The Nationalization of Patriotism in the Brazilian Far-Right: An Analysis Based on Foucauldian Discourse Studies

Abstract

This article aims to problematize the transformations of discursive practices that have consolidated the emergence of patriotism throughout history. It is grounded on the assumption that patriotism is neither a fixed nor a natural notion, but rather a historical-discursive product that changes according to the conditions of production of the discourses that sustain it. In this sense, the study seeks to highlight how this social phenomenon has been strategically discursivized in different historical moments and how the formation of distinct bodies of knowledge has objectified it in singular ways. More specifically, we intend to emphasize the recurrence of the term patriotism in the discourses of the Brazilian far right, in which forms of knowledge that once delineated the functioning of nationalism are reappropriated and reactivated. For this reason, the paper seeks to map the concepts that traverse these discursive events, exploring how both patriotism and nationalism, through historical continuities and discontinuities, come to operate through an attachment to a national identity, an attachment that produces practices, motivates behaviors, mobilizes emotions, and, ultimately, generates subjectivity by articulating a specific subject position. Thus, we aim to examine what we refer to as the “nationalization of patriotism” through the analysis of municipal and federal legislative projects. From a theoretical and methodological perspective, this article is grounded in Foucauldian Discourse Studies, in dialogue with historical and social theories.