Modelos de Espaço Público em contraste: Imprensa e Modernidade Seletiva nas Províncias da Paraíba e Pernambuco (1870-1880)

Abstract

This article seeks to elucidate the debate that was constituted by the press throughout the 1870s and 1880s in the Brazilian provinces of Paraíba and Pernambuco around the French model of parliamentary monarchy that contrasted with the republicanism of the USA. Taking over the role of public opinion maker, the press sought to highlight the issue of the Public Space since that distinct ways of dealing with it was considered in each of those idealized international political models. This article also mapped some relations that the newspapers analyzed betrayed between the debates on the Public Space and the rhetoric of modernity that accompanied them. Often the question of science and technique seemed to eclipse the dimension of conflict that is proper to the political universe and the public sphere, unifying the glances around a dazzle with the material improvements that the century promised.