Introduction to a terrific book:

"Bens culturais e relações internacionais – o patrimônio como espelho do soft power", edited by Rodrigo Christopholetti

Por Bernardo Buarque de Hollanda

Readers have in hand an original and major work. Its magnitude can be immediately ascertained by the oeuvre's length, fruit of its organizer's competent and passionate commitment. The collection comprises a total of twenty-seven chapters divided into four autonomous and interconnected parts, in which the impressive work of compiling unpublished texts is evident. These, in turn, are the result of research largely developed at the Universidade Católica de Santos, by academic works dedicated to an interface so far unexplored in Brazil—cultural heritage and International Relations.

The book's originality lies not only in the filling a reflexive gap left by the Brazilian Academy. It raises a fundamental question, still poorly dimensioned in its scope, in this emerging area of study and action. Such question refers to the phenomenon of contemporary cultural goods and can be formulated in the following terms: to what extent can soft power, a term originating in International Relations, constitute a useful tool to understand the process of commodification and transnationalization of culture, on the one hand, and the elaboration of cultural public policies, which are placed above purely national interests, on the other?

As we know, 'soft power' was an expression coined in the early 1990s to designate persuasion skills in the decisive sphere of governments and in the geopolitical strategy of nation-states. It is a search for alternatives to the use of physical force, to the exclusivity of war power, to military intervention and, ultimately, to war. The term was originally proposed by US political scientist Joseph Nye and has since remained confined to the scope of international relations theory.

Nye and his axial concept are the guiding themes of the present work. They transversely permeate the assumptions and questions addressed by the articles gathered here. Far from mere journalistic jargon, 'soft power' is thoroughly theorized in this book, in multiple ways and from often critical angles. Its use allows to reflect on another latitude of human knowledge: cultural heritage, in its physical-symbolic, material, and immaterial dimensions.

If it is clear that International Relations does not show much interest in what concerns culture and the arts in general, the reverse is also true. This is because the field of heritage was constituted in Brazil, and in most of the globe, under the aegis of the nation, in the context of national identities. This is what anthropologist José Reginaldo Gonçalves, professor at UFRJ, has convincingly demonstrated since the publication of A retórica da perda: os discursos do patrimônio cultural no Brasil [The rhetoric of loss: the discourses of cultural heritage in Brazil] (1996). According to Gonçalves, national ideologies have conformed a discursive, institutional, and practical field of policies to preserve the material and symbolic goods of Brazilian culture since at least the beginning of the 20th century.

Nationality informed not only the struggle to preserve the memory of the past, materialized in the defense of colonial architecture and the safeguarding of national works of art. For a significant portion of Brazilian intellectuals and statesmen, culture and politics were not antithetical poles. The field of heritage, therefore, saw itself affiliated to the project of construing protectionist projects that would face dangers of 'cultural imperialism', in this book associated with the Norwegian Johan Galtung.

In Latin America, as we also know, such a threat was located in the northern hemisphere of the American continent. It gained greater visibility when the original inspiration for the Monroe Doctrine (1823) combined the 'big stick' tradition with the Good Neighbour policy in the mid-20th century. At that moment, as mentioned in passages of this book, cinema, illustrated magazines, comic books, and other products of the cultural industry began to reach the rest of the continent en masse, influencing lifestyles, projecting imaginaries and conforming cultural consumption habits.

The search for protection, both internal, against the risk of forgetting the historical past, and external, against the distorting invasion of national authenticity, led intellectuals to a progressive investment in the field of legislation and law. The legislative field was contemplated by means of conservation laws enacted by nationalist governments of various ideological hues.

To mention once again anthropologist José Reginaldo Gonçalves, it is worth remembering the heritage policies of the Estado Novo (1937-1945), headed by Rodrigo Melo Franco de Andrade, creator of SPHAN. It is also worth noting the cultural actions and institutions created during the Civil-Military Dictatorship (1964-1964), in which the name of designer Aloísio Magalhães stood out, to cite only one of the figures active at the time in the Ministry of Education and Culture (MEC), precursor of today's MinC.

Clinging to a nationalist point of view—sometimes progressive and necessary, sometimes xenophobic and deleterious—, one can understand why the area of Cultural Goods has not shown greater interest in the political-economic canon of International Relations in the last thirty years. If the disinterest was not complete, given a potentially fruitful sector such as cultural diplomacy, linked to the governmental actions of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MRE), collaboration remains very incipient[1].

The present volume thus proposes fruitful dialogues between the two areas. The book unveils unsuspected possibilities for dialogue between cultural heritage and international relations. As this is a voluminous work, Rodrigo Christofoletti's Introduction is as inviting as it is timely. The organizer systematizes, with breath and wisdom, the general proposal of the book, defining concepts with rigor and proposing a research agenda that is not exhausted in the work. His Introduction presents an alternative way of looking at the polyvalence of culture within globalization—or, as sociologist Renato Ortiz prefers it, mundialização (from the French mondialisation).

For a holistic understanding, the nearly six hundred pages of this book are very well contextualized in the lengthy Introduction. At first sight, the book's understanding is limited and fragmentary, but gains organicity in the organizer's introduction. Nevertheless, it is also true that each of the four parts of the work represents a unit in itself and can be read separately, as if it were a book of its own, with a systematically structured knowledge, even with occasional diverging views on the subject at hand Namely: 1. Comprehensive themes; 2. Actors, organisms and manifestations in focus; 3. Museums and collections; 4. Cities and tourism.

Read together, some themes caught my attention more. In the light of history, Marcos Olender's chapter addressing the World's Fair, a kind of showcase for the techno-scientific world and for the self-display of empires and industrial nations, among those more developed in north-western Europe and the east coast of North America, in the second half of the 19th century, is particularly thought-provoking. As history shows, this tradition dates back to 1851 and the city of London, when the first major World's Fair was held at the Crystal Palace.

Although focused on machinery and the monumental works of modern engineering following the Industrial Revolution, the Great Exhibitions inaugurate the idea of circuits and rotation of cities that become internationalized under a new cosmopolitan bias. Such exhibitions would be the genesis of festivals, biennials, fairs, and other exhibition prototypes that would reach culture, the arts, and sports, as the current mega sporting event of the Olympic Games, re-enacted every four years. With them, the urban spaces of a world integrated by the media and transportation are put on stage, like Paris, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Venice, Vienna Berlin, Milan, Kassel, among many other cities and cultural capitals.

If the theme appears here as an example from history, capable of suggesting the connections between heritage in the modern arts system and the driving principles of International Relations, it is also valid to reflect about its contemporary relevance. To this end, it is worth remembering the internationalization of cultural equipment, object of reflection by authors Hal Foster, in Complexo Arte-Arquitetura [The Art-Architecture Complex] (Cosac Naify, 2015), and Edward Lucie-Smith, in Movements in Art since 1945.

In this latter work, Lucie-Smith, when addressing "the spectacular rise of museums"[2], notes that:

"One of the unifying factors was the steady progress of contemporary art towards the very center of our culture. The art public of the early 21st century is quite distinct and much broader than it was three decades ago. The growth of contemporary art and its increasing centrality in our culture are two of the factors that have encouraged the great surge in museum creation. Some of these, most notably Michael Wilford and James Stirling's Neue Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart, Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, and Herzog and De Meuron's adaptation of London's Bankside power plant, which became the Tate Modern, were readily recognized as architectural masterpieces—undoubtedly the buildings that best sum up and express the sensibilities of our time."[1]

Another theme that caught our attention while reading the book organized by Rodrigo Christofoletti dates back to the immediate post-World War II era. In this period, the rearticulation among the victorious powers conceived the creation of international agencies for education, science, and culture, in ecumenical, integrating, and supranational terms, so to speak.

UNESCO is its most striking example. A number of organs from this agency, affiliated to the UN, such as ICOMOS—a non-governmental organization located in Paris, dedicated to the conservation of historical monuments and sites—is examined here by more than one author, as can be read in the articles by Fernando da Silva, Bernardo Hazan, and Jessica Fernandes. Such a theme is challenging because it allows us to understand how a global consciousness is constituted and institutionalized around world heritage, based on international law.

A third theme that stands out throughout the work relates to entities such as the aforementioned ICOMOS and refers to threats of the physical destruction of historical sites and material heritage endowed with cultural, artistic, and architectural value. If for a long time the concern against the oblivion of collective memory occupied the center of antiquarians and preservationists' attentions, nowadays it can at least be said that, given the virtual, digital and technological possibilities of reproducing information, the problem of preservation becomes more physical than symbolic.

The current international conjuncture, marked by new counter-hegemonic forms of action such as terrorist attacks, has seen the destruction, dilapidation, or loss of cultural goods. Its target are countries endowed with priceless buildings, palaces, and monuments, among other works of heritage significance to humanity. The challenge of combating terrorism and the shadow economy of arts, amidst the complex new international order, affects millenary civilizations and territories such as Iraq, Syria and Turkey, but also traditional Western countries—the USA, France and Germany—, occupying the core of Victor Mendes and Rodrigo Christofoletti's reflections.

Other topics of great interest crop up in the course of reading. Although specific or punctual, some chapters address current issues of extraordinary relevance, capable of reviewing well-stablished topics in the literature and analysing them from a different perspective.

Among them, it would be worth mentioning a short list: archaeology; archival documentation; museological thinking; environmental sustainability; the spectacularization and massification of tourism; the comparison between cultural experiences of cities in different countries; bilateral agreements within culture—cinema, theatre, concerts and shows—; the role of the arts in the Global South or in the traditional centre-periphery relationship— exemplified by events such as the Year of Brazil in France and the Year of France in Brazil —; cultural stereotypes used to project national identity abroad; and last but not least, the migratory flows on an international scale, whether at the late 19th century or the early 21st century.

Based on the above, we conclude that this volume is a remarkable contribution to cultural managers and internationalists in the International Relations field. A benchmark, this book will contribute to the narrowing of ties between academic spaces hitherto seen as diametrically opposed and isolated, and will remain a valuable source for those who wish to understand the limits and potential of contemporary Brazil in the globalized world.

[1]Cf. LUCIE-SMITH, Edward. Os movimentos artísticos a partir de 1945. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 2014, p. 09-10.

[1]A fine exception is the collection organized by former diplomat and Africanist Alberto da Costa e Silva, O Itamaraty na cultura brasileira (Rio de Janeiro: Francisco Alves, 2002), which contains essays on Joaquim Nabuco, Guimarães Rosa, João Cabral de Melo Neto, Antônio Houaiss, Raul Bopp, Aluízio Azevedo, and Vinicius de Moraes, among others.

[2]Cf. SEVCENKO, Nicolau. A corrida para o século XXI: no loop da montanha-russa. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2004, p. 126.

Edição Final: Guilherme Mazzeo