Brazilian imaginary in the pandemic – «cattle» or «yacaré»

Abstract

The article offers an interpretative path for cultural products that emerged from the Brazilian political debate during the breakthrough of COVID-19 pandemic information on social media and messaging networks, and that had the performance of Jair Bolsonaro as a reference. Using the theoretical framework of Psychoanalytic Semiotics, it balances speeches and identity profiles present in different psychosocial spheres to investigate cultural mitogenesis bringing light to cancel culture’s phenomena. The analysis deepens the understanding of signifiers such as «gado» (cattle), «imunidade de rebanho» (herd immunity), «virar jacaré» (turn alligator), «cercadinho» (cow pen), «leite» (milk), amongst others, verified in the narratives of the pandemic. Bolsonaro’s representation is articulated with the idea of the «father of the primitive horde» in Freud and the Lacanian Other. It presents psychoanalitical concepts such as unheimlich, das Ding and abjection, dialoguing with Sloterdijk’s spherological theory. It also offers a contemporary overview on the affections and feelings involved in the symbolization and resignification of the semiotic context (mediated by social networks). It considers fake news and post-truth in the political manipulation of the imaginary order (as historical objects) by observing the production of mythological narratives aiming for psychosocial identity processes yield, which seeks to amplify the partisan spheres. The text emphasizes the emotions of fear and the search for immunity as articulators of Brazilian political spheres and the discursive dynamics established between them.