This essay intends to emphasize the relation between production of knowledge and instituted power, by focusing concrete situations in which sociological interpretations are used to legitimate hegemonic demands. Its main objective is to perceive how Gilberto Freyre's analyses on Brazilian northeastern cultural identity are appropriated in the discursive articulation of regionalization of Brazilian political space. It will be carried out through a comparison between the Freyrean books that deal with northeastern cultural identity and Pernambuco governor's discourses in the period 1983 to 1998. In these discourses there is a fighting for the interpretation of Freyrean books, which constitute narratives with scientifically status that legitimate governor's discourses. I conclude that the use of Freyrian categories to the analysis of contemporary political field prevents the appreciation of an ensemble of identities and power demands that originates in the public sphere with Brazilian struggles for redemocratization, acting as an element that conceals social conflict.
Gilberto Freyre; sociological knowledge; government discourse; political culture; regionalism