Manifesting Democracy?. Группа авторов

Swyngedouw, as for Rolnik, Brazil’s urban protests, along with those that took place elsewhere in the world, reveal the possibility of the revitalization of political agency and enactment and the possibility of formulating new ways to counteract the end of the political. This revitalization, though, should not be thought of as a step back in time. The post-politics thesis is clear that the interruption afforded by ‘the return of the political’ is a moment, and one that requires the subsequent slow materialization of new democratic and egalitarian practices going forward, not the imitation of an old order. To this extent, the phrase ‘political enactment’ is useful because it allows us to see that what has emerged since 2013 is not a new ontology of politics in Brazil, but instead new methods for the staging, or manifesting, of politics. It is important though to bear in mind, as noted earlier, that the new manifesting of politics that emerged in Brazil has been capitalized on by the right, which, rather than calling for the return of the political, aims to preclude it. If the original protests and protestors demanded a new way of doing politics and a new democratic order in Brazil, the right clamoured to go back to an authoritarian past, using the demonstrations to effectively reject democracy. So while the June 2013 Days revealed emancipatory possibilities, they were taken over by what Alain Badiou (2013) calls ‘a logic of negativity’ and ‘a will to destruction.’

      The emergence of the right in these demonstrations serves as a reminder that for all the similarities between Brazil and other international protests, the uncanny and ominous thing about the 2013 manifestações was that, unlike Egypt, they took place in a context of democracy not authoritarianism. While Egyptian protestors demanded freedom and democracy, this was already in place in Brazil. And in contrast to Greece and Spain, the Brazilian manifestações exploded in a context in which the country, according to the media at least, was in the midst of an economic boom, enjoying confidence in its future. Indeed, Brazil in 2013 was experiencing high numbers of employment, financial stability, and the emergence of a middle class. As Rolnik has written, the Brazilian June Days ‘disrupted and shook the order of a country that was seemingly going through a period of peace and prosperity’ (2013, p. 8). This was a country in which the last thing one would have expected was widespread protests, hence the inability to make sense of them at the time.

These divergences and differences between Brazil and other global movements of dissention serve as a reminder to avoid the essentialism that can result in homogenizing different international protests. Moreover, the adoption of the manifestações by the right in 2015, reminds us that we cannot have a simple utopian metanarrative about Brazil’s protests. Returning to the scene of 2013 and exploring distinct aspects of Brazil’s June Days, the chapters in this volume analyse and seek to understand the protests, and in doing so question their utopian metanarrative, a narrative that essentially decontextualizes the Brazilian demonstrations and their class-specific politics – a politics evident and foregrounded by the adoption of the manifestações by an authoritarian contingency. Each of the chapters zooms in on a particular context and expression of the June Days, situating distinct aspects of the protests in specific historical and geographical contexts. Written by scholars from different disciplines (philosophy, history, geography, political economy, urban planning, and cultural studies) and also by social activists, the volume brings together the often-divided realms of scholarship and activism to offer a variegated lens with which to understand and reflect on the 2013 manifestações and more broadly the question of democracy in Brazil.

This volume adds to what is surprisingly (given their magnitude) the sparse literature about Brazil’s June Days. The protests brought much immediate academic attention and critical commentary, not least in the country itself, as an attempt to comprehend what was occurring in Brazil (see, for example, the collection of essays in Rolnik 2013). Since 2013, however, there has been relatively little scholarly engagement with the manifestações. Social scientists have discussed the context and triggering events of the protests, noting, for example, the deep popular dissatisfaction with the quality of state services (Bucci 2016; Mendes 2017; Vicino and Fahlberg 2017). Others have examined the adoption of neoliberalism and changes in class as well as forms of class struggle (Purdy 2017; Saad-Filho 2013). The media and use of social media in convening the manifestações has also received interest (Martinez 2020; Landesman and Davis 2018; Porto and Brant 2015). This volume complements these studies; it also adds new dimensions to this small body of literature, with a rare focus, for instance, on urban planning, history, political philosophy, geography, cultural production and practices, as well as first-hand testimonies of the June events and accounts from social activists involved on the ground. Indeed the chapter that opens the volume, by social activists Marina Capusso and Matheus Preis, focuses on the role of the MPL which initiated the protests. In their chapter, the authors trace the roots of the MPL’s manifestações linking them to a broader history of urban struggles over public transport in Brazil. In a country where over 80% of the population lives in cities, the majority in urban peripheries, public transport is key to the daily lives of Brazilians, yet it is expensive and unreliable, something that people have historically protested against. As Capusso and Preis note, protests over transportation began as early as 1897 in Rio de Janeiro and took place again in 1947 in São Paulo, with similar demonstrations also occurring in various cities during the years of the military dictatorship. The start of the twentieth century too witnessed a number of battles over the right to public transport led by social movements in different regions of the country, namely the Revolta do Buzú (The Buzú Revolt) in 2003 in Bahia and the Revoltas da catraca (The Turnstile Revolt) in Florianópolis in 2004 and 2005. The opening chapter, therefore, foregrounds a history of urban struggle over the right to free public transport in Brazil that the MPL inherited. It also carefully notes that the MPL’s own particular struggles have global connections, linking the formation of the Brazilian collective in 2005 to the emergence of anti-capitalist movements that opposed economic globalization in the 1990s and early 2000s, notably the Zapatista uprising in Mexico and the protests in Seattle, which had a significant impact on ‘organizations that sought to strengthen social struggles outside the State.’

      Capusso and Preis’s chapter thus allows readers to see the local and global roots that sparked Brazil’s June Days. It additionally and crucially foregrounds the importance of the urban context for the 2013 manifestações, something that is drawn out and analysed by other contributors. Marilena Chaui, for instance, analyses demonstrations that took place exclusively in the city of São Paulo, noting that the manifestações in Brazil were not homogenous but rather were determined by the social and historical circumstances of particular cities. The key ignitor for the São Paulo protests was what Chaui terms an ‘urban hell,’ caused by a rise in the use of private cars, a rapid real-estate boom that caused the boundaries of the city to exponentially widen, social exclusion and inequality, and an inadequate public transportation system. While noting São Paulo’s history of urban struggles, Chaui also draws attention to differences between 2013 and previous protests in the city. Key here is a rejection of politics amongst demonstrators, meaning a broad criticism of political institutions. This criticism, Chaui says, is not unfounded given the hierarchical and exclusionary nature of Brazilian society, where political parties tend to be the private clubs of local and regional oligarchies that use public funds for their own private interests. Included in this critique is the Workers’ Party (PT), then governing, which Chaui says abandoned its relationship to social struggles and movements to become a bureaucratic, electoral machine. While Chaui highlights protestors’ rejection of politics, she also foregrounds the dangers of this, noting that the rejection of government and of institutional mediation can give rise to reactionary and even dictatorial manifestations, something that was palpable in the 2015 right-wing protests and that is clearly evident today in Brazil. A rejection of politics unarguably boosted Bolsonaro’s popularity in the 2018 elections, with many Brazilians preferring to vote for an outsider who openly spurned government and state institutions. In returning to 2013 then, Chaui presciently forecasts the present. Nevertheless, she carefully highlights the real possibility that the manifestações revealed, writing that ‘symbolically … protestors carried out a political event: they said no to the status quo, contesting the actions of government. They modified the common meaning of conservative discourse and words and, via inverting meanings and irreverence, they illustrated a possible form of political praxis with which to rethink power.’