Darcy Ribeiro e UnB: Intelectuais, projeto e missão

Abstract

The history of the University of Brasilia (UnB) -since its original conception, struggles for its implementation, until the military coup suffered in 1964 with its campus invaded by military troops- is remembered for being related to the debate by Brazilian public intellectuals that, in the 1950s and 1960s, defended a certain nation project that had seen in education and science its constituent forces. I use the Intelligentsia category of Mannheim that strengthened the argument of the intellectuals engaged in social planning with a view to necessary changes. Darcy Ribeiro is one of those intellectuals. Upon the notions of "project" and "mission" I try to explain what could also be called "generation of utopia", being UnB one of the ongoing projects that was born within a "range of possibilities" that was abruptly modified. Revisiting the mission contained in UnB, updating it because of unprecedented "fields of possibility", may be a necessary task for the educational debate today.