Making Latin America: literature and anthropology in the founding of Latin American imagination

• Grant number: 13/00578-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: June 01, 2013
• End date: March 31, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology - Theory of Anthropology
• Principal Investigator: Lilia Katri Moritz Schwarcz
• Grantee: Jorge Mauricio Herrera Acuña
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The overall goal of this proposed research is to analyze how have consolidated certain conceptions of supranational identity in the American continent in two moments of the twentieth century. Specifically, we focus on the meanings of Latin America and some interpretations associated with it, such as the importance of a certain kind of miscegenation in the historic and cultural formation of the continent. The scope of the work focuses on two important intellectuals whose works explored the theme of Latin America as we indicated above: the Cuban Alejo Carpentier (1904-1980) and Brazilian Darcy Ribeiro (1922-1997). Thus, we intend to develop the research in comparative perspective, focusing contexts with relevant similarities and differences to the complexity of the subject. The similarities are, for example, the great interest of both in Anthropology, History and Literature and also a politically engaged work in different countries, and the experience of prolonged exile - Carpentier in the 1930s and Darcy in the 1960 and 1970. The importance of the miscegenation is also key to both authors, structuring essential part of their arguments about Latin America. The differences go through various points of their careers, including the origin and family, educational and professional background, and the differences between the countries and regions where they begin their activities. The scope of analysis is structured by two ways: the trajectories of both authors buoyed by events injunctions and dissemination of an imagination on Latin America ruled in a pattern of racial mixing in different types of speeches. The events injunctions are related with periods of tension between the political and cultural and spatial displacement in cultural and aesthetic experience and daily. In Carpentier, for example, we intends to focus on the trajectory of the writer before departure for France, contemplating the family size, his educational and professional background, as well as the traffic along the intellectual and political circles of Cuba, like the "minoristas". The exile in Paris in the 1930s and his intense activity as a mediator between the universe of France and Cuba structure a second approach to the research, adding on to the third point, namely, Carpentier's return to the territory of Cuba and its implications definition of "real maravilloso". Darcy Ribeiro, in turn, recognized figure in the field of anthropology, education and politics in Brazil, was able to cover different forms of writing, first in studies of ethnology, after researching in the area of education and finally coming to the literary writings, in works like Maira (1976) and Savage Utopia (1982). With a circulation in various fields, it is important to this research proposal which moments of his life and writings notice to allow the construction of the concept of miscegenation in the bases of a Latin American imagination. Among the boundaries would be his exile in Uruguay in the 1960s and the passage by other countries like Peru and Venezuela until the permanent return to Brazil in the early 1980s. Thus, the spread of an imagination about Latin America ruled in a pattern of racial mixing in different types of speeches will be consolidating Ribeiro and Carpentier along these liminal moments, according to our initial hypothesis. In several of them, the overlap between Anthropology, History and Literature was essential to determine the design of a supranational identity. Without claiming a radical separation between the analysis of the trajectories and distribution of imagistic identity, this points to cut some beacons where the project aims to deepen, seeking to understand through an "anthropology of intellectual practices" as the conceptions of Latin America and miscegenation produce and are produced in each time. (AU)

Academic Publications

(References retrieved automatically from State of São Paulo Research Institutions)

ACUÑA, Jorge Mauricio Herrera. Masteries of Mestre Pastinha: an intelectual of the gingada city. 2017. Doctoral Thesis - Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD) São Paulo.