Published in Portugal, Cadernos Ultramares seeks to present Brazilian culture and thought in a qualified way, through volumes bringing together important essays by renowned authors in different areas of knowledge. In the two essays compiled here, "Ideas out of place" and "National by subtraction," the important literary critic Roberto Schwarz discusses a paradox experienced by Brazilian society as a malaise, in which there is a sense of dislocation between ideas and place and between culture and society.