Raízes do Brasil e Macunaíma: narrativas e ressonâncias em torno da identidade nacional

Abstract

This work is about the concept of cordiality developed by Sérgio Buarque de Holanda in Raízes do Brasil, comparing it with Mario de Andrade’s Macunaíma. In order to achieve it, we must consider the period when such works were produced; they were both written during a context where possible Brazilian identities representations were being searched, in the 1920s and 1930s, under the perspective of Modernism. The cordiality, such as expressed by Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, is a characteristic of our social formation, which was contrary to ritualism and aimed the affectivity. Such characteristic was not synonymous of “kindness”, but it meant only that the national character opposed itself the most from the modern rationality, preferring the actions from the heart. The analysis of our formation by Sérgio Buarque de Holanda privilege the psychosocial aspects and also highlights the personalism, patrimonialism, moral aversion to work, lack of hierarchy sense and social cohesion, besides the lack of ethnic sense. This perception can be related to the work of Mário de Andrade, where an emotional based ethics is valued by the main character. He is characterized by having an adventurous spirit, also by being careless, luxurious and personalist. Regarding this perspective, the studied authors consider our nationality in a formation process, creating a representation of what would better correspond to a Brazilian national identity. Authors such as Benedict Anderson, Homi Bhabha, Stuart Hall and Silviano Santiago, present a perspective that approaches those literary and historiographical narratives as ways to narrate the action, tensioned in between the rural and the urban, the ancient and the modern, the homogeneity and the difference.