O jogo político da democracia: lutas simbólicas na "redemocratização" brasileira (1984-1985).

Abstract

This thesis discusses the symbolic disputes involving the conservative and liberal project of “redemocratization” engaged by political groups which constructed themselves and were constructed as legitimate symbols of democracy and “opposition” to civil military regime during the presidential succession (1984-1985). We have emphasized the figure of Tancredo Neves because we regard him as an acceptable conception of democracy for both political and economical elites in the 1980s. At the same time, we have highlighted Workers Party in order to evidence that the “redemocratization” model plotted by political elites did not configure as a “consensus” concerning the media propaganda which praised the opposite. This research has been carried out through the analysis of both political discourses and mainstream media regarded as a symbolic instrument which covered the theses and arguments in agreement on one hand, and the disregarding of contrary “opinions” on the other hand. We have utilized mainly the newspapers O Globo and Folha de São Paulo regarded as means which intervene in the political field, by defining agendas and legitimating positions. Considering the sociological theory, our discussion has been based on Pierre Bordieu’s concept of political field which enables the strangeness of socially-constructed “truths”, and thus the notion of democracy which won the symbolic struggles in the 1980s. In this sense, our analytical proposal points out that within the scenary of disputes around the “redemocratization”, the winner political groups were the ones who represented a conservative conception of democracy whose foundation relied on the political and media effort engaged in erasing their defensors’ struggle against the dictatorial period, as well as the silencing of alternative proposals which “contested” it. Therefore, a myth of “redemocratization” without antagonisms was constructed, by annuling the political plurality from an authoritarian imposition of a truth that restates the classical thesis of a liberal-capitalist model regards the only way capable of promoting democracy. At last, we have verified that a conservative project of “redemocratization” we bequeathed is a conception of democracy which defends the Democratic State of Law, and in a contradictory way, it dislikes the social democratization.