Cover issue 43 - Untitled - Moisés Patrício
Untitled work from the series "Aceita?", by Moisés Patrício. The work was the cover of our issue 43.

when the writer, educator and Argentine president Domingos Faustino Sarmiento wrote, in 1845, Facundo: Civilization and Barbarism, tried to portray the Argentine national formation through the relations of the man from the desert, “from the pampa”, versus the man of the city and the force that European colonization would have had in the cities. The existence of two countries, a civilized one – white, enlightened, integrated with Europe – and a barbarian one – the Argentina of illiteracy, mestizos, isolation, violence: an antithesis that put at stake the possibility of building a body of nation . The work is considered the founder of Argentine literature due to its pioneering spirit in breaking with the standards of European romanticism.

In 1930, Sigmund Freud wrote The Discontents in Culture (in the Brazilian translation also edited as The Discontents in Civilization). In this key text of his work, Freud (whether he agrees or not) puts to rest any illusion about the possibility of men coming to coexist in peace. Or any theory that, coming from a political, economic or sociological concept, suggests that man is able to relate in a cordial, solidary encounter, where we would supposedly have access to a higher objective, ceasing to behave like animals.

For him, “the aggressive instinct is not a consequence of property, this already ruled almost without restrictions in primitive times, when property was still little, [aggressiveness] is already manifested in the child, only property has lost its anal form; constitutes the sediment of all affectionate and loving bonds... If all personal right to possess material goods were eliminated, they would still be replaced by the privileges derived from sexual relations, which must necessarily become a source of the most intense envy and the most violent hostility between the people. human beings.”…” Obviously it is not easy for man to give up the satisfaction of his aggressive tendencies; he is not at all comfortable without that satisfaction.”

“On the other hand, a cultural but restricted nucleus offers the advantage of allowing the satisfaction of this instinct through hostility towards subjects who were excluded from that [nucleus]. It will always be easier for them to bond more lovingly with each other, on the condition that there are others left on whom to unleash their blows” (page 3049, The Malaise in Culture, Sigmund Freud, Complete Works, Biblioteca Nueva Madrid, 1981).

Our drive for life and death always beats, more, in the non-equal.

This edition shows, through an exquisite recap of images, archives and works presented by artists, photographers and thinkers, how over time we have not been able to leave the place: how the conflicts between North and South, between classes and geopolitical power are always service of a subjugation of one by another. The black for the white, the colonized for the colonizer. And also how, precisely because of this difficulty, art results in a permanent support to work with helplessness.

PS: Good news: two Private Foundations, one that celebrates its 45th anniversary and the other that opens, expose their collections to the public! It unites us.

PS2: Follow on paginaB all the materials of the edition over the next few weeks


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