Notes on Lies, Secrets, and Truths in the Brazilian Congress

Abstract

In the past decades, many studies have focused on various kinds of elites in a complex society, as well as on processes of governance and state administration. This acumen has expanded the repertoire of social meanings in both politics and state processes. However, regarding the corresponding ethnographic information, much has yet to be done. Several articles show how difficult it is to study prestigious institutions and propose alternative research strategies, but very few address the impact such discomfort has on ethnography as a means of knowledge production, over and above participant observation. This paper attempts to link the very challenge of researching powerful individuals to the difficulty of personally dealing with them and writing about them and their hidden agendas. It focuses on the Brazilian Congress and on recent events in Brazilian politics, including the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff. It offers some possibilities for studying politics by taking seriously the ethnographic motto “from the native’s point of view.” Is this possible when the researcher has moral objections toward the “native”? How is one to do ethnographic work with people like politicians, who usually hold secrets and tell lies? What sort of knowledge and truth can we draw from such a “dialogue”?