Silences and absences in the works of Claude Lévi-Strauss: ephemeral and fragmented reports about his experience in the 1930's at São Paulo City

• Grant number: 14/15433-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Master's degree
• Start date: November 20, 2014
• End date: May 19, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - History of Brazil
• Principal Investigator: Maria Stella Martins Bresciani
• Grantee: Thainã Teixeira Cardinalli
• Supervisor: Mônica Raisa Schpun
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), France
• Associated to the scholarship: 13/02142-7 - The sad Paulicéia: the image of São Paulo in the decade of 1930, in the dialogue between Mário de Andrade and Claude Lévi-Strauss, BP.MS

Abstract

The proposal of the research submitted through this project is to continue the master's degree studies, funded by Fapesp, and its main objective is to understand the construction process of São Paulo's representation(s) in the works of Claude Lévi-Strauss and Mário de Andrade. Analyzing the texts Tristes Trópicos and Saudades de São Paulo, as well as Claude Lévi-Strauss interviews, it was identified that the reports about São Paulo concealed the characters with whom the anthropologist lived together, the relationship with São Paulo intellectuals and the everyday experiences in the city. The French ethnologist wrote only swift descriptions and nuisance impressions of a city under intense urban transformations. The difficulty to understand these reports stems from a specific bibliography about Lévi-Strauss that hardly contributes to the comprehension of them. To understand better the procedure of those city's representations constructions, and to comprehend the absences of characters and sensible descriptions of the urban space in the texts of Claude Lévi-Strauss, a research is proposed in French archives, such as Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Archives Diplomatiques de Nantes, Musée du Quai Branly and Bibliothèque Claude Lévi-Strauss, in order to investigate correspondences, photos, field diaries and notepads.It is important to emphasize that the research in France will be supervised by Doctor Mônica Raisa Schpun, in the Centre de Recherches sur le Brésil Colonial et Contemporain (CRBC) at École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. (AU)