Foucalt and the Politics of Resistance in Brazil: Carceral Notebooks

This volume brings together the contributions of scholars throughout Brazil to explore the intellectual and political importance of the philosopher Michel Foucault’s lectures and conferences during his visits to Brazil in 1965, 1973, 1974, 1975, and 1976. During these visits, Foucault synthesized and advanced his research on an astoundingly wide range of topics, from juridical practices, to social medicine, to sexuality. He sought to clarify his unconventional perspectives in interviews with the mainstream and alternative press. Faced with the growing political repression of students, professors, and journalists, Foucault also engaged in open opposition to the military dictatorship. The point of the essays in this volume is not simply to account for Foucault’s activities in another national geographical space (alongside the more commonly recognized spaces of Tunisia, Iran, and the United States). The essays in this volume situate his contributions in Brazil within a series of theoretical, historical, and political contexts to reflect on the politics of resistance in Brazil in the past and present. Some of the essays fill in the historical details of Foucault’s visits to Brazil to expand our understandings of his concepts, such as political spirituality and militancy. Others bring concepts from Foucault’s toolbox, such as self-writing, to bear on practices of resistance in the Brazilian present. Still others focus on the effects of his encounters in Brazil for contemporary practices of resistance there. What emerges collectively from the essays is the importance of Brazil as a space of conceptual and political innovation for Foucault and the significance of Foucault for debates about theory and politics in Brazil.