Speaking of flowers
Subtitle: student movements and the making and remembering of 1968 in military Brazil
By: Victoria Langland
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 2013
Place of publication: Durham
Language: eng
Number of pages: 326
ISBN-13: 9780822352983; 9780822353126
Subjects: Student movements; History; Nineteen sixty-eight, A.D.; Collective memory
Description: Speaking of Flowers is an innovative study of student activism during Brazil's military dictatorship (1964-85) and an examination of the very notion of student activism, which changed dramatically in response to the student protests of 1968. Looking into what made students engage in national political affairs as students, rather than through other means, Victoria Langland traces a gradual, uneven shift in how they constructed, defended, and redefined their right to political participation, from emphasizing class, race, and gender privileges to organizing around other institutional and symbolic forms of political authority. Embodying Cold War political and gendered tensions, Brazil's increasingly violent military government mounted fierce challenges to student political activity just as students were beginning to see themselves as representing an otherwise demobilized civil society. By challenging the students' political legitimacy at a pivotal moment, the dictatorship helped to ignite the student protests that exploded in 1968. In her attentive exploration of the years after 1968, Langland analyzes what the demonstrations of that year meant to later generations of Brazilian students, revealing how student activists mobilized collective memories in their subsequent political struggles. -- Publisher's description.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction : the molding of 1968 in military Brazil; title: Constructing "the house of democratic resistance" : authority and authenticity in university student politics, 1808-1955; title: "Professional students" and political polarization : contested revolutions, 1956-1967; title: From martyrdom and militancy to memory: 1968 in Brazil; title: Dark weather: the post-68 storm, 1969-1973; title: Rebuilding the house of memories, 1974-1985.