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Reading and Discursive Intensities: On the Situation of Postmodern Reception in Brazil

Author(s): Silviano Santiago


Reviewed work(s):
Source: boundary 2, Vol. 20, No. 3, The Postmodernism Debate in Latin America (Autumn,
1993), pp. 194-202
Published by: Duke University Press
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Reading
and Discursive Intensities: On the Situation of
Postmodern
Reception
in Brazil
Silviano
Santiago
The distinction between
spectacle (or
cultural
event)
and simulacrum
(or electronically produced
mass
entertainment)
is common
among
critics
who anchor themselves in classic modernist values in order to understand
the historical moment we are
passing through,
the
moment,
that
is,
of the
postmodern. According
to these
critics,
in the field of
symbolic
or cultural
production, postmodernity
is the
overwhelming
and abusive
proliferation
of
electronic
images,
of
simulacra,
to the detriment of
spectacle.
In Fredric Jameson's
image,1
the field of
experience
of
postmoder-
nity
is bounded
by
the walls of an electronic version of Plato's cave: The
postmodern subject
no
longer
can
gaze directly,
with its own
eyes,
at the
1. A condensed version of
Jameson's postmodernism essay
was
published
in Brazil in
the
journal
Novos Estudos CEBRAP
(Sao Paolo)
12
(June 1985),
and became one of
the focuses for the
wide-ranging
debate on
postmodernity
that ensued.
(For this, see,
for
example, my
own earlier
essay "O
narrador
posmoderno,"
in Las
malhas
da Letra
(Sao
Paulo:
Companhia
das
Letras, 1989);
Roberto
Schwarz,
"Brazilian
Culture:
Nationalism
by
Elimination,"
New Left Review 167
(1988);
Luiz Costa
Lima,
"Posmodernidade: contra-
ponto tropical,"
in his Pensando nos
tr6picos
(Rio
de Janeiro: Rocco, 1991);
Roberto
Cardoso Oliveira et
al., Pos-modernidade
(Campinas: UNICAMP, 1988);
and Heloisa
Buarque
de Hollanda
ed., Pos-modernidade
e
politica (Rio
de Janeiro:
Rocco, 1991).
boundary
2
20:3, 1993.
Copyright
K 1993
by
Duke
University
Press. CCC 0190-3659/93/$1.50.
Santiago
/
Reading
and Discursive Intensities 195
real world of the
referent,
the
thing-in-itself,
but is
obliged,
instead,
to find
mental
images
of the world on the walls of its confinement. For
Jameson,
the triadic
conception
of the
sign (signifier, signified, referent)
remains in-
tact. Instead of
privileging
the
referent,
as both traditional and modernist
theories of realism
did,
postmodernism
affirms the
exclusivity
and
omnipres-
ence of the electronic
image-that
is,
in
semiotic terms,
of the
signifying
chain. For the theorists of
symbolic production
in the era of late
capitalism,
reality (if
the
concept may
be
permitted
in the
company
of the
postmodern)
appears
more and more in
representations
of
representations.
The distinction between
spectacle
and simulacrum is correct and
should be maintained. It carries with
it, however,
an
excessively negative
evaluation of
postmodernity.
One
rapidly
becomes aware that the distinction
is used
strategically
to
privilege
the realm of direct
experience,
in
corpore,
and to
disqualify experience
obtained
through technologically produced
images,
in absentia.
Thus,
spectacle (as presented
in
museums, theaters,
concert
halls, etc.)
is
"authentic" culture,
while simulacrum
(by
which is
meant,
above
all, television)
is a bastard
product
of cultural commercializa-
tion.
Spectacle
leads to
reflection,
while simulacrum serves
only
to kill time.
The distinction
aims,
finally,
to blame the mass media for the
contemporary
debasement of
public
life. For its
proponents,
what is at stake is the
preser-
vation,
at all
costs,
in a democratic or would-be democratic
society,
of the
possibility
of
public opinion,
a
possibility they
believe can be attained
only
through
a
devastating critique
of the mass media and the
proliferation
of
images they
furnish for mass
consumption.
In a
culturally "underdeveloped" country
such as
Brazil,
the
problem
represented by
the
spectacle/simulacrum
distinction becomes
particularly
acute. It also exists in the advanced
countries,
but less
so,
because these
countries
developed
mass
public
education in the nineteenth
century
and
underwent a
subsequent
democratization
(in
relative
terms)
of
higher
edu-
cation,
particularly
in the decade of the sixties in this
century-a phenome-
non connected to the cultural radicalism of that
period, which,
as we
know,
had as its
epicenters Berkeley
and the Sorbonne.
In
Brazil, by contrast,
not even mass
literacy
was instituted at its
"proper"
moment-that
is,
by
the end of the nineteenth
century.
This his-
torical
lag
is at the core of our national
classic,
Os Sertoes
(1902).
Its
author,
Euclides da
Cunha,
suggested
in
vain,
after the "crime" of
Canudos,2
that
2. Under the
leadership
of a
holy
man called Antonio Conselheiro
(Antonio
the Coun-
cilor),
the
poor peasantry
of the interior
(sertao)
of the state of Bahia
staged
a rebellion
against
the central
government
in the town of Canudos. The
military
destruction after a
196
boundary
2 / Fall 1993
the task of reconstruction of the ruined
sertao,
or
backlands,
be entrusted
to teachers. He believed that if the
young Republic
wanted to take
respon-
sible
steps
in its desire to modernize
Brazil,
it should send teachers to all
corners of the
country
instead of
relying
on successive
military expeditions.
If the conflict between
spectacle
and simulacrum in the advanced
countries does not
always
result in the
victory
of the
first,
it at least
pro-
duces a stalemate.
Libraries, museums, theaters,
concert
halls,
and books
compete-more importantly,
coexist-with television. There exists a broad
public capable
of
paying
for
extremely expensive spectacles
like
grand
opera,
and a
larger, less-privileged (economically, geographically,
and cul-
turally) public
for the retransmission of
opera
on television or videocassette.
The
globalization
of
culture,
a characteristic
postmodern phenomenon
today
in the
hegemonic
countries,
is
only possible
thanks to the techno-
logical
means of
reproduction
of
images.
On the other
hand,
certain
"spec-
tacles" no
longer
exist as
such,
because
they originate
in the first
place
as
simulacra
(that
is,
they
are
produced solely by
electronic
transmission).
In
Brazil,
the debate between
spectacle
and
simulacrum,
cultural
modernism and mass consumer
society, already
has a
history.
It
begins
with,
and
passes through,
the discussion of the
question
of the
extremely
limited
consumption
of books and literature
by
the Brazilian
public.
In an
essay published
in
1973,
when the
military dictatorship
was in the
process
of
restructuring literacy
education,3 our
greatest
modern
critic,
Antonio
Can-
dido,
discussed the
relationship
between literature and
underdevelopment,
calling
attention to the fact that in Latin
America,
there existed a
"prior nega-
tive condition" for the
enjoyment
of
literature,
that condition
being
the small
size of the
reading public.
The modern writer of the
underdeveloped periph-
ery,
Candido
felt,
was fated to be a
"producer
for
minorities,"
given
that the
masses were
"marginalized
in a folkloric era of oral
communication."4
The dilemma Candido identified so
starkly
seemed to have a corre-
spondingly simple
solution: For the market in books to
improve
and for Bra-
brutal and
prolonged siege
of the
town,
which da Cunha witnessed as a
military engineer,
was
justified
on
"positivist" grounds by
the
newly proclaimed Republic
as a
question
of
civilization versus barbarism. Os sertoes has been
published
in
English
under the title
Rebellion in the Backlands
(Chicago: University
of
Chicago
Press, 1944);
the incident is
also the basis of
Vargas
Llosa's recent novel,
The War at the End of the World.
3. The
dictatorship
created
something
called the Movimiento Brasileiro de
Alfabetizacao
(MOBRAL)
to
replace
the
popular literacy workshops championed by
Paolo Freire.
4. Antonio
Candido,
"Literatura e
subdesenvolvimiento," Argumento
1
(Sao Paulo) (Octo-
ber
1973).
Santiago
/
Reading
and Discursive Intensities 197
zilians to
emancipate
themselves as
citizens,
it should be
enough
for them
to become literate.
Already
in
1973, however,
Candido found this conclu-
sion
problematic
because of the acute and
(for him) pernicious
interference
of the mass media in the relation between
literary high
culture and its
newly
alphabetized potential
audience. At the
time,
he wrote:
As
they acquire literacy
and are absorbed in the
process
of urbani-
zation, [the masses] pass
into the domain of
radio, television,
comic
books,
constituting
thus the basis of mass culture....
Alphabetiza-
tion therefore does not increase
proportionally
the number of readers
of
literature,
as we
think;
rather it
impels
the
newly
literate,
together
with the still
illiterate, directly
from the
stage
of oral folklore into the
kind of urban folklore that mass culture in effect is.
In other
words,
in
Brazil,
or more
generally
for Candido in the under-
developed
countries as
such,
the
newly
literate or semiliterate masses
pro-
duced
by
modernization would
bypass
the book and
literary high
culture on
the
way,
so to
speak,
to television. The
costly project
of
phonetic alpha-
betization mounted
by
the
dictatorship
would be of little or no use for the
social and intellectual
improvement
of the
population.
This was the mes-
sage ciphered
in his 1973 article.
Candido's conclusion was
anguished
and
compelling: Any process
of
phonetic alphabetization
will
encounter,
in the countries of the
periphery,
a voracious and determined
enemy,
mass
culture,
which creates what he
called a
"catechism
in reverse." Jesuit catechism in Brazil
during
coloni-
zation
depended
on ecclesiastical drama and
spectacle
to convert Indians
and Africans to
Christianity
and the dominant Western
values;
similarly,
Candido
felt,
the mass
media,
in our own
day, employs
the
production
of
simulacra to indoctrinate the
peasantry
and urban
proletariat. Through
tech-
niques
such as subliminal
suggestion,
the media
"impose
values which
are in themselves dubious and in
any
case
quite
different from those the
cultured
person
seeks in art and literature." Since this is a catechism
"in
reverse," however,
it
was,
for
Candido,
even less
progressive
than its colo-
nial
antecedent,
which had the
basically positive
and
high-minded goal
of
instilling
the best of Christian
thought
and
European high
culture. The cate-
chism of the media aims instead at
restoring
the mass of
poor
Brazilians to
a state of barbarism.
A
progressive modernist,
Candido believed in the
Enlightenment
principle
that access to art works and their fruition as cultural forms
signi-
fied a
higher stage
in the
process
of human
emancipation. Consequently,
198
boundary
2 / Fall 1993
he saw:
(1)
the mass media as the
great enemy
that had to be
fought by
educators and intellectuals who were
genuinely
committed to the
project
of
modernity;
and
(2)
the traditional values
imposed by high
culture as the
only
values worth
preserving,
in
spite
of the fact that the
economic, social,
and
political
state of both the
contemporary
world and
contemporary
Brazil
suggested
a
different,
and
perhaps
easier,
road. There befell the defenders
of
high
culture such as Candido the
inglorious,
and
difficult,
task of resist-
ing
the lure of the mass media in a
country
with an illiterate or semiliterate
majority.
The sense that this task was
ultimately
doomed to failure
posed
a
question
Candido's article neither
posed
nor answered
directly:
In a
country
such as
Brazil,
was
literacy
as
such,
in
fact,
less than useless in
producing
an "informed"
citizenry?
Let me
approximate
an answer via three criticisms of Candido's
article,
abstracting
its
argument
from the historical moment in which it
ap-
peared
and which conditioned and
justified
its
language
and concerns.
My
dialogue
here is with
my contemporaries, although
the current defenders
of
Enlightenment
values in the
underdeveloped
world have not come
up
with a more
devastating
rationale than Candido's. The
acquisition
of liter-
acy,
as
they
understand
this, was, indeed,
the
path
of human
emancipation
a
century ago,
when the access to modern
knowledge depended crucially
on the
degree
of
reading
skills an individual
possessed.
In the nineteenth
century,
and at the
beginning
of our
own,
there was no access to even
the bare minimum of information
necessary
for an
understanding
of the
variety
and
complexity
of human societies and their current and historical
configurations
without books or
magazines.
This situation
began
to
change,
however,
with the advent of film
newsreels seen
by
millions of
spectators
in different
parts
of the
world;
it
changed
even more with the
documentary (it
is
enough
to mention the im-
portance
of this
paradidactic genre
in a
country
such as
England
in the
1930s,
and the role
played by
the Brazilian Alberto Cavalcanti in its
pro-
duction);
and it
changed
once and for all with the massive introduction of
television into the households of the
literate, illiterate,
and semiliterate alike.
Granted this
point,
however,
there arises a double task for those
of us who
propose
to
go beyond
an
Enlightenment
model of cultural citi-
zenship:
on the one
hand, rethinking
what is meant
by literacy
in a mass
society
such as
Brazil,
which did not
go through compulsory alphabetiza-
tion at the
appropriate stage
of its national
development
and
which,
by
the
same
token,
did not
participate
in the
expansionary
boom in
higher
educa-
tion in the sixties; on the other hand, determining
what is meant, or should
Santiago
/
Reading
and Discursive Intensities 199
be
meant,
by reading today,
when it is the "texts" furnished
by
the mass
media that are the main form of cultural
consumption.
A
person
of
good
faith,
a
citizen,
even one who is
illiterate,
has a
quantity
of information at his or her
disposal today
that
exceeds, by
far,
the
quantity
of information available to a
person
of
good
faith,
a
citizen,
even one who was
literate,
fifty years ago.
The
problem-then
and now-is
knowing
how to transform this
excessive, anarchic,
and
always
biased infor-
mation into
knowledge,
how to channel it so that the
person-citizen
can use
it to understand and to intervene in the
society
and world he or she lives in.
What we now know is that in the
underdeveloped
world,
this will not
happen
through
the
immensely
difficult
strategy
of
phonetic alphabetization
alone.
A second criticism follows from the first and has to do with a contra-
diction in the
contemporary
field of aesthetic
judgment
itself.
High
culture
(that is,
the culture of the written book or
text,
of the
"unique,"
or
"original,"
artwork) increasingly
valorizes and
incorporates
cultural
products
that less
and less
depend
on the distinctions between elite and
pop, original
and
copy,
oral and written. It would be
impossible,
for
example,
for a reader to
capture accurately
the sense of Manuel
Puig's
fiction without a
knowledge
of radio
soap operas (Boquitas pintadas)
or
Hollywood
"B" films
(The
Kiss
of the
Spider Woman).
As Jameson and other theorists of
postmodernism
point out,
it is
becoming increasingly
difficult to make out the
dividing
line be-
tween
avant-garde high
culture and commercial art. The artists themselves
are
investing
their creative
imaginations
in new areas:
They
are
discovering
that
they
have to
develop
new
ways
of
"reading"
cultural
productions
that
are not embodied in
writing, understanding
that there exists in the mass
dissemination of simulacra a universe that needs to be
explored
in order
to
develop
an aesthetic
sensibility
and
strategies
that are relevant to the
present. They are,
in
effect,
telling
their
"readers,"
"You have to learn to
appreciate
other forms of
'reading,'
as we
did,
in order to be our
contempo-
raries. You should
approach pop
culture with fewer
preconceptions."
The
absence of
preconceptions
is the condition sine
qua
non of
any
aesthetic
experience
whatsoever.
A third criticism of the defenders of cultural modernism concerns
a
symptomatic problem
in their
analysis
of television.
They
confuse the
medium as such with the
ways
it is
being
used
by foreign
and Brazilian
cultural industries. There is in this a veiled form of
obscurantism,
prop-
erly pilloried
in some of
Pynchon's novels, which,
in
effect,
amounts to a
prejudice against technological progress as such, as if it were a matter of
being against
the
airplane
because it
permitted
the
dropping
of the atom
200
boundary
2 /
Fall
1993
bomb on Hiroshima.
(What
deserves our
total,
unlimited
disapproval
is the
atom bomb and the fact of its
being
used
against
a civilian
population. By
contrast,
the
airplane
is a vehicle that can be used to
help
more
quickly
the
victims of a
disaster.)
In
the case of the mass
media,
the confusion between
product
and
medium derives from the
privileging
in modernist criticism of the
analysis
of the
production
of cultural commodities rather than of their
reception.
First,
the medium is a
priori
devalued,
although
the
problem
of
quality,
in
many
cases,
has to do with the
product.
Second,
and even more
important
and
disheartening,
with the critical devaluation of the
product,
its
"reader"
is also a
priori
devalued. The current theorists of classical modernism are
prone
to state
categorically
that
only
a second-class
spectator
or an illiter-
ate could be interested
(in anything
but an ironic or distanced
way)
in this
type
of
product.
Medium,
producer, product,
and
spectator
are thus con-
fined to a
low-quality ghetto,
in a total communication
system
that,
in
turn,
is
viewed with
complete pessimism by
these theorists. From the confusion of
medium and
product,
it follows that the simulacrum is
nothing
more than a
diabolical
part
of this
system,
which, by contagion,
also becomes diabolical.
As the
popular saying goes:
If
you stop
here,
you
must dance here
(vacilou,
dancou).
Let me take as an
example
of this confusion the case of a Catholic
Mass
(spectacle)
that is broadcast on television
(simulacrum).
If we em-
phasize
the mode of
production
of the
simulacrum,
we will see a team of
technicians
who,
with their
lights
and
equipment
and their loud
voices,
are
disrupting
the service and
distracting
the fervor and contrition of the church-
goers.
If we
emphasize
its mode of
reception,
however,
we will observe that
many
of the
participants
in
corpore
are not that interested or involved in the
service,
are there
perhaps only
for status reasons. On the other
hand,
there
is
nothing
to
prevent marginal
and
economically
or
geographically underpri-
vileged
sectors of the
population
from
participating
with
genuine
conviction
and
feeling, through
the
broadcast,
in a
religious
ritual that would otherwise
have been restricted to the
congregation
in the cathedral in the
city. Only
through
the simulacrum is what Walter
Benjamin
called "the
experience
of
the
poor" possible today.
It is a
question,
then,
of
locating
the tonic of
possibility
in the act of
reading.
This should be understood as an
activity
that transcends the ex-
perience
of
knowledge
transmitted
by phonetic writing.
In a mass
society
of
peripheral capitalism
such as
Brazil,
we should look for the
ways
to
improve
the
interpretation
of both
spectacles
and simulacra
by ordinary
citizens.
Santiago
/
Reading
and Discursive
Intensities
201
This means that the
production
of
meaning
ceases to be a
monopoly
of
restricted minorities who
are,
in conditions of
inequality,
better trained and
thus more
sophisticated.
With that
change,
the
singular,
or
authoritarian,
interpretation
made
by
a
legitimizing group (traditionally, professional
critics
or
experts)
also
disappears. Meaning
in
symbolic
and/or cultural
produc-
tion becomes
plural
and unattainable in its
plurality.
The "total"
meaning (or
the
totality
of
meanings)
becomes the
product
of a
purposiveness
that is
no
longer necessarily
articulated
by
the traditional institutions of
knowledge
and their
acolytes.
This shift in
perspective
involves more than a theoretical
question
that can be resolved
simply by "taking thought,"
above all because we still
situate ourselves as intellectuals in the hermeneutics of
profundity
instituted
by modernity.
I limit
myself
here, then,
to
simply suggesting
that it is time
for us to rethink
radically
the
problem
of cultural
enjoyment
and evaluation
in mass
society.
More
immediately,
however,
we need to confront the edu-
cational
propaganda
of the current
government
in
Brazil,
which retains an
Enlightenment
model of
literacy. (I
am
referring
here to the
literacy program
that Collor's
Ministry
of Education tried to
implement
before his
impeach-
ment,
which found a
powerful ally
in
Brizola,
the social democratic
governor
of the state of Rio de
Janeiro.)
It is unthinkable that the head of a house-
hold,
a
worker,
who
every night
informs himself or herself
(well
or
badly)
via
TV news about what is
happening
in
Brasilia,
or
Berlin,
or
Moscow,
or the
Persian Gulf-it is unthinkable that such a
person
should be
pressured
in
the adult
stage
of his or her life to become literate in order to
qualify
as an
emancipated
citizen. Such a
person
cannot be
compared
with the Citizen
of the Future
posited
at the end of the nineteenth
century.
Adult
literacy
training,
in the form that was
promoted by
Collor's
Ministry
of
Education,
represents
a
step away
from,
rather than a means of access
to,
full citizen-
ship. Literacy
courses taken at home after an
exhausting workday,
with the
television
on,
are a waste of
time,
pure
and
simple.
What is
needed, instead,
is to find
ways
to turn the adult worker into a more conscious reader of his
or her
symbolic
and cultural
universe,
of the walls of the electronic cave. On
these are
"printed"
the
evening
news as well as the
novel,
the broadcast
of a classical music concert as well as a debate about
public policy among
intellectuals on educational television.
Finally,
we should be aware that
simply demanding
a
priori
better
quality
from the cultural
producers
of simulacra is not
going
to advance
things
much. Better
programs, given
a
public
that is not
prepared
to receive
them, won't work. "A failure with the
public,"
the
Ibope (Brazil's version of
202
boundary
2 / Fall 1993
the Nielsen
Index)
will
say,
and
everyone
will echo this. Nor will the im-
provement
of the
quality
of mass cultural
products
come from the
pressure
of the state
(this particular one,
or even one that is more
progressive politi-
cally)
on the
groups
that control their
production,
or from the transference
to the
state,
by
the
state,
of that control. It will
come, instead,
from the im-
provement
in the level of taste of the
spectators,
of the
consumers,
and this
must be the task of an education oriented to our times. The
spectators-
that
is,
the new
"readers,"
more or less
literate,
more or less
demanding,
more or less
expert
in their
experience
of mass media-are who will define
the standards of excellence in the
future,
as the critical establishment and
the
university
did in the
past.
It is not a
question
of
excluding
criticism
and the
university
but of
taking away
the
authority
that
they imagined
con-
ferred on
them,
the sole or final
power
of
judgment.
Every literary
critic knows that a bad book can
produce
a
good
read-
ing,
and a
good
book a mediocre one.
Hardly anyone
insists
anymore
that
only
the classics should be read. The
political
discussions of the 1980s
taught
us that so-called universal values are bound
up
with
ethnic, social,
sexual,
et
cetera,
centralisms. The
struggle
of subaltern and
minority groups
for their own
identity
and
rights passes necessarily through
the search
for,
and
recovery
of,
cultural
objects
that have been
judged
inferior
by
the mod-
ern tradition on the basis of its own centered
("objective")
standards of
taste. The value of a cultural
object
itself, however, depends
on the sense
that it is
given by
a new
reading,
above all if this deconstructs
prior readings
that are based
only
on
prejudice
and inertia.
Spectacle
and simulacrum
are, therefore,
neither
good
nor bad in
themselves. It
depends. They
are there for the
impassioned
reason of the
citizen-reader. Or
they
are not.

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