From the "Formation" to the "Net" paradigm: philosophy and culture after modernization

Abstract

To reconstruct how academic philosophy became implanted in Brazil means foremost to present the process as that of the modernization of the country from de 1930s on, specially through the position that the university progressively acquired in this project. Not only in the case of philosophy, the main determinant was the social struggle for this project to be tied to democratic and justice claims. This was a common ground for a multitude of different regional dynamics that cannot be reduced to a single pattern or model, a ground that outlasted even the military dictatorship (1964-1985). This progressively built common ground, the “formation” paradigm, although still very influential until today, was theoretically and politically undermined – as was the national-developmentalist project to which it was tied – by the global transformations of capitalism since the early 1980s. To conclude, it is argued that the “formation” paradigm must accordingly be overcome by a new way of understanding the country and its new position in the global context.