Tradition, modernity and individualism in Brazil: the dilemmas of an official interpretation

Abstract

My objective here is underlining the quandaries of the culturalist interpretation of Gilberto Freyre and Roberto DaMatta about Brazil, for being two authors who had reached great influence in our national imaginary, answering as that officially, in their respectives times, for the questions concerning our nationality. My thesis is that their incessant search for the definition of a singular character that conferred an identity to Brazil finishes for ignoring its contextualization in the modern cosmopolitan occidental reality. Their thesis concerning the brazilian singular traditionalism distort the form as the modern institutions come to Brazil, resulting in a pathological definition concerning our individualism and omitting our insertion in the occidental cosmopolitan morality.