The seed and the fireflies: Brazilian Historiography and the Annales heritage (1935-1985)

• Grant number: 19/07120-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: October 01, 2019
• End date: July 31, 2024
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History
• Principal Investigator: Miguel Soares Palmeira
• Grantee: Mariana Ladeira Osés
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 22/08095-0 - Across the Atlantic: the doctoral courses of Brazilian historians in France between 1970 and 2000, BE.EP.DR

Abstract

Fernand Braudel's presence in the "French mission" that founded the History Department of the University of São Paulo is usually believed to have established a genetic link between USP historians and the Annales historiography. Despite being deeply rooted in Brazilian historiography, the belief in this so-called "heritage", as well as its inherent contradictions and anachronisms, are yet to be subjected to extensive critical analysis. This project aims to fill that gap by comparing the historical development of the notion of such 'heritage' in USP and in other Brazilian universities where historians who were also closely connected to the French group worked. The goal of this analysis is to investigate in which ways the claim for this 'heritage' is affected by factors such as the individual trajectories of these agents, structural changes in the Brazilian historiographic field and shifts in the Annales' influence and intellectual power in France and abroad. The project's working hypothesis is that the aforementioned 'Annales heritage' isn't monolithic and stable in nature, but, on the contrary, multifaceted and subject to diachronic changes; modulated by the subjective dispositions of the agents that enunciate it and by historical changes in the Brazilian and French historiographic fields. (AU)