This article is an attempt at formal analysis as immanent criticism, a kind of close reading describing and commenting on Júlio Bressane's film O anjo nasceu (The Angel Was Born, 1969) as an internal rupture within Cinema Novo, operating mainly on a formal level. Instead of the expressive mobility of “a camera in hand and an idea in mind” and the narrative dynamism associated with mobility around popular characters or their representatives — such as in Glauber Rocha's Terra em Transe (1967) and so many other Cinema Novo works — the film constructs a rigid, frontal, and orthogonal visual space, as if viewed from infinity.

Focusing Chico Buarque’s Budapeste, this reading seeks to discuss different issues involving literary production and the commodification of literature, implying relationships between art and artistic counterfeiting.

Esta é uma resenha crítica, descritiva e pormenorizada de No soy un robot, livro de ensaios do escritor mexicano Juan Villoro, publicado em 2024, cujo objetivo principal é oferecer perspectivas atuais, debates e provocações sobre a cultura da letra na sociedade digital. Todos os questionamentos do autor afetam a relação proposta pelo título desta revista: Literatura e Sociedade. Como, hoje, a leitura, e em especial, a leitura de textos literários, poderia nos resgatar dos problemas produzidos pelo mau uso da tecnologia? Como nos alertaria a respeito de seus riscos e excessos?

True to his fragmentary method, Adorno does not presente a systematic critique of progress in his writings. He did, however, outline an admirable attempt at a dialectical problematization of the notion of progress, beyond bourgeois myths and reactionary nostalgia.

O ensaio faz uma leitura benjaminiana de duas exposições de arte em dois momentos em que um olhar anacrônico de desconhecimento se mostra gesto simbólico no tempo-espaço: em 1931, o painel de Cícero Dias em seu gesto de resistência ao modernismo sulista ao voltar-se ao nordeste provinciano para salvar momentos (imagens dialéticas) poéticos infantis do esquecimento que se presentificam. Em 1944, a exposição dos artistas brasileiros modernistas em Londres equipara-se, em seu gesto de resistência artístico, ao gesto de infamiliaridade/desconhecimento com que é recebido ao olhar dos ingleses... Voltas anacrônicas que despertam um presente crítico na arte, através das interrupções de um contínuo da história.

This article explores how Bertolt Brecht’s ideas about epic theater may have influenced Roberto Schwarz’s interpretation of Machado de Assis, especially his view of the reader’s role in A Master on the Periphery of Capitalism (1990). The article argues that Roberto Schwarzidentifies a strategy in Machado’s prose analogous to Brecht’s estrangement effect. While Brecht breaks with theatrical illusion to provoke reflection, Machado destabilizes readers with an unreliable and ironic narrator, forcing them to question naturalized social relations. The analysis reveals that, when examining Machado, Roberto Schwarz implicitly mobilizes Brechtian categories (albeit in a negative sense). This demonstrates that both authors developed avant-garde forms of politicising art in different contexts.

No seminário “USP 90 anos: Antonio Candido”, ocorrido em outubro de 2024, no departamento de Letras da FFLCH-USP, Paulo Arantes, falando sobre o livro Formação da literatura brasileira (1959), contou ter percebido com espanto que, entre colegas e mestres no histórico prédio da rua Maria Antonia, onde funcionava a Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras da USP, com exceção de duas ou três pessoas, o célebre livro não fora lido completamente tanto quanto faria supor a celeuma e os vários equívocos que causou (o mais famoso deles e síntese das discussões de uma década antes ficou sendo o livro O sequestro do barroco, de Haroldo de Campos, de 1989).

Entrevista realizada no dia 14 de março de 2025, na residência do autor, em São Paulo (SP).

The idea of carrying out an anatomy of Roberto Schwarz finds its justification in the paradox that, while it is increasingly internationally acclaimed, the intelectual contexto in which such acclaim takes place is shaped by theoretical presuppositions and interpretative practices utterly at odds with the spirit of Schwarz’s writings. (The article form itself is already witness to this.) By characterizing the way Schwarz’s critical imagination works, rather than insisting on its conceptual content, the intention here is to facilitate its transmission as a dialectical craft, which is averse to sheer analytical rigor, as the cucumbers herein discussed attest.

This article analyzes how Roberto Schwarz's dialectical reflection, by articulating the spheres of culture and politics, influenced the debate of cultural workers, with an emphasis on the Brazilian theater movement, setting issues for debate and opening new perspectivesfor research. The essays “Culture and Politics, 1964-1969”, “Politics and Culture: Support for a PT Platform in 1982” and “Highs and Lows of Brecht's Current Times” stand out. The influence of Anatol Rosenfeld, through the scope of his theoretical production and the form of intervention in the debate of the theater environment, is highlighted, based on Schwarz's texts about the master. The article suggests that Schwarz's attention to Rosenfeld is in the order of learning, as is the case with Antônio Candido, from the perspective of an organic and consequential action, in constant dialogue with groups of intellectuals and artists, in a combative stance against fascism, and in direct confrontation with the 1964 coup. The emblematic impact of Schwarz's dialectical critique on later research in the Brazilian theaterfield is highlighted. The adherence to and interest in Schwarz's thought by the Landless Workers' Movement, here considered as a movement Fighting for land, for human rights and as a cultural movement, is also considered.