The Mythical Performativity Of Anti-Politics: Fashion And Mimesis On The Brazilian Far Right

This essay examines how the Brazilian far right has used the discourse of anti-politics to construct a model of mythical performativity and promote conservative ideology by mobilising the dimension of the sensible. Intuitively, it uses uchronia, a central element of fashion as a cultural phenomenon, in its narratives to fabulate temporalities that merge present, past and future. By using mimesis to provoke aesthetic transformations in the social imaginary, the far right appropriates various neofascist stylisation strategies, reshaping sensibilities to disseminate the idea of cultural renewal. The use of mythical elements related to nationalism functions as an aesthetic strategy of ideological differentiation in which clothing acquires political relevance in public space through a (re)semanticisation of objects, eliciting a mimetic behaviour as it disseminates its specific agendas and convictions regarding a new political paradigm guiding the Brazilian cultural imagination. The essay focuses on how mimetic behaviour, typical of fashion as a phenomenon, contributes to establishing emotional reciprocity by encouraging political pathos among the masses through iconic languages that present the new regime of visibility of the far right.