How many “modernisms” fit in on a modernity?

Abstract

Based on the intentions of this brief essay, which intends to underline some of the visible conceptions of modernity through the recent debates about modernisms, it is set the hypothesis that some of these modernisms from the beginning of the 20th century, including the ones expressed by the Anthropophagous Manifesto, found their roots on an identity anachronism that crosses the very figuration of Euro-Western modernity since the 16th century. Consequently, the presence (in both senses) of Brazilian modernism would be an awareness of our anthropophagic being, then considered an indigenous heritage. This modernist being in that present had, as we shall see, a historical, philosophical and aesthetic character, which allowed us to attempt to understand the modernity of the other (European) from the depths of the (anti)coloniality of the self. For that, we turn to authors who theorized the modern, such as Oswald de Andrade, Benedito Nunes, Philadelpho Menezes and Philippe Dagen, among others.