Trivium - Estudos Interdisciplinares

War Dossier

Paulo Endo — 2025-04-06

Editorial.

War Dossier

Paulo Endo — 2025-04-06

Editorial

Guerra, Morte

Betty Fuks — 2025-04-07

We are currently witnessing two wars that are on the verge of becoming global. Convoked by this sad reality, we bring to the forefront the impossibility of separating the unconscious from the social and political field, returning to Freud's thinking on war and his reaction to the alliance between progress and barbarity. From there, we consider the possibility of tracing an ethical-political trajectory capable of confronting the violence of the destruction drive and its cruelty.

The cursed ones of democracy

Paulo Endo — 2025-04-07

This article seeks to delve deeper into the global call spread by the far right. It mobilizes the arguments of some contemporary thinkers who have been warning for decades about the attack on rights, the readiness of governments to implement policies of extermination of groups and individuals, and the growing support of the masses for such discourses and practices. It uses the thinking of Sigmund Freud, who pointed out imminent dangers in the project of building civilization. Civilizing, progressing, and becoming rich has not only always been a possibility for a few, but today, these few intend to call the shots on who will be in the privileged places of prosperity and civilization.

In war and peace

Wânia Pasinato — 2025-04-07

In this article, I seek to reflect on the repetition of violence against women based on two apparently contrasting ideas of naturalization and exceptionality, considering that both, each in their own way, reinforce the invisibility and non-recognition of violence as a violation of women's rights. Mobilizing concepts such as feminicidal violence and low-impact war, I start from the idea that extreme cruelty in violent acts against women that occur in times of crisis can also be identified in other contexts and historical periods, including gang rapes and high rates of female homicides.

Against the war culture or against the culture war?

Rinaldo Voltolini — 2025-04-07

In this text, the concept of total war will be examined through a concrete case—the civic-military schools—as a proposition of a permanent, ordinary state of war embedded in the daily life of civil society. Freud's assertion that what works in favor of culture works against war, an assertion that establishes a dialectical opposition between war and culture, enabled an analysis of how the civic-military school project implies a certain rupture with this dialectic. This rupture undermines the cultural path as a means of addressing the structural violence inherent to humanity, favoring instead a proposal of disciplinary control.

From racial violence to black feminisms

Diana Mendes — 2025-04-07

What are we talking about when we use the expression Racial Violence? How does it connect to the concepts of Black Genocide, Necropolitics, or Total War? How does this violence manifest itself in Brazil? Originating from the experience at the Observatory of Racial Violence CAAF/Unifesp between 2022 and 2024, these questions organize the present reflection, which also seeks to present some of the responses to this daily and systematic violence. An inexhaustible source of models for political subjectivation, Black feminisms are the references for these responses.

The children of war

Marylink Kupferberg — 2025-04-07

This article takes as its starting point the events of World War II, which shattered the illusions that Western civilization may have built about itself and left the 20th century marked by horror. It is stated that the second generation, referred to here as the “Children of War”, was profoundly impacted by the effects of the transmission of “Zones of Silence”, spaces resulting from the traumatic impact experienced by the generation of Shoah survivors.

Disgust as a weapon in the colonial war against trans existences

Andreone Medrado — 2025-04-07

The war against trans bodies is based on the imposition of cisnormativity as a regulatory principle of what different bodies can or cannot be. This text critically and reflectively questions this assumption and its deadly effects against the trans population, understanding cis-heteronormativity as a weapon of war. This weapon finds a key ammunition: disgust, an emotion that becomes central in the politics of rejection against trans people. The analysis is based not only on well-known statistics on trans deaths but seeks to illustrate the centrality of disgust in the consolidation of this anti-trans war.

The violence of the (de)civilising process and the psychic economy as the expression of social conflicts

André Oliveira Costa — 2025-04-07

Instead of thinking of civilization as a point of arrival, Norbert Elias and Sigmund Freud broke with the ideals of the civilized individual, revealing its dark sides full of contradictions and ambivalences. Both thinkers included barbarism within civilization. And, in this way, they rewrote the destinies of societies. The civilizing process, then, comes to be seen with advances and retreats, constructions and destructions, civilization and barbarism, caused by civilizing and decivilizing forces. And the experiences of violence produce social traumas that are transmitted between generations. The collapse of civilization is then shown as one of the inevitable fates of the civilizing process.

Total Memory or Absolute Amnesia?

Karen Worcman — 2025-04-07

This article discusses two perspectives on the future of memory. The first perspective is debated based on an article by Hoskins (2024) about how artificial intelligence has been transforming the way individuals, groups, and society in general relate to their memories. The second perspective, presented by Gudynas (2019), links the biocentric approach to a possible future for what we call memory. Both perspectives represent diametrically opposed paths and confront us with different choices: what will be the future of memory? Finally, the article discusses how a place of memory, such as the Museum of the Person, can be reinterpreted to address both perspectives.

The jouissance of war

Vera Pollo — 2025-04-07

The article analyzes the presence of violence and war throughout History, investigating what the author calls the “enjoyment of war.” Drawing on Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, it argues that the death drive, in its destructive aspect, emerges in times of conflict and is reflected in power structures. Psychoanalysis, especially with Lacan, is seen as a tool to understand humanity’s fascination with the cruelty that sustains hatred and segregation.

Direitos Humano, democracia e memória

Maria Victoria de Mesquita Benevides — 2025-04-07

Review of Paulo César Endo, Andrei Koerner, Raíssa Wihby Ventura (Eds.). Critical Essays and Experimentation in Human Rights, Democracy, and Memory. São Paulo: Institute for Advanced Studies, University of São Paulo. USP Open Books Portal, 2024. 363 pages.

About War and Peace

José Maurício Teixeira Loures — 2025-04-07

Critical Review of War and Peace Panels by Cândido Portinari

Under the Rubble of Gaza

Jamil Chade — 2025-04-07

The journal Trivium – Interdisciplinary Studies inaugurates the “Debates” section in its War Dossier, aiming to provide a space for the expression of different perspectives. This initiative seeks to foster a critical dialogue that respects the multiplicity of voices and reflects, with rigor and sensitivity, on the impasses that characterize the contemporary landscape.

War narratives

Daniel Feldmann — 2025-04-07