Roberto Schwarz and the negative critique: notes about critique and dialectis on the periphery of capitalism

Abstract

This text aims to attentively examine some aspects of what Schwarz understood as negative critique as well as to identify in his writings the foundations of a critical program in this direction. In order to do so, we will be taking a look at some works, interviews and presentations by the above mentioned author and a few comments made by Paulo Arantes on Brazilian social and political thought in general and on Schwarz's ideas in particular. In addition to a theoretical digression on the influences of european critical theory on the thinking of the literary critic. Based on all this we are confident about demonstrating that Schwarz structures a certain negative critique or dialectics, from which we can infer a search for a radical critique of the world capitalist order and of the commodity realm, along with its inequalities.