When one leaves Brazil for an academic experience abroad, "Brazil" can become a strange signifier, a space one is supposed to represent but which one cannot completely recognize anymore. What is Brazil in a North-American academic environment where Brazil itself is seen as part of a "Latin-American" tradition that for most Brazilians is barely recognized as theirs? Is it possible that Latin America as a coherent symbolic construct is only pertinent from the perspective of an English-speaking academic community? What does it mean to raise questions about Brazilian literature when we are abroad? These and other questions will be addressed here in order to ask if belonging is not the least pertinent of our most cherished feelings.
Brazilian thought; Language and nation; Latin America; Universalism; Area studies