This article examines the work of fabricating "labels" and "icons" that goes on within Brazilian politics. I focus on "the big names" and interpreters of the political history of two Brazilian states, Rio Grande do Sul (RS) and Maranhão (MA), as well as interpretations that have made of "Getulism", "Pasqualinism", "Brizolism", "Vitorinism" and "Sarneyism". My analytical exercise has consisted of looking at the connections between those who have interpreted these "isms", political leaders and the relational fabric that gives meaning to the identifications, distinctions and the positions that are taken. That is, I analyze their underlying social resources: (i) their political and intellectual reputation (social origin, professional recognition, political offices, degrees and belonging to spheres of intellectual recognition; (ii) their political alignment and (iii) their transit through factional interplay within in two distinct regional configurations. Through analysis of their itineraries and through texts (biographies, books and newspaper articles), my reflections explore the uses and relevance- as political instruments and means of identification - of the following: symbolic genealogies, forms of personification of symbolic capital, relations of reciprocity, the role of mediation, the activation of political memory and the social bases and dominion of "writing" as a form of expression and association with the intellectual universe.
Political Elites; Leadership; Charisma; Memory; Networks
