A Quiet (Brazilian) Revolution in Critical Theory

Written, originally, over twenty years ago and since somewhat revised, “A Quiet (Brazilian) Revolution in Critical Theory” poses and attempts to answer the questions (1) of how to understand and assess the literary and critical theory of Roberto Schwarz in relation to the postcolonial theoryPostcolonial theory that was at its intellectual and institutional peak in the 1990s, and (2)of what, hypothetically, the critical result might have been had Schwarz’s thinking been worked into the circumscribed postcolonial theoretical universe? This it does via a parallel and contrastive consideration of Gayatri Spivak’sSpivak, Gayatri concept of “catachresis,”Catachresis/catachreses as presented in her 1993 work, Outside in the Teaching Machine, and Schwarz’s concept of “misplaced idea.”Schwarz, Roberto What at first might appear to be the striking similarity between the two ideas, however, only further dramatizes the more profound, underlying difference between Spivak’s deconstructionistDeconstruction and Schwarz’s Hegelian-MarxistMarxism approaches to problems of interpretationInterpretation and critique in a neocolonial context. Postcolonial theory’sPostcolonial theory misstep, I argue—at least in its onetime Spivakian vein—is not to problematize what the imperial peripheryPeriphery typically experiences as a historical inadequation of concepts such as, say, liberalLiberal democracy (a problem that she adroitly captures via the figure of “catachresis”Catachresis/catachreses) but its failure or reluctance to bring the Marxian theory and critique of ideology to bear on the catachrestic puzzle itself and thus to think not just the “misplaced idea”Schwarz, Roberto in its positive content but also and equally its accompanying effect of “misplacedness” both as ideological mediationsMediation. This is the step taken by Schwarz, given additional theoretical articulation in Schwarzian concepts such as “ideology to the second degree,”Ideologies of the second degree and helping to explain why, a generation later, postcolonial theoryPostcolonial theory seems increasingly dated while the actuality of Schwarz’s thinking blazes ever more brightly.