10 Years of the June 2013 Journeys

What did the Journeys of June 2013 signify for a solitary intellectual? For better or worse, that is the question guiding Paulo Arantes' discourse in the seminar Visions of June. By invoking the expression reminiscent of the Spring of Nations in 1848, when the French people attempted (unsuccessfully) to storm the heavens of Paris for the first time, Arantes re-elaborates his immediate enthusiasm for the movement initiated by MPL and justifies the exaggeration: this hyperbolic force is nothing other than enrapture. This simple word, which might appear Parnassian and misplaced for political elaboration, gains historical determination and conceptual strength in the professor's terms. The political mobilization is thus considered an indispensable mystical ecstasy to militant action, due to the collective impetus that the belief in the destruction of the existing social order can generate. As Arantes reminds us, this hypothesis was strongly advocated by Carl Schmitt in his Political Theology. However, the mystical enrapture demystifies the end of an era, namely, it concerns the fright that the end of the end of history sparked among laymen and well-educated individuals. Beyond the tedious period of institutional rotation, initiated with the redemocratization and FHC's victory, Brazil experiences a rendezvous with the resurgence of global history, thickening the brew of revolts sparked by the Arab Spring (another spring, indeed). It is among incredulous and intoxicated individuals that we witness the uprising of local social movements, where new agents are willing to contest the agreements hitherto established for maintaining social peace in perpetually war-torn civil societies. The pact has crumbled! It is no longer conceivable to acknowledge the lifelong victory of democratic capitalism. The theological underpinning of this enrapture is so strong that it mobilizes not only the autonomist left, but also the Christian faith revolutionaries, affiliated with the far-right and willing to militarily dispute the gates of Armageddon heralding the extinction of an unsustainable earthly life. Herein lies an inflection point: an alternative within the end is needed. This new dispute appears to enrapture us.

(Review by Nathalia Colli)

Keywords: Enrapture; Far Right; End of History; Journeys of June; Political Theology.