Realms of memory or spaces of rememoration? A benjaminian approach to political memory in Brazil

• Grant number: 15/04514-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: January 01, 2016
• End date: August 31, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Sociology - Sociology of Knowledge
• Principal Investigator: Leopoldo Garcia Pinto Waizbort
• Grantee: Marc Pierre Olivier Berdet
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 16/23027-0 - From Villa Grimaldi (1997) to the Museum of Memory (2010): socio-anthropology of memory of political repression in Chile, BE.EP.PD

Abstract

This project will question, from a benjaminian perspective, the actual construction of political memory in Brazil. It proposes to systematize, opening the dialectic bow of Walter Benjamin's figurative thought from "phantasmagorical" spaces of capital to revolutionaries "rememorations", the post-benjaminian concept of "space of rememoration" as an alternative to the post-halbwachsian concept of "realm of memory". This conceptual elaboration will happen through a constant discussion with empirical data generated today in Brazil and produced here with participant observation and interviews with memory activists and visitors in sites of hurtful memory. The objective of these comings and goings between concept and empiricism is to propose, in the field of memory studies, a new concept adequate to actual practices, and to throw a new light on theses practices beyond Pierre Nora's traditional concept, still prevailing today. (AU)