ABSTRACT
The task of the present chapter is to explore how the development of contemporary Brazilian epistemology is embedded in a specific moment of passive revolution, namely, the first Vargas government. The period 1930–45 is thus perceived as a foundational time for the forging of Brazilian intellectual discourse. To this end, this chapter explores the advantageous position of intellectuals as the main subjects of modernization policies promoted by the state in the nineteenth and twentieth century. By doing so, it uncovers how intellectual praxis in the early twentieth century was part of a political platform that sought to reclaim the place of pride they had enjoyed in empire politics. It builds on arguments presented in Chapter 1 by investigating the relationship between the place of intellectuals in Brazilian society and the sort of knowledge that has been produced in the country. As such, the theme running through the chapter is that knowledge production in Brazil has been historically infused with the perspectives of the class that has produced it. Intellectuals of the first quarter of the twentieth century exercised dissent against the liberal republican system (1889–1930) by defending the centralization of the state. Notwithstanding the conservative turn that took over the first Vargas government after 1934, intellectual adherence to the state project remained almost unaffected. By helping to shape and pragmatically taking part in the modernization effort of the 1930s and 1940s, this generation voluntarily helped forge the institutional arrangements where both knowledge and subjectivities of modernization would be negotiated in the decades to come. However, in order to understand how politically crucial the Vargas government was to Brazilian knowledge production, this chapter first explores the imbricate relationship between politics and intellectual production prior to the 1930s.
