This dissertation undertakes an analysis of the concepts of crisis and transition as they appear in the Revista de Cultura & Política (Journal of Culture & Politics). This publication was made under the auspices of the Centro de Estudos de Cultura Contemporânea (CEDEC, Center for the Study of Contemporary Culture) in the late 1970’s, with a clear proposal of political intervention in the context that would later be known as the Abertura Política (Political Opening) in Brazil. Two main hypotheses are developed throughout the dissertation. The first one concerns the fact that the concepts of crisis and transition in the Journal should be understood within the intellectual scenario called the Escola Paulista (São Paulo School), characterized, above all, by the criticism to the ideas attributed by its members to developmental nationalism. The second hypothesis concerns the fact that those responsible for the Journal made use of arguments characteristic of the referred intellectual context with the purpose of conferring meaning to the political process within which they were inserted. While the arguments of the Escola Paulista are incorporated into and organized around the concepts of crisis and transition, various contradictions come to light in the discussions promoted in the Journal. Instead of building an obstacle, these contradictions intertwine themselves with the political practice of the intellectuals in question, who, in this movement, were inclined to be engaged in the formation of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (Labor Party), contributing to the construction of some of the historical meanings this party would come to understand and incorporate as their own.