SHARPED WORDS: MEMORIES AND AFRICANIST REPRESENTATIONS IN THE CAROLINA MARIA DE JESUS

• Main Author: Élio Chaves Flores
• Format: Article
• Language: Portuguese
• Published: Universidade Federal de Pernambuco 2010-06-01
• Series: Clio: Revista de Pesquisa Histórica
• Subjects: Black Memory; Historical Representations; Historical sociology
• Online Access: https://periodicos.ufpe.br/revistas/revistaclio/article/view/24239/19661

his article focuses on the Africanists memories and representations writing by Carolina Maria de Jesus (1914-1977), based on theoretical "historical sociology of Florestan Fernandes (1920-1995). Florestan Fernandes began studying "race relationships" in Brazil in the same historical context in which Carolina Maria de Jesus settled in a slum of Sao Paulo in the late 1940s. When Caroline died in 1977, Florestan Fernandes had written a year earlier, the seminal essay on the blacks’ situation (African-American). The writing by Carolina Maria de Jesus was performed from the slum, which she designated as the "garbage dump" of black and poor people at the metropolis. The Florestan’ scientific writing comes from the "living room", called by Carolina as a worthy place, where one can "read all the books in the world". Would one writing explain another? In which sense the Carolinean narrative would confirm the sociological thesis of Florestan Fernandes? Or could it be otherwise? The essay works on the assumption that the Africanist memories and representations contained in the Carolinean “oral writings" support the radical sociology of Florestan Fernandes.