Representatives of culture in the Brazilian Constituent Assembly (1987-1988)

what concept of culture did they defend?

Abstract

The article examines the concept of culture that guided the discussions of the Subcommittee on Education, Culture, and Sports of the Brazilian National Constituent Assembly (1987–1988). Based on the analysis of the minutes of public hearings with representatives of the cultural sector and of the interventions of the then Minister of Culture, Celso Furtado, it seeks to understand how the cultural sector may have contributed to the constitutional formulation of culture and which meanings prevailed in this process. The examination of the documentary material reveals the predominance of an anthropological conception of culture, oriented toward valuing the cultural diversity of Brazilian society and associated with an explicit critique of practices of censorship and state tutelage – thus shaping, as this article seeks to demonstrate, a conception in which culture is understood as a right, a plural expression of “civil society” and of its valorization. By emphasizing this discursive affinity, the article contributes to understanding how culture was conceived, within the constituent process, as a field of mediation between State and society, in which the defense of diversity and creative freedom was articulated with an effort to redefine the limits of state intervention in public life.