Emerging Scholars Colloquium

Emerging Scholars Colloquium

Categories: General, Lectures and Seminars | Intended for

Thursday, June 15, 2017

3:00 PM - 5:00 PM | Add to calendar

A715 Loeb Building

1125 Colonel By Dr, Ottawa, ON

Contact Information

Kimberley Séguin, 613-520-2600 x. 2583, KimberleySeguin@cunet.carleton.ca

Registration

No registration required.

Cost

Free

About this Event

Host Organization: Department of Sociology and Anthropology
More Information: Please click here for additional details.

Sabrina Fernandes (Ph.D. in Sociology) will be discussing the Crisis of Praxis: Leftist Fragmentation in Brazil.

One notices an international trend around the strengthening and prominence of right-wing parties and far-right groups. Recent electoral gains around the world point to the need for the left to regroup to deal with the challenges of this right-wing offensive, even if at least to contain the human rights and protections advanced in the past before they get taken away. This is the situation of the left in Brazil today, which becomes more complicated if we consider how fragmented it is and how this fragmentation is part of a larger crisis of praxis.

There is consensus inside the Brazilian left regarding its fragmentation, but the scenario requires a careful analysis of fragmentation since the conjunctural change of June 2013. The same can be said about depoliticization, explained here through the phenomena of post-politics and ultra-politics, and which is arguably the marker of the difficulties the left has found to mobilize the working class even as this class is under attack.

The concept of a crisis of praxis is proposed to attend to the misalignment between theory and practice at the leftist organizational level that has led to melancholia and distance from the consciousness of the class, despite the potential held by new mobilizations – both spontaneous and organized. It is argued that without properly addressing fragmentation and depoliticization, the left will have trouble appealing to the working class, especially given the conclusions of a crisis of representation that was exposed in Brazil in June 2013 and capitalized on by right-wing conservative forces in order to foster political instability in their favour.