Marcelo Hoffman, Foucault in Brazil: Dictatorship, Resistance, and Solidarity – University of Pittsburgh Press, February 2024

Now published

Philosopher Michel Foucault’s cultural criticism crosses disciplines and is well known as an influence on modern conceptions of knowledge and power. Less well known are the five trips he took to Brazil between 1965 and 1976. Although a coup in 1964 had installed a military dictatorship, Foucault kept his opinion on the Brazilian government largely to himself until October 23, 1975. On that date, he delivered a manifesto at a student assembly in São Paulo expressing his solidarity with students and professors protesting a wave of arrests and torture. This manifesto caught the government’s attention and became the focal point of the dictatorship’s surveillance of Foucault. Foucault in Brazil explores the production of the public antagonism between the philosopher and the dictatorship through a meticulous consideration of each of his visits to Brazil. Marcelo Hoffman connects history, philosophy, and political theory to open new ways of thinking about Foucault as a person and thinker and about Brazil and authoritarianism.

 Brilliant and chock-full of insights and impeccably researched historical portraits, Foucault in Brazil is a luminous, indispensable book in a range of fields, and constitutes a landmark for scholars interested in the French philosopher in the continent and beyond. 

Adam Joseph Shellhorse, Temple University

Foucault in Brazil develops a meticulous and riveting historical account of the philosopher’s trips through that country. Hoffman’s scholarship employs rigorous historical investigation to excavate nothing short of a model of what it can mean to marshal one’s social capital to contest power publicly. This work is outstanding and without peer. 

Kevin Thompson, DePaul University

This beautifully crafted account of Foucault’s political activities in Brazil in the 1970s is a tour de force. Foucault in Brazil not only illuminates rich archival details about the philosopher’s support of Brazilians fighting a military dictatorship but also brings much needed nuance to our understanding of how his distinct philosophical approach to power was driven by concrete acts of political solidarity. 

Lynne Huffer, author of Mad for Foucault