Fellow 2021-2022 BRUNA DELLA TORRE
Term: 12/2021 – 10/2022
Bruna Della Torre is post-doctoral researcher at the Sociology Department at University of Campinas where she holds a fellowship from Fapesp. She was a lecturer at the University of Brasília (2021/ 2017-2018) and since 2018 has been the executive Editor of the Crítica Marxista Journal. She was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Literary Theory and Comparative Literature Department at the University of São Paulo (2018-2021), as well as Lecturer at the Department of Social Sciences at UNIESP (2013-2015). She holds a PhD in Sociology (2017/University of São Paulo) where she presented, and subsequently defended, the dissertation: Theodor W. Adorno, crítico dialético da cultura (Adorno, Dialectical Critic of Culture). She also holds a Master’s degree in Social Anthropology (University of São Paulo); delivering her master’s dissertation Vanguarda do Atraso ou Atraso da Vanguarda? Oswald de Andrade e os teimosos destinos do Brasil (Backwardness of the Vanguard or Vanguard of the Backwardness? Oswald de Andrade and the Stubborn Destinies of Brazil) in 2012. She also holds a BA in Social Sciences from the University of São Paulo.
In 2019 she was a Visiting Scholar at the Humboldt University of Berlin’s Philosophy Department as well as at the Akademie der Künste at both the Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno Archives (2014-2015). Previously she spend a year as Visiting Scholar at Duke’s University Literature Department (2015-2016). She also was a Visiting Scholar at Goethe University Frankfurt’s Sociology Department (2014–2015). In 2019 she published the book: Vanguarda do Atraso ou Atraso da Vanguarda? Oswald de Andrade e os teimosos destinos do Brasil. São Paulo: Alameda Editorial. She was awarded the following fellowships and grants: National Post-doctoral Fellowship, Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (2018-2021); Research Stay for Scientific Academics and Scientists, DAAD (2019); Conference Travel Grant, Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel, CAPES (2019); Grant for conference organization. Academy of Global Humanities and Critical Theory, Bologna University, Duke University, UVA (2019).
INTERVIEW WITH CAPAS FELLOW BRUNA DELLA TORRE
Digital Culture Industry and Right-Wing Radicalism in Bolsonaro’s Brazil
Inspired by the studies of the Frankfurt School and its contemporary successors, this postdoctoral research aims to study the recent right-wing radicalism in Brazil, mobilizing apocalypse as a boundary concept to understand this phenomenon. The line of investigation, I propose, is the self-destructive tendencies in the Brazilian social body concerning President Jair Bolsonaro’s politics. The preliminary concept will be to investigate the relations between digital culture industry and the far-right propaganda it conveys and, on the one hand, the rise of authoritarianism in the country. The methodology resorts to a multi-method approach of analysis: firstly, the political advertising content and techniques on social media will be investigated; subsequently, our focus will turn to the profile of the consumers of such advertising, composed of constituents who voted for and support Jair Bolsonaro.