Muniz, before we discuss ECO’s postgraduate program in Communication, from its creation until today, tell us about your trajectory until arriving in the academy, in Rio. You studied Law in Bahia, correct? I studied Law in Bahia. And I took special classes in Economics, an Economics course that SUDENE (Superintendency for the Development of the Northeast) had, but I graduated in Law.
How old were you? I was 19 or 20 years old. I graduated in Legal and Social Sciences. Bahia has a traditional School of Law. I studied Finance, I studied Philosophy of Law, State Theory, which was a strong course, General State Theory, with great professors. One of the Bahian professors of Civil Law, Orlando Gomes, was one of the area’s luminaries in Brazil. At the same time, I worked at the Jornal da Bahia. I began working there when I was around 14 or 15 years old.
What did you do there at this age? First of all, I began as a secretary for the owner, João Falcão. But I was always good at languages, so at the same time I worked for the Department of Tourism at the Salvador city hall.
Also very young. Also very young. I spoke English, French... I was, let’s say, skilled in languages. Today, young people are.
But at that time this wasn’t common. Neither here nor in Bahia. Yes, not even here, but today, with the proliferation of language courses... I spoke German early on, when I was around 16 or 17 years old. I was clever in this sense. So I worked during the day at city hall – I was poor, I came from the interior. I was fired in 1967 by Antônio Carlos Magalhães, because I abandoned my job to come to Rio, I was having problems with the military. So, in the morning it was Law school; in the afternoon, city hall; and at night, the Jornal da Bahia. As an adolescent, I didn’t play, I worked all the time. I supported myself. I’ve been supporting myself since I was 13 years old. My parents were from Feira de Santana.
Did you leave there at your own risk? At my own risk. It was a family tradition: the men left home early. I lived on my meager salary, first as an usher. I was an office boy at a bank, when I arrived in Salvador. I served coffee and water to the directors. And I studied at night at Colégio Central, which was an elite high school.
Was it a public school? Public, but it was hard to get into. At the time Glauber Rocha, João Ubaldo, all of those guys studied there. It was a great school. And so I studied there at night. I slept in the basement of the house of a rich farmer who was my father’s friend. I lived in the basement of that house, for free, and I lived off my salary. I was poor, but the entire family studied, everybody: one is a doctor, the other is an Air Force officer, my sister is a teacher.
Had your parents studied? No. My father didn’t even finish high school. But he had a newspaper, he was a lawyer, a politician, and also a practicing dentist. One of the best dentists in Feira de Santana. And he was a huge, great man. Physically he doesn’t look like me. He was known as brave, a man capable of building a house by himself. He knew everything, he was a factotum, my father. All of that: brave, a politician, he negotiated… His hobby was gemstones, which he knew like no one else. He never walked on the street without his 38-caliber revolver and silver dagger, not even to go to the corner. He was a son of a gun. No one messed with him.
But he encouraged his children to study. That was all he valued. He did not value money, but both culture and valor. Valor in the sense of “not letting oneself be humiliated.” It was the only advice that he could give me when I left home. “Don’t let anyone humiliate you.”
So you contacted his friend in Salvador. Ah, yes, he had friends, because he was a canvasser. He had been a councilman, he was a candidate for assemblyman. So he had votes. In Salvador, I lived on this extra job. Sometimes I went home, my mom sewed a shirt for me, something like that. But I lived on my own account.
And how did you come to Rio de Janeiro? I graduated in Law and there was a military coup. Salvador became unbearable, unsustainable for me. So I came to Rio.
Were you a student militant? I was. I was not a member of the Communist Party, I never was, I was an independent leftist. I was not very militant because of my job. I had to work in order to live. All of my friends who were militants didn’t work in order to live.
Middle class kids. Yes, nobody worked. I had to work in order to live, otherwise I couldn’t pay for my breakfast, or any of my things. Possibly, if I weren’t doing that, I would’ve been even more militant. I was even invited a couple of times to leave the country, to take a course abroad. But I never went.
You never became affiliated with the Communist Party? No, never. I’m also anti-party anyway. Anti-party, anti-church.
Since you were young? Since I was young. My father was also not a very religious person. He didn’t like priests very much.
He was anti-clerical, but... Anti-clerical, but he had that political experience. Not my mother. My mother was the daughter of Indians and gypsies, from the Bahian interior, from Santo Amaro. My mother prayed a lot. My father worshipped Saint Anthony, despite not being Catholic. But he liked Saint Anthony, because of his father. But I only met my maternal grandparents. Indians and gypsies on my mother’s side. My father’s side was black. So, I made ends meet in Salvador.
So your coming to Rio was mostly for political reasons? No, I wanted to come in order to work at the press here, I didn’t want to be a lawyer.
Did you already have a newspaper in sight? Well, at the Jornal da Bahia, after being a secretary I assumed the role of editor. My journalism school was the Jornal da Bahia. The snakes of Bahia were there – everyone from the Communist Party. Although it wasn’t a newspaper for the Communist Party, the owner, João Falcão, who was rich, a real-estate owner, was a constituent in 1948 and was sort of a secretary for Prestes, connected to Prestes. João Falcão, he was a notable figure. Now, before dying, some years ago now, when I was at the National Library, he wrote a book, then wrote another, telling the story of his life in Bahia. He was rich, from a rich family in Feira de Santana.
But the newspaper ended up becoming a shelter for communists. There were practically all communists, or else leftists. For example: João Ubaldo, who was an editor, was not a Communist, but he was a leftist. Glauber Rocha was not a Communist, but he was also a newspaper employee. A lot of people. The Jornal da Bahia was a legend in the state, until it was practically liquidated by Antônio Carlos Magalhães: he cut advertising, he clashed with João Falcão. Falcão, the owner, was fiery. So it was a journalism school. But there were historical communists there: Ariovaldo Matos, João Batista. João Batista had come from Rio, where he directed the Jornal do Brasil.
And you were able to make a trajectory. A trajectory, there I did an apprenticeship really. It was at the Jornal da Bahia that I learned about this thing called text. And in Rio I went to the Jornal do Brasil. It was Alberto Dines who hired me, because of languages.
Languages once again. Once again. Languages have always been, thus, a sort of business card for me. I joined because Fernando Gabeira had left the research, which was kind of the newspaper’s elite. Nobody knew at the time that he had left to become a militant, but he left. I got this position: “There’s a position, but you have to know languages,” they said. “You have to have a university degree.” I said: “Look, tell me what languages you want and I’ll go there.” “English, a little French.” I said: “No, I’m proficient in English, French, German, Italian, and I speak Russian.” He didn’t believe it. I always joke with Dines, he’s been my friend ever since then.
In what year did you begin to work for the Jornal do Brasil? In 1965. From there, I went to Bloch Editores. I had a friend, Flávio Costa, who was the one who had invited me to Rio, promising a job.
Was he also from Bahia? He was. He was the editorial secretary at the Jornal do Brasil. He had lived in communist countries: Czechoslovakia, Nicaragua. A nice guy also. He wrote fiction. Almost everyone wrote fiction. Ubaldo, Flávio Costa, João Carlos Teixeira Gomes was a poet, a good poet.
Flávio Costa invited you to Bloch, then? He invited me to Bloch. I went because it payed more.
Was it soon afterwards? I stayed a very short time at the Jornal do Brasil, and went to Bloch. And so I stayed there several years. I was a reporter at Manchete, a reporter of Facts and Photos. A year later, I earned a scholarship to go to France. So I went to do a master’s in Communication, Sociology of Information, in Paris.
Did your academic life run parallel to your work at the press? Were you already interested in this earlier? No, no.
How did the academy present itself? It was with this master’s in France. I did it and came back. I continued at the press, at Bloch. So they gave me a new magazine to direct. I did the first number on. Then Carlos Heitor Cony joined, when the magazine was at newsstands. It was called Ele Ela. Then it became a porn magazine.
It wasn’t before? No, it was a magazine for couples: Ele Ela (“Him Her”). It was a German format. There was the same magazine in German. Bloch bought the rights, everything here was adapted.
How did this possibility of doing a master’s appear? In France? A journalist at Bloch, a friend of mine – not a friend, a colleague – gave me a tip: “There’s an opportunity to study mass publication in France.” I had never heard of that. So I said: “That’s a good idea, isn’t it?” He said: “I think there’s only one position. But don’t you want it? Because I’m going to apply.” He was generous, but he thought I wouldn’t get it, because he saw me as a country bumpkin, with a Bahian accent, and he underestimated my French. Because he had done the entire course at Aliança Francesa, and he spoke with an accent. Well, I passed and the guy said to me: “You passed French.” French and all of the other languages, I speak all of them with a Bahian accent, only my vocabulary, in any of these languages, is a superior vocabulary. Even in English.
But how did you learn? Are you self-taught? Self-taught in everything, except German, in which I was self-taught in the beginning, then I spent a year and a half at the Goethe-Institut. But I never went to a language course like Aliança Francesa, IBEU. Never. The same with Russian. I had, or have, a talent for languages. For example: when I was 12 or 13 years old, I was a Latin teacher. I was the best student in Latin that the public school ever had. For the Law entrance exam there was a terrible Sociology and Latin requirement, people were deathly afraid of Latin, with Virgil’s Aeneid – the Aeneid is difficult –, and Cicero’s Catilinarian Orations. There was a written and oral exam. The teacher who came to examine me in the oral exam, I saw that he didn’t know Latin as well as I did, but I didn’t say anything. He gave me a perfect score. I knew a lot of Latin. Due to this ease in learning languages there were people who later even thought that I was a seminarian. Never, I was anti-Catholic, though I had priest friends, and I liked going to Saint Francis’ Church in the afternoon to hear the Gregorian chants. And all of those friars there, I liked practicing German with them. But I was self-taught, basically self-taught.
Did you look for books and learn that way? Yes. And, since I worked in Tourism, I always had someone to talk to. I no longer speak languages like I used to, I don’t feel pleasure in speaking, but I am proficient in them to read, to translate, and to write, also.
Coming back to your master’s, did you already see yourself as, for example, a communication theorist? No. I tried journalism, but I didn’t like it. I came to not like journalism here in Rio.
Why? First of all, because of the pressure there was in the editorial offices with the military regime – it was a risky thing; second, I didn’t make very much; third, work relations were unstable. I was always a bit of a nerd. I like to study, to read. It’s impossible for me not to be reading two or three books at the same time: one of fiction, a detective novel. I like it, I write fiction also. I like to read, I’m addicted to it. Only I’m a person of action also. I like doing, practicing. Having a poor childhood, wanting to move up in life, gave me other perspectives besides being a quiet nerd. For example: I have always been like this, a slim type, but I’ve always been a fighter.
You do capoeira, don’t you? I did Mestre Bimba’s capoeira, which was a contact capoeira, different from Angolan capoeira. I did jiu-jitsu in Bahia with Waldemar Santana, who fought with Hélio Gracie, beat Hélio Gracie. And, since I’ve been here in Rio, karate, with Hiroyasu Inoki, until today. I’m there three times a week, I’m a black-belt of the third dan, in the Shotokan style. I’ve always done physical activities, but that did not prevent me from having a heart attack in 2003, when I was part of Lula’s Economic and Social Development Council. I had a heart attack on the way to Brasília, but I only found out that I had a heart attack three days later. Not feeling well, I went to the hospital, and they put a stent in me. Later, as a preventative measure, I put two more in. But 15 to 20 days after the stent I was already doing karate again.
So, in this sense, you have never been that classic intellectual. No, I’m a guy who makes ends meet.
And how was the transition – if it was a transition, or if it ran parallel – from journalism to the academy? I started doing both things at the same time. Around 1970, when I founded the school here with José Carlos Lisboa, with everybody, I was still at the press. And so they invited me, I kept doing it, until in 1973 I left the press for good. I left, and I came to earn about four or five times less here than what I earned at Bloch.
Even so you preferred the academy, already at ECO. It was not a salary to live on, I had to do other things. It was very little. There was no professor’s career like today. I earned less, but I was much happier with that little salary, because at Bloch I couldn’t stand that business any longer. It was very mediocre. My happy life at work was here at ECO. But I always did other things. I was a director at TV Educativa in 1979 and 1980, when Gilson Amado died. Eduardo Portella was the minister. And Portella was one of the founders here as well.
He was acting as minister. Right, he was “acting minister.” I was, later, the minister of the National Library. I’ve had public offices.
The library in a short time, right? In a very short time. I was a Globo advisor for some time, there on the board of directors. I had completely forgotten about that. I found out two years ago, I discovered that I had some unemployment insurance as a Globo employee. “Me?!”
Do you remember in what year you worked at Globo? No, but it was certainly before 1977, in 1977 I wrote a book, O Monopólio da Fala, and I was put on Globo’s blacklist because of this book, because people thought that O Monopólio da Fala was Globo. It was not, it was a semiotic concept. And that book was much read, it’s still much read, there are many editions. When I arrived at TVE, there were people from the Nation Intelligence Service (SNI) who brown-nosed me, right? Then I found out that I was a suspicious person in all kinds of information files.
You were seen as a leftist, naturally. I was seen as someone from the Left, but the information was sometimes wrong. I had given “a speech in Mariana for the students,” saying bad things about the military. But I never went to Mariana, as far as I can remember, I didn’t give a speech. But there is a SNI file, a request for information about me, from 1975, that praises me. I kept it. It says that I exercise my profession honestly at Bloch Editora.
You didn’t engage in party action? I don’t like political parties. The only club, let’s say, that I’m a part of, where I have a hierarchical role that I’m proud of, is the Terreiro de Axé Opô Afonjá, in Bahia, where I’m obá xangô. I’m part of the candomblé hierarchy in Bahia, and I’m very proud of this. I speak Yoruba, I go to the ceremonies – I’m part of a Xangô cult. It’s the only one.
There in Bahia or in Rio also? In Bahia, but here the Afonjá candomblés recognize me also. The old women come to take my blessing. And here I, for many years, went to the house of professor Agenor, who was a great babalaô, from the black tradition – though he was white and had blue eyes, these Brazilian things. I wrote a book about him called Um Vento Sagrado, with a student here at ECO, Luís Filipe de Lima. He was my undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral student. And my friend. Luís Filipe is from candomblé, is made in candomblé. They made a film based on the book. Agenor’s funeral happened in the MEC building, because Gilberto Gil, who was the minister of Culture, opened the doors. When professor Agenor would have turned 100 years old – he died at 96 years old – I was already at the National Library. And I threw a big party at the National Library, not with religious things, because I couldn’t, but as a person of letters, for he was a great Parnassian poet, he was a professor at the Colégio Pedro II (Pedro II School). So, coming back, you didn’t have ties to the Communist Party. Many people thought I was a communist. I actually have certain issues with communists, a large part of whom I knew were reactionaries, rough with women, whose personal lives were full of prejudice. These straight-jackets don’t attract me.
Have you ever interrupted your trajectory since you joined UFRJ? No, never. Only to travel to France a second time, in 1980, but as a professor, doing a post-doctorate there.
You said that, in 1970, you came here to create the school. I came here to this (ECO’s) building, but it was already at Praça da República. I entered there in 1968 to 1969. The Communication School was created through a 1967 decree by Castelo Branco: it transformed the Journalism course into the School of Communication, the same way Lisbon decided to transform the old Journalism course in the College of Philosophy into the School of Communication. And so I was invited.
Then it came to Urca. In 1970 the school came here to this building. Simeão Leal, an extraordinary figure, was already the director. A doctor by education, a genial guy, and also a plastic artist. He was terrible, a shameless and crazy guy from Paraíba who liked to fight. It was his idea to do the doctorate, the master’s. He invited Emmanuel Carneiro Leão, who is the most extraordinary professor of Philosophy I"ve ever known. I studied in France, I was a student of Roland Barthes – Barthes is the most intelligent figure I’ve ever seen in my life, the most brilliant, the brightest. But Emmanuel Carneiro Leão, who doesn’t have a huge written work, only a few books, was a Brazilian Socrates to me. An impressive person, with an impressive amount of culture. But it’s not the amount of culture that impresses, I’ve met many cultured people like that. For example: Antonio Houaiss. Antonio Houaiss was extremely cultured, but it’s not the same thing as Carneiro Leão. Carneiro Leão has an equal or greater amount of culture, but his intelligence is greater than his amount of culture.
And was his ability to pass on this knowledge also great? Totally, for whoever let himself be initiated by him and for whomever he wanted, because, depending on the day and his mood, he was like this: he would look at the class and not enter the room, but leave.
Was he important in your education? He was essential, first, as a close friend – until today, though I don’t see him much. He retired, but we always talk by phone. Emmanuel Carneiro Leão is a great teacher, a great teacher. He was Heidegger’s student, one of Heidegger’s brilliant students in Germany. He has a superior knowledge of German, of Latin, of Greek. He was my mentor in life. Another was Simeão Leal. Not for the same reasons as Carneiro Leão, but as a person. Simeão was someone who liked people. That is, there were people whom he didn’t like, because he was really short-tempered. He loved the school and liked me and Carneiro Leão a lot. He was a guy who united this school and put undesirable figures out. He had no problems, with the coronels or the Department for Political and Social Order (DOPS). Armed or not.
He had physical courage. An enormous physical courage. So he could do ECO even at a very difficult time: there were leftists in here, students were imprisoned. He was the cousin of the commander of the 1st Army, who liked him.
He could get into fights. Simeão had his back looked after. And he was a person who, if he saw talent, would give up a part of himself, so to speak, in support. This is very important when you found something. ECO had no prestige, it was an emerging school. It had no importance at the rectory – I think we have a lot, today. Today it’s because the word “communication” has grown, but at the time it didn’t mean anything. Such that this building belonged to Pharmacy, when Hélio Fraga was the rector.
You must know good stories about Simeão. Several. When ECO was created, he decided to keep empty bookshelves, where the library was. So the rector ordered their removal. In the morning, the workers came with an engineer to remove the bookshelves from the library. They put the key in the door. When they opened the door, who was sitting there inside? Simeão, sitting on a chair with a belt in his hand, which was his trademark: an exemplary man with a whipping belt. He whipped many people with that belt, such as Breno Accioly, a 2-meter-tall gaucho writer whom he famously whipped in the halls of the Education Ministry (MEC) with belt in hand.
Did the workers try to complete the task? When they entered, Simeão said: “Do you all want to get a whipping? Either you leave here now, or everybody’s going to get a whipping.” They never went back. Because, along with this, he threatened the rector. “If the rector sends them again, I’ll go there to deal with him.”
And how was the school curriculum assembled? Nobody had theory. I made the undergraduate curriculum along with Carneiro Leão, in the beginning. Just like at the Fluminense Federal University, because I’ve been at UFF since the beginning. I applied there along with Nelson Pereira dos Santos and with Nuno Veloso, and later I brought Nuno Veloso here. Only Nelson applied to be a full professor, because he was clever. I could have applied to be a full professor. I thought it would be too much, so I applied for assistant professor.
First you taught in the undergraduate program and soon afterwards in the postgraduate program, correct? Soon afterwards in the postgraduate program. I ended up doing a doctorate in Letters, but I was already teaching here in the postgraduate program. I did my doctorate in Letters, along with Marcio Tavares. Carneiro Leão conceived the postgraduate program in the following way: by understanding communication not as journalism, only, but journalism as a practice within communication, one practice among others: advertising, editorial production.
Was it a vision common to other postgraduate courses? It was not common. Hence the reason why the postgraduate program faced great difficulties with the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES), because CAPES was dominated by people from São Paulo, and they wanted a vocational course, but ECO’s position has always been more theoretical. How was communication understood here? It was understood as thinking, thinking about things like newspapers, radios, magazines, those technical devices that were arising with the changes on top of journalism, television. Thus, communication as an activity of thought. Look, this position of thinking about communication as an activity was Wittgenstein position. Wittgenstein conceived philosophy as an activity of elucidation of the questions that language brings to anyone – be it for the scientist, be it for the philosopher, be it for the common man –, an activity of elucidation, not a body of doctrine, not, let’s say, a systematic set of knowledge like science – but philosophy is another thing, this activity of clarification, of elucidation, of resolution of the difficult questions. And communication, for Carneiro Leão, who was a teacher, entered in this sense, here. Because we took turns at the direction of the postgraduate program. Carneiro Leão, Marcio, and myself, for many years. One left, the other entered. And I taught a course together with Carneiro Leão, for many years, at the same time.
In the same room, at the same time? In the same room, at the same time. Fábio Lacombe, Maria Helena Junqueira, whom Francisco Antônio Dória later joined. He was, sometimes, more of a professor than a student. It was an experimental course, which gave initial classes and then it was only dialogue on top of that. It was a famous course here in the postgraduate program. The students nicknamed it “Rock in Rio,” because, according to them, there were several stars. It was a great time for us here.
Could this contribution be considered specific to the postgraduate program at ECO? Yes. The postgraduate program here was theoretical, with theoretical professors, which provoked a certain anger, a certain hatred in a certain part of the Journalism professors, who wanted to turn the school into something practical, which is a profile of other postgraduate programs and of other schools. Because this really affected the undergraduate program. But the feedback that we had later, that we’ve always had, was from people, even from newspapers, from the press, who came back to do the postgraduate course here after graduating, and they wanted precisely theory – “Ah, I learned that at the newspaper, I’ll learn it at the newspaper.” There is no theory of journalism, there is journalistic knowledge. You can reflect on it. I even dealt with this in my book A Narração do Fato. It’s about that. But there are people, big journalists, one of them really, I won’t say who, he was a good journalism professor, but he was fanatical about this practical thing, he brought it here. But, here, it never prospered.
Did the postgraduate program ever distance itself from this original intent? It has never distanced itself from this. Now, today there has been a change, after the internet, after the extensive control of CAPES, about the content of disciplines and about productivity. To have a score at CAPES, to be able to have grants and scholarships, to be able to exist, you have to conform to what CAPES says, what CAPES does. You have to adjust to this. Today I would say it’s a fast-food productivity. You have to produce articles, it doesn’t matter if nobody reads them, articles that sometimes you can assemble from another text. What’s important is the number that appears in the curriculum there, in order to later be evaluated, numerically, by the CAPES commissions. I feel a mediocritization in the field.
In relation to this first conception? It doesn’t mean that the professors are mediocre. No, I think the opposite: in the meantime, professors today know more about the field than they knew before, they have constituted their own lines of research. Although few work this notion of totality of the field. For example: in October 2014, in São Paulo, there will be a meeting organized by Ciro Marcondes, who is from the University of São Paulo (USP), called “Thinkers of Communication,” to think about the field. Only a few people were invited to this meeting. There will be three days of discussion. A few people, because the field has become very scattered – professors are competent at what they are doing, but the field is very scattered. So, at this meeting will be Marcondes, who works with this, with philosophy, myself, Lucrécia Ferrara, José Luiz Braga, and Luís Martino, who was my student, by the way. Few people.
Speaking of students, among those who passed through the postgraduate program, would you highlight anyone? Look, I won’t give names because I taught a large part of the ECO professors. There’s Ana Paula Goulart: she was Milton José Pinto’s postgraduate student here, but she was my undergraduate student at UFF. Later I was part of the committees in which she was. I reviewed the application in which she entered the school. Just to mention one. I was Milton José Pinto’s PhD director, because I also tinkered with linguistics. Later I abandoned this perspective. For example: last week, I was the one who gave the opening address of the semiotics congress at the International Center for Semiotics and Communication, in Alagoas. Eliseo Verón created it there, in Japaratinga. I went last year as a participant, I went the previous year, and he wanted me to give the opening talk. There were people from France, people from Argentina. The address was full of people, many people. I’ve always tinkered with semiotics, but a more open, intellectual semiotics, not that formal thing. I also reviewed Marcio’s application, for full professor. Look, I’ve had many, many students.
Speaking in a generic way, are the people who graduated from here important for the field of communication? Yes, they’re important. I’ll cite one name, who was my student and is my wife: Raquel Paiva. She came from Juiz de Fora, she was already a teacher, and she did her master’s here. I was her director. She also went to Europe, to Turin, and later became my wife. And I consider Raquel one of most successful events of the line created here at ECO that today is everywhere, which is communitarian communication, an expression of hers, by the way, not communitarian journalism. This place where we are talking, the Laboratory for Communitarian Communication Studies (LECC), which has existed for 15 years, provided an education to community radio stations in favelas; she helped create the Popular School of Critical Communication at Maré, with Jailson de Souza e Silva, who is connected to the Favela Observatory”); anyway, courses in Bahia. This little place here is very important in the school. It’s a practical thing in communication, without being only journalism. And now she has founded the National Institute for Research in Communitarian Communication (INPECC), which congregates ECO, the UFF laboratory, and another one from Rio Grande do Norte. And they are joining other courses. So you see: it was a discipline that didn’t exist, that was born here from Raquel’s doctoral dissertation.
Are there other examples in this line? Marcio’s IDEA. A first-rate group here to think about philosophy and communication. So you have Marcio, who like me is retired and continues to teach as a professor emeritus. There’s Paulo Vaz; Mauricio Lissovsky, who is now the coordinator of CAPES; there was Luiz Alberto Rezende, who’s a physicist; and Henrique Antoun. There was a big group, I don’t even know who else is there at IDEA. There’s Heloisa Buarque de Hollanda’s group, the Advanced Program of Contemporary Culture (PACC). There are several groups. Today I’ve lost dimension a little, but it was a school characterized by the existence of groups, all connected to the postgraduate program. Today this also exists in several other places. I think that ECO was a driving force for groups directly or indirectly connected to the postgraduate program and with different areas of study. When a person sees the Communication School from the outside, from a newspaper: “This is a Journalism school.” It isn’t. Here Communication has become something much more broad. Here is, in fact, an applied social science.
You spoke of an initial resistance to this concept. But, despite the resistance, the postgraduate program was consolidated. We faced a lot of resistance to this concept, but the school persisted in this. And today, when it changed, it conforms more to CAPES, it was also because of a diversification of the professors who arrived and who are very competent in their fields. I can cite a few of them. Eduardo Granja Coutinho, who works with popular music, has a book, Velhas Histórias, Memórias Futuras, about Paulinho da Viola, his doctoral dissertation. He also wrote Os Cronistas de Momo: Imprensa e Carnaval na Primeira República, which is very good. He works with popular music and with Gramsci, he is the communist here at the school. He was my student also, I was his dissertation director here at ECO. He has just written a very good book, A Comunicação do Oprimido e Outros Ensaios, in which there is an essay in my honor, about joy. It’s beautiful, one of the most well-written things I’ve read recently. There is João Freire, a very good professor; here there are people from the area of cinema, like André Parente, who is very good. There are many, many people here. Marialva Barbosa, who is now the president of Intercom. I’m citing people who are close to me and very good, really. Micael Herschmann, the son of Rubens Gerchman. Many good people at this school, many really good people.
Who also left for other Communication schools around the country. Yes, students from here are at UFBA, at UFF. João Baptista de Abreu, from UFF, did his doctorate here. There are people in Brasília, Alagoas, Maranhão, and Belém do Pará. The school fed the others, many others. I think that, the poorer you are in terms of resources, the more you secure in certain things that do not need expensive technology. And maybe the school’s luck here was to have always been poor. It is difficult to say this. Today there is equipment, but this equipment isn’t the glory of the school. It’s more the capacity of the professors, I would say. And why? If you are not connected, secure in equipment, you are required to think, to build your theory. Now, the internet has changed all of this. The internet is completely changing the school’s curriculum. And the tendency is this: Journalism turning to courses connected to electronic communication, to the internet in its broad spectrum. This is the tendency of the school, of the undergraduate program, now. Not of the postgraduate program; the postgraduate program is reflection. You can contemplate this, but this is not what it’s about. But in the undergraduate program, it is. So the school will certainly change. It’s a new generation that is entering, already discussing topics that I don’t even know about.
But to reflect on a knowledge that is still changing is also more difficult. Yes. One of my books is being published now, the result of a course here in the postgraduate program, a study-abroad course, because I’m also a visiting professor in Seville. It’s called A Ciência do Comum: Notas para o Método Comunicacional. A reflection that includes the internet. Electronic communication is more important than classical media, though I think up until today the internet has not provided a journalism comparable to paper journalism. It might be that it will, but it hasn’t yet.
What reflection would you give on journalism today? For me, the press has fallen into decadence. That is to say, to be clear, you have the great American newspapers, Brazilian newspapers, we keep on reading the newspaper, but it’s no longer the same newspaper we used to read, because it has lost its function. The press’s prestige in the West is due to the second article of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which speaks of freedom of expression as a civil liberty – not a political liberty. Civil Liberty is a modern thing, the freedom of expression, of movement. This is civil liberty. The press is what advanced this. The press’s prestige is tied to this second article. It’s as if it were, let’s say, a strong device. The arguments when a journalist is killed, when the dictatorship suffocates the press are based on this. And this liberal spirit has never been totally extinguished. It has never been ideologically extinguished, but, in practice, I think it is already in extinction. In practice, the freedom of the press today is the freedom of the owner of the press, of the company, not freedom of expression, of speech. That is why Balzac was against the press, has libels against the press. Because he considered himself a journalist, but he would say “pamphlet journalist,” of pamphlets – pamphlet in the good sense of the expression. So I think that this press is ending, is being exterminated.
To give place to... To give place to something within the contents industry that is supported by the internet. The internet, for me, is another country. It’s another continent. At this level, I define the internet as another continent, a continent above the others that are there, that crosses all of the others. And as a continent it has, for me, a more geographic than cultural effect. It tinkers with the tectonic plates upon which we are settled. A profound change. But, therefore, information is more necessary than ever. I’m not sure if journalism... Because it’s necessary to make a distinction between journalism and information. Journalists confuse journalism with information a lot. The so-called informative, informational content is one thing – journalism is this content put into a discourse of revelation of State secrets, of clarification of publics. This is what journalism has been since the 19th century. So it’s not enough to inform. Because today we are informed from all sides, not only there with the newspaper. Anything is informing us. Even seeing the beasts on National Geographic – the behavior of lions, of hyenas, of fish –, we are all the time anthropomorphizing these things. We have the “orca, killer whale.” No animal is a murderer. Animals can kill people. Why? Because they got old, they’re hungry, for territorial competition, because their territory has been invaded. I like watching these shows. It’s scandalous because the lions attack the zebras in throngs, attack the gazelles, and it seems to be terribly ferocious for five lions to jump on top of a gazelle. It has always been like this, because animals need to eat. This is the law of the jungle, the law of survival. Man has always done this, much more than a lion killing a gazelle. But on National Geographic it seems to be a terrible thing. Or the orca that killed its trainer, a much seen video on the internet. Possibly on this day the orca was not very well, was a little irritated because of something: food, a lot of people. Sometimes, people’s movement might have seemed aggressive to her. That is the first hypothesis. The second is that it was a game, a game she had already done before, she just wanted to play. The murderer is man. Man is the only animal capable of murdering. But, if you are being informed, nothing is free anymore, in this sense. You don’t escape from information. But this isn’t journalism. Journalism, historically, is all of this – this information that is given – in the sense of magnifying the public, educating the public. On the other hand, journalism depends on public space, and public space has not increased, it has shrunk. You say: “The more television, the more internet...” It seems public space has increased. Technically, it has increased. Facebook is already a network of a billion users. Yes, but 1.2 billion is absurd. No newspaper or television has had this audience. So it seems that public space has increased, but this is not public space. This is publicity space. It’s something else, it’s different. This is a space of this information turned public. Public space has always been a place of debate and discussion connected to politics and the arts. Always has been. So this is a tectonic plate that has shifted. We have the same things, but things aren’t the same. They’ve shifted. Journalism – the name – remains, but with fewer and fewer newspapers. The important newspapers are O Globo, Estadão, Folha de São Paulo, and Correio Braziliense. You have a newspaper in each place. But when I arrived in Rio, in 1965, there were many newspapers. Things keep on shrinking, but it seems like you have a broad source of information. O Globo has its columnists, opinions, you can write a letter – if they find it convenient, they publish it. It’s not everyone who reads letters to the editor. So you also have a critique of the press that has arisen. I write twice a month for the Press Observatory. For 15 years. Last week actually, I participated in one about prejudice on television, with Dines: me, Chaim Katz, who was from the school here, a psychoanalyst for many years. Therefore, I’m a person who thinks that journalism still has an important social function. But it’s not the same. You have to rethink it.
Even from the point of economic viability. To make it economically viable and to think. I’d say that the people who do journalism and who are good at doing journalism are bad thinkers of journalism. And I think it’s useless, because the guy who is in the newsroom and prints the newspaper, who is up to his neck, doesn’t want to hear about thinking. He wants to make the newspaper, put it out on the street and leave, For this, the school is also useful, though the newspapers, at bottom, despise the academy. But I comprehend that. There has always been a rivalry: “Teaching is not doing.” This is a lie. Teaching is doing something with words. Speaking, communicating is doing, too. Doing is not only manipulating this here or writing. It’s doing with words. So teaching is doing, and with words, too. Words are instruments, only. In general journalism is somewhat obtuse. I think that journalism is in crisis.
Muniz, to close, could you say which of your books you consider most important? I have two lines of books: books about Brazilian culture and books about media, media in general.
In addition to your fictional work. Yes, fiction, Brazilian culture, and media. In total there are around 36 books, by several publishers. So, my currently most read books by the folks at the postgraduate program are Antropológica do Espelho, which is a theory of communication, and As Estratégias Sensíveis. I received an email today from a guy who renovated the Federal University of Southern Bahia, changed the whole curriculum, and is now the rector at the Federal University of Southern Bahia, which is an experimental university that unites the cities of the region – Naomar de Almeida Filho. The email is about a book that is really being read by the folks in education. It’s called Reinventando a Educação. It was the first book about education that I published. There is a preface by Leonardo Boff, and Boff is an enthusiastic propagandist of this book, which came out two years ago, in 2012 or 2013, I can’t remember anymore. So I’ll highlight these on media and on education. And, on Brazilian culture, I have a book called Claros e Escuros, about the issue of race here in Brazil – I’m now introducing a chapter about quotas. And a book called A Verdade Seduzida. People like this one a lot. I also have a book on black culture here in Brazil – the folks in geography read a lot. It’s called O Terreiro e a Cidade, which is about space and territory here in Rio de Janeiro.
And in fiction? José Olympio reprinted last year my first book of short stories, which is from 1988. Santugri: Histórias de Mandinga e Capoeiragem. The best review of this book was done by João Bosco, the musician, with a song in honor of me – it’s on the cd As Mil e Uma Aldeias. Go on the internet, put the name of the song: “Convocação.” |
