoliberalism and democracy, BE.EP.PD

Abstract

This project aims to investigate the place occupied by Antonio Gramsci in Francisco de Oliveira's political thought (1933-2019). We start from the hypothesis that the translation of Gramsci carried out by Oliveira, especially of his concept of hegemony, is closely related to the conception that the sociologist builds about politics and democracy, being capable of being captured in the inflection that marks the abandonment from the category started in the late 1980s and which is completed in his analysis of the Lula administrations (2003-2010). In this sense, this research asks: what were the changes that made Oliveira, a first-rate PT member, to have passed to this radical critical opposition that at once subsumed his bet on politics and on the usefulness of Gramsci's thought to think about the contemporary world? What changes did Oliveira introduce to the concept of hegemony after his translation? The purpose of this research is, therefore, to reconstruct the historical and political conditions in which Gramsci was translated by Oliveira to formulate his interpretations and interventions in the public debate, in order to outline what were the transformations in these spheres that made him gradually abandon this theoretical instrument. With this, the aim is to contribute to the history of Brazilian political thought, following thematic and chronologically from the confrontation of the most diverse sources - articles in newspapers and periodicals, interviews, books, chapters and conferences - the ways in which Oliveira interpreted and intervened in his socio-historical reality in permanent tension with the Gramscian categories. (AU)