Abstract

The arrival of Jair Bolsonaro to the presidency of the republic gave rise to many analyzes committed to understanding the relationship between the politician and the past of the military dictatorship - a theme strongly claimed in his public speeches. In this article we think about the notions of temporality involved in this return to the past, discussing the notions of historicism and updatism situating the Bolsonarist speeches about the dictatorship and, more precisely, about political repression, within the broader range of public discourses of the Brazilian military. on state violence. Our thesis is that Bolsonaro, although he presents himself as the heir of the military who participated in the political repression, represents a radical rupture in relation to the discursive strategies of this sector. Our conclusion is that he breaks a discursive framework that denies the systematic use of torture and, by explicitly defending violence as an instrument of power, takes up the dictatorship not as a past, but as an unfinished project, to be updated in the present.

Keywords:
Military dictatorship; Historicism; Historical time