Lusophony in perspective: panlusitanism, lusobrazilianism and lusotropicalism

Abstract

This paper is circumscribed within three concepts discussed through the “lusophone” perspective, which were widely propagated along the period between the 1930s and 1950s. The first concept is the “panlusitanism” present in the Luso‑African Society of Rio de Janeiro bulletin that pursued the ideological dissemination of Lusitanian traditions and praised the vast colonial empire. The second concept is the “Lusobrazilianism” by the Portuguese Nuno Simões, who defended a cultural approach based on blood ties, language and history. Finally, the third concept refers to the “Lusotropicalism” by the Brazilian essayist Gilberto Freyre, who postulated a peculiar ability of Portuguese people in colonization due to miscegenation and adaptation to the tropics. Understanding “lusophony” as a discursive perspective within a cultural matrix, the configuration of “Panlusitanism”, “Lusobrazilianism” and “Lusotropicalism” is taken with special interest, while the main issue to be analyzed is related to the political discourses historicity as well as the intellectual networks articulated around them.