Habermas e o Contexto Brasileiro: Tradução Teórica e Desafio Prático

Abstract

The article “Habermas and the Brazilian Context: Theoretical Translation and Practical Challenge” proposes a situated reading of Habermas’s theory, reinterpreting communicative rationality in light of Brazil’s historical, social, and political conditions. Based on the idea that “thinking Habermas from the South” entails an epistemological rather than merely terminological crossing, the text examines the tensions between the universalism of the theory and the peripheral contingency of Latin American societies. It argues that, in Brazil, language functions simultaneously as a medium of understanding and as a symbolic arena of struggle, where recognition becomes a daily battle against structural inequalities. When reread from the South, the theory of communicative action acquires ethical and political depth: it becomes a project of insurgent reason, transforming listening into an act of emancipation and language into an instrument of democratic reconstruction.