An overview of the last 25 years in Brazil

from neoliberal resurgence to preventive counterrevolution

Abstract

In order to explicit a historical pathway, in an extended analytical framework, which includes both the confrontation of historical projects and different discursive and institutional guidelines, we will make use of some gramscian categories coming from the late Italian modernization in the 19th century (Rissorgimento) in order to ”“ under a neo-institucionalist and neo-marxist approach ”“ verify meanings of neoliberal continuities or embedding. This discussion was made possible and acceptable in the form of a historical essay in which the concatenation of the facts placed under analysis and comparison is sought. The text itself seeks to expose an extended cycle of economic and political ruptures and permanences in Brazil, starting in 1994, based on concepts and conceptualizations that only gain meaning in the proposed historical counterpoints. Just as there is a game between revolution and restoration in the concept of passive revolution, there is no contrast between event and structure in "long-term" neoliberalism in the context of pathways of market-disciplinary regulatory restructuring (neoliberalization processes) verified in Brazil in the last 25 years. We try, in short, to present those neoliberal resurgencies as decompositions of eligible and palpable alternatives, alternatives that were systematically sabotaged and neutralized. By historicizing the predominant regulatory pattern in capitalism in Brazil and addressing the political form that corresponded to it successively in that period, we intend to escape the essentialization or labeling of the theoretical-political debate about neoliberalism.