Un instante indómito

Abstract

The essay follows the trail of the “white column,” an architectural expression of the sovereign will to give a definitive form to the national identity, tracing its trajectory from the construction of Brasília (1956) to the Castello Branco dictatorship (1970). The essay explores the processes of formation (Didi-Huberman) and deformation of such communitarian architectonics and regards Brasília not as the monumental co-substantiation of national identity (as proposed by modernist/populist rhetoric), but as an example of a deferred modernity. The article explores the relationship between architecture and sovereignty using différance as a movement of inquiry and the white column as a body of analysis. This is an attempt, in short, to think through the historical and conceptual relations between architecture, labor and race. The text is divided into three sections, each comprising a certain phantasmagoria of the white column, understood as the unfinished formation of modernity. In the first part, the theoretical components required to identify the formations that connect the extractive system of the sugar cane engenho with the new monumentality of Brasília are presented. Focusing on the colonnade designed by Niemeyer for the Palácio da Alvorada, the second part analyzes the relationship between suspension tectonics and the 1964 coup d’état. The last part investigates the playful reformulation of the white column in Ernesto Neto’s Leviathan Thot and its deject exploration, together with visual artist Artur Barrio’s trouxas ensangrentadas.