The construction of an aesthetically and ideologically imagined Brazil

Abstract

Mário de Andrade recalls, twenty years after the Week of Modern Art, the founding character of a national spirit to be attributed to modernism, without which the awareness of Brazilian nationality would not have developed. Considering Benedict Anderson's thought about the concept of nation and national consciousness, we revisit some nodal points of Andrade’s work to critically problematize his conviction on the national question to be stemming from modernism. Another equally important author among the early modernists is Oswald de Andrade, who contributes to the attempt to form Brazil’s identity. The vanguardist content of the Brazilian modernist movement is also jeopardized with the confrontation between Marinetti's futurism and Oswald's absorption of it, emphasizing the modernist paradoxes in their avant-garde and national nuances. Close to the celebration of the centenary of the Week, we raise important critical questions about modernism, with no intention to disregard the movement's aesthetic-literary quality.