The National Book Institute and the social organization of knowledge in the Brazilian Estado Novo: the role of newspapers in the Book Works Dissemination Plan (1937–1945)

Abstract

The journalistic activity related to the Book Works Dissemination Plan, drafted in 1938 by the National Book Institute, is analyzed in order to understand how newspapers operated as an instance of production and social organization of knowledge in Brazil. The study is based on the hypothesis that the newspapers responsible for disseminating the INL’s actions, in complementary articulation with the Plan, constituted a documentary set guided by state rationality, in which information and discourse functioned as mechanisms of discursive legitimation and ideological diffusion of the regime’s cultural project. The research is qualitative in nature, with an exploratory-descriptive approach, grounded in documentary research and anchored in Critical Discourse Analysis, in dialogue with the theoretical perspective of the Social Organization of Knowledge. The corpus consists of articles published in nationally circulated newspapers between 1937 and 1945, consulted in the Digital Newspaper Library of the National Library and in the collection of the Center for Research and Documentation of Contemporary Brazilian History, with the Book Works Dissemination Plan serving as a complementary document for contextualization and analysis. The results indicate that the press acted as a mediating instance in the systematization and circulation of knowledge promoted by the State, contributing to the construction of a nationalist narrative and to the legitimation of the cultural policies of the period. It is concluded that the articulation between journalistic coverage and the plan represented an experience of social ordering of knowledge oriented toward political centralization and the shaping of a disciplined national identity.