Roots and Constellations of the Brazilian Academic Geographic Knowledge: knowing and thinking under the condition of ribbing

Author(s)

Guilherme dos Santos Claudino

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: Presidente Prudente. 2020-04-13.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp). Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia. Presidente Prudente
• Defense date: 2019-10-23
• Advisor: Eliseu Savério Sposito

Abstract

Diverse processes have differentiated the trajectory of the knowledge/thought that we conceive today as geographic. Human history reveals that, in different periods, the human – and their subjective and material milieu – has underpinned elements for the effectuation of characteristics that, united, give substance to knowledge; and geographic knowledge is no exception. In different manners and in the most diverse paths, geographers from various institutions did engage in the exercise of understanding geographic knowledge. Such occupation came into materialization and crystallized, inter alia, in the form of master's theses and doctoral dissertations. The present doctoral dissertation, therefore, aims to understand the studies, in Brazilian graduate programs, that turned to geographic thought and knowledge as objects of investigation, which I however understand as studies of knowing. I therefore think that knowing is a synthesis of knowledge and thought. In this state of affairs, I identify that the study of knowing, as an object in Brazilian Geography, takes place under two dimensions of analysis: one is historical, and the other is theoretical-conceptual-propositional. A set of other research themes concentrates within these two dimensions. The dissertations and theses were distributed in detail into these dimensions and other sub-axes, revealing authors, research objects, institutions of origin, and dates of conclusion. In effect, the authors and their respective objects of analysis are not outside space and time, since they are products of a historical heritage that precedes them – once there are what I call roots – of which they are inextricably heirs. Such roots were the drivers for the rising of constellations of geographers whose identity underlies a research theme in common. I analyze, therefore, a part of the Brazilian academic work in Geography within the scope of historical and epistemological studies on geographic knowledge and thought as an object considered under the notions of roots and constellations and, at the same time, I discern that such studies should not be investigated on a separate basis. In this regard, I reckon that knowing is a synthesis of knowledge and thought, raised to the condition of ribbing. I also seek to represent the future in relation to the past, what I call the continuous present of the coming past of the constellatory roots of knowledge. In other words, it is an exercise that intends to evoke things from the past yet unsaid, which can now come to the surface through research, and which are connected through the subjects in the present. What is coming manifests in the future, that is, new subject-geographers will emerge and become part of geographic thought. To represent these three periods in time, I realize and attempt to remain in foretaste and expectation regarding the object, as can be seen in the constellatory synthesis, which unifies them all in a single tone. This doctoral dissertation, in other words, is the creation and revelation of a state of expectation through a way of thinking that unfolds by ribbing. Lastly, I feature and propose a more plastic way of thinking that does take into account the advisor-advisee relationship, essential to the history of Brazilian Geography and its state in the most recent period, thus forming constellatory roots of knowledge. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 17/18305-3 - Brazilian academic geographical knowledge roots and constellations the knowing and thinking of the condition of object
• Grantee: Guilherme dos Santos Claudino
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate (Direct)