The Hypothesis of the Misencounter

Abstract This article develops the following hypothesis: despite their differences, or better, precisely because of them, law and politics in Brazil comprise a system whose primary feature is its incapacity to form a totalization of the social world; that is, to formulate a public rule capable of including the diverse parts of society. Much the opposite: the characteristic of this system is the purposeful rupture, the strategic estrangement between the pole formed by law and the State (which is constructed against spontaneous forms of sociability) and the pole that includes politics and society (in which exchange modelled on the gift plays a central role). There is no higher plane capable of incorporating the two into a single unity, nor do they submit to a synthesis or to an encompassing value. The article argues that the relationship between law and politics is articulated as a dialogue conducted at a distance and through estrangement, such that one is constituted as the possible worlds of the other.