Ambivalences of the defeat

lessons and limits of Roberto Schwarz’s critique of populism

Abstract

The article proposes an interpretation of the essays and passages of Roberto Schwarz’s work which deal with the subjects of populism and the 1964’ coup d’etat in Brazil. Through an emphasis on the meaning of political defeat, we argue that Schwarz develops two distinct and intertwined ways of treating the matter: one familiar with the Marxist critique of populism, and the other going beyond those assumptions and founding itself on an openness characterized by the notion of democratization. Analyzing those two ways and its dissonances, we reach an ambivalent understanding of political defeat – ambivalence that operates analytically as an index of a closer reading of the Brazilian political life’s objective contradictions.