The emerging field of psychosocial studies signifies a confluence of disciplines for whom the fantasies, repressions and cultural practices underlying national identity represents a crucial research focus. This book presents a psychosocial portrayal of Brazil’s arrival on the international stage in the economic boom of the run-up to its hosting of the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games. This former Portuguese colony is a country of contradictions in need of a new image; a nation that needs to be able to both love and sell itself in today’s neo-liberal reality. It argues that a contemporary representation of Brazilian subjectivity is best enabled through an interdisciplinary perspective. Five key themes – to be explored in all their contradictions and ambivalence – structure the book: fantasies of the nation; xenophobia and denial; Brazilian cultural practice; transnational mobility; and gender, race and Brazilian identity.

This collection explores the emergence of new spatialities and subjectivities in Brazilian films produced from the 1990s onwards, a period that became known as the retomada, but especially in the cinema of the new millennium. The chapters take spatiality as a powerful tool that can reveal aesthetic, political, social, and historical meanings of the cinematographic image instead of considering space as just a formal element of a film. From the rich cross-fertilization of different theories and disciplines, this edited collection engages with the connection between space and subjectivity in Brazilian cinema while raising new questions concerning spatiality and subjectivity in cinema and providing new models and tools for film analysis.

Subjectivity and Critical Mental Health: Lessons from Brazil presents and discusses subjectivity as a key concept to challenge the individualized and reified perspective that psychology and mental health studies have traditionally sustained. Situated against the maintenance of hierarchical, unilateral and objectifying relations within mental health, this book is a timely and necessary critical intervention. Drawing on González Rey’s cultural-historical theory of subjectivity, the author constructs points of convergence with critical social psychology, as well as with some critiques from traditional psychiatry based on antipsychiatry. Using empirical findings from original research undertaken in Brazilian community mental health services, a complex articulation between mental health, education and subjective development is proposed by emphasizing a unified research/professional practice, based on an ethics of the subject. Ending by examining possible alternatives for critical mental health that engage with culture and society, the book sets the stage for further re-thinking of research and practice within the critical mental health field. Accessibly written, the interdisciplinary nature of the text should also make this book fascinating reading for students and academics interested in critical psychology, post-colonial studies, mental health and education alike.

Forges a new understanding of how these two Lusophone nations are connected. The closely entwined histories of Portugal and Brazil remain key references for understanding developments--past and present--in either country. Accordingly, Fernando Arenas considers Portugal and Brazil in relation to one another in this exploration of changing definitions of nationhood, subjectivity, and utopias in both cultures. Examining the two nations' shared language and histories as well as their cultural, social, and political points of divergence, Arenas pursues these definitive changes through the realms of literature, intellectual thought, popular culture, and political discourse. Both Brazil and Portugal are subject to the economic, political, and cultural forces of postmodern globalization. Arenas analyzes responses to these trends in contemporary writers including Jose Saramago, Caio Fernando Abreu, Maria Isabel Barreno, Vergilio Ferreira, Clarice Lispector, and Maria Gabriela Llansol. Ultimately, Utopias of Otherness shows how these writers have redefined the concept of nationhood, not only through their investment in utopian or emancipatory causes such as Marxist revolution, women's liberation, or sexual revolution but also by shifting their attention to alternative modes of conceiving the ethical and political realms.

The appeals of citizenship : a performative approach to discourse, subjectivity, and gender -- "We are gaúchos, we are gaúchas" : incitements to gendered and regional subjectivity in the 2002 election campaigns -- Political time in Porto Alegre : electoral citizenship, experimental subjectivities, and gendered self-agency -- Participation speaks louder : ambiguity and contradiction in official representations of citizenship in the Porto Alegre participatory budget -- Cynical citizenship : gendered performance and parody in the Porto Alegre participatory budget -- Invitations to global citizenship, neoliberal critique, and a party : official discourses and local media coverage of the 2003 World Social Forum -- Participation from the periphery : Beira Rio community leaders' perceptions of the 2003 World Social Forum -- Another citizenship (theory) Is possible

This book offers a theoretical and epistemological-methodological framework as an alternative approach to the instrumental-descriptive methodology that has prevailed in psychology to date. It discusses the differences between the proposed approach and other theoretical and methodological positions, such as discourse analysis, phenomenology and hermeneutics. Further, it puts forward a proposal that allows the demands of studying subjectivity to be addressed from a cultural-historical standpoint. The book mainly highlights case studies that have been conducted in various countries, and which employ or depart from the theoretical, epistemological and methodological proposals that guide this book. The research discussed here introduces readers to new discussions on theoretical and methodological issues in subjectivity that have increasingly attracted interest.