Qui Trompe-t-on? Family and State in the Brazilian Political Process

The rise of contemporary right-wing movements has been followed by dramatic political conflicts in Brazil. Clashes within families are among the most severe. They display a surprisingly varied morphology, ranging from avoidance and rupture of social relations, well into open threats and violence. Their underlying motivations are not any less diverse, including economic interest, political loyalty, and libidinal aspects. This presentation elaborates on results from preliminary interviews on this subject, carried mostly in São Paulo, in preparation for my current research. It draws on the material available to me to advance a particular conjecture on alienation: namely, that subsumption under a social power (as it presents itself here) must be conceived, not as immediate, one-sided estrangement, but as a twofold exchange of social forms. This is illustrated by a selection of instances in which the contradictions between the form and content of political conflicts among kin become apparent – such that politics appear as the form of kinship strife, but also kinship relations as the form of political strife, according to the case. A corresponding phenomenology is sketched, reporting particular affections to those underlying discrepancies, and leading to a final outline on the form of alienation at stake here – in the relation between families, as they are for the state or as moments of the political process, and the state, as it is for families or as a moment of family life.