Time and change in the Iberian Americas: words and concepts in Portuguese and Spanish enlightened reformers' discourse (c. 1750- c. 1807)

• Grant number: 17/16541-1
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Effective date (Start): April 01, 2018
• Effective date (End): March 31, 2020
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History
• Acordo de Cooperação: Coordination of Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES)
• Principal Investigator: João Paulo Garrido Pimenta
• Grantee: Mariana de Oliveira Ferraz Paulino
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The research proposes a study about notions, conceptions, representations and concepts of time expressed in the political languages of Portuguese and Spanish enlightened reformers, especially in the discourse produced by those who were linked to or integrated into the state apparatus and walked about spaces of sociability such as academies and societies of scholars, which address matters related to the Iberian Americas between c.1750 and c.1807.According to the presuppositions established for the investigation, it's given that the phenomenon of time is a central premise for the understanding of the words and concepts undertaken by the characters of Portuguese and Spanish enlightened reformism because the nature of these policies, which conditioned their formulators and managers to the conception of a more prosperous future for the monarchies, generated systematized ideas about the past, the present and the future. This is because the Iberian crowns gradually interpreted that they occupied peripheral positions in relation to the economic competition patterns in a global context, before the appearance of symptoms related to the acceleration of historical time and the questioning of the spaces of experience and the horizons of expectation in those circumstances. These symptoms seemed to threaten the viability of the empires and were manifested especially in political languages and in the performance of Portuguese and Spanish enlightened statesmen as to how they sought to find, in the historical legacy of past centuries, inspirations of conduct that could ensure the rescue and maintenance of an order that seemed to reveal its bankruptcy.If "the crisis evokes the question to the historical future", according to Reinhart Koselleck, the changes inherent to notions, conceptions, representations and concepts of time have been apprehended in the most diverse instances, of varying forms and to varying degrees and to a greater or lesser degree, were one of the most eloquent indications that the nature of the reformist imperial policy of Portugal and Spain instigated the formulation of projects aimed at securing a future that would ensure prosperity to the empires in the face of a feared, sometimes even imminent, bankruptcy. And if the Iberian Americas occupied central positions in this metamorphic whirlwind, it is important to address the discursive temporal aspect of reformism regarding especially to the colonial circumstance. (AU)