Brazil in Modernity and Modernity in Brazil: updating the discourse of domination

Abstract

This article intends to deal with Brazil and modernity, the latter as a macro-political phenomenon and the former as part of this phenomenon. To this end, categories of the thought of Jessé Souza, famous critic of the official readings of Brazilian social thought are brought, its theoretical bases are investigated, with Charles Taylor, and enriched with the reading made of the modern phenomenon from the decolonial thought of Quijano and Lander. Understanding Brazil as a kind of reverberation of this modernity helps to understand the value set that guides contemporary actions, but it is necessary to extrapolate the boundaries of synchronic analysis and think about how this was built over time and what immanent characteristics could remain unchanged in centuries of continuous transformation. Understanding this allows us to draw an internal critique, as it helps to unveil the self-legitimating discourse of the status quo and also helps to understand modern patterns of domination that operate not only here, but in much of the world, making the Brazilian experience useful, if not exemplary, for future analyzes of societies that share this characteristic called 'modernity'.