Três trópicos da tropicália

the creative energies

In tropicalismo (in the wake of antropophagy), there is a tendency to make Brazil exotic as much for the tourists as for Brazilians. No doubt even I myself reject what seem to me ridiculous attempts to neutralize the strangeness of this Catholic tropical monster, in the hunt for the crumbs of ordinary international respectability. Of course I recognize that a headdress of bananas is not particularly useful when worn by a nuclear physicist or a classicist born in Brazil. But “Brazil” can liberate the creative energies that will enable the proliferation of research (or the invention of new disciplines) only if Brazil refuses to feel intimidated by itself, and if it places its narcissistic pleasure above sensible submission to the international order.