This seminar analyzes research, debates, interviews, and statements collected by the Núcleo de Estudos e Pesquisas of the Fundação Nacional da Arte (FUNARTE). The main topic addressed is how “the national” and “the popular” have been represented in Brazilian culture since the thirties. Marilena Chauí argues that until the sixties, nationalism and populism were concerns of governmental policy but that starting in that decade, they became a subject of the mass media, specifically television, which altered the meaning of representations of “nation” and “the people.” Pursuant to examination of such representations, Chauí establishes a typology of artists and intellectuals—one in which categories overlap at times—tied to the notion of the nationally-popular. She posits a “religious” dimension, where the intelligentsia is understood as missionaries; a “conceptual” dimension, for which nation and people are myths and symbols that provide society with an image of itself; an “economic” dimension born of a developmental-nationalist conception; and a “political” dimension, according to which the notions of nationhood and the people can only be obtained by means of the nation state.

Historian Adauto Novaes was the coordinator of this overview of studies of “the popular” and “the national” in Brazilian culture assembled between 1980 and 1982. The range of essays by intellectuals in different fields (philosophy, music, visual art, film, theater, literature, television, and radio) was gathered for publication in a six-volume work entitled O nacional e o popular na cultura brasilera. In this seminar, intellectual Marilena [de Souza] Chauí (b. 1941), who is well versed in philosophy, discusses the multiple difficulties with defining “the popular” and “the national,” difficulties related to the local versus the cosmopolitan, the national versus the international, form versus content, the critical versus the jingoistic, and the impossible reconciliation of the popular, the scientific, and the romantic. In the face of so many ambiguities, the research attempts to avoid generalizations, especially at the end of the dictatorship in power from 1964 to 1985—a moment when the military government conveyed its vision of these topics in terms of development, integration, and national security. The author asserts that this proves that “the popular” would not form part of history if it were not useful to a geopolitical strategy.