Advisor: João Masao Kamita
Dissertation: Brasilia: Birth & Death
Defense date: 27/05/2019
Abstract
This dissertation analyzes the effects of Brasilia’s construction, as a
materialization of modern utopia in the southern hemisphere, more precisely, in Brazil.
We investigate how modern utopia is a product not only of rationality and technical
development, but also of will and faith, something that introduces it to religious nuances.
In that sense, Brasilia becomes a paradigmatic case of study, because it results from a
convergence between the ideals of modern architecture and a mythical genealogy that
foresaw the construction of a capital in Brazil’s central plateau as a means of unleashing
the flourishing of a great civilization in a paradise of abundance, a paradise that later
would be proved lost, unleashing melancholy and disillusionment. From this angle, we
analyze unconventional readings of the event, extracted from the classics of Brazilian
literature, and also mobilize the theoretical framework of allegory, derived from the work
of the German philosopher Walter Benjamin, in order to construct an unconventional
interpretation of Brasilia, beyond the boundaries of traditional historiography and its
linear logic.