Uma perspectiva política centrista: Yves Lacoste e a controvérsia do Terceiro Mundo na intelectualidade francesa

Abstract

This article examines Yves Lacoste’s position in the French controversy over Third-Worldism, based on Contre les anti-tiers-mondistes et contre certains tiers-mondistes, published in 1985. Situated within intellectual history, the article treats centrism as an analytical category for understanding the position Lacoste adopted between liberal-conservative anti-Third-Worldism and certain revolutionary Third-Worldist currents. The study draws on Lacoste’s memoirs, texts by the protagonists of the controversy, and later critical interpretations. It argues that the Cultural Revolution, the Cambodian genocide, and the boat people crisis helped move Lacoste away from a socialist-revolutionary horizon toward a reformist, democratic, and humanitarian grammar. By rejecting both the liberal denunciation of Third-Worldism and the automatic political unity of the Third World, Lacoste defended the effectiveness of aid policies, while reducing the explanatory weight of imperialism, plunder, and colonial relations in the making of the modern world.