Spectacles of multiculturalism: Brazilian national identity, FIFA, and hegemonies of whiteness at the 2014 World Cup ceremonies

Abstract

This article examines the 2014 World Cup opening ceremonies in Brazil as part of practices of neoliberal multiculturalism. While intertwined racial and class inequalities remain embedded within sports structures and Brazilian society, the FIFA ceremonies elided difference while purporting multiculturalism as a value. As the state, FIFA, and global corporations co-opted multiculturalism for nation-building narratives and for global profit, the ceremonies repackaged colonial fantasies to regulate non-white bodies and to normalize neoliberal multiculturalism. Through the marketing and consumption of culture, racial hierarchies were performed that promoted whiteness as markers of modernity and indigeneity and Blackness as tradition fixed in the past. Thus, the hegemonic Brazilian narrative of racial democracy and global multiculturalism were reinforced as unifying rather than perpetuating inequalities.