O ENLACE HISTÓRICO-FILOLÓGICO NA ESCRITA DA HISTÓRIA: O COMPARTILHAMENTO DE UMA HISTÓRIA SOCIAL PELO GRUPO DE PESQUISA ESCRAVIDÃO E INVENÇÃO DA LIBERDADE.

Abstract

The historical narrative constitutes the main element of the historiographical work materialization. History materializes through the process of chaining events, making them intelligible in space and time. In this itinerary, the figure of the historian is fundamental, insofar as they play the role of mediator towards the past, projecting a dialogue with specialized historiography on the collection of sources. Whether as an artisanal act (ALBUQUERQUE JUNIOR, 2019), or as a manufacturing act (CERTEAU, 2015 [1975]), it is possible to expand the historiographical work, also facing it as a collective practice. Starting from this scenario and using the historiographical production of the research group Escravidão e Invenção da Liberdade (Slavery and Invention of Freedom) from the Federal University of Bahia, the purpose of the present study is to understand how the gestures of writing/reading (MIYASHIRO, 2015; CHARTIER, 1988) imprinted in the narratives produced by its members converge to form a social history of slavery. In order to outline a modus operandi carried out by the group, reflections from both history and philology were activated, considering the theoretical affinities of the knowledge in the desideratum of mediation to the past (HANSEN; MOREIRA, 2013). In this sense, the discussions around a democratic and inclusive philological practice (SAID, 2007 [1993]), the problematizations derived from the sociology of texts (MCKENZIE, 2018 [1986]) and the anti-foundationalist perspective of philological criticism (BORGES; ALMEIDA, 2017) functioned as ballast for rethinking the decentralization of the text (including the historiographical one). This setting resonates with the perspectives of cultural history (CHARTIER, 1990; 2015, [2007]), because it identifies the textual dimension as a historically determined bundle of sociocultural relations, the result of a meaning-building look. From a procedural point of view, the narrative propositions of one the leaders of the mentioned group, João Reis, were used as an initial parameter to, for this purpose, map textual movements of appropriation (CHARTIER, 1998) relatively to the other members’ historiographical production. Excerpts from collective and individual books constructed by the aforementioned research group were compared, from the beacons of modern textual criticism, in order to trace community movements on the writing of history. The mapping allowed us to visualize a network of sociability and a process of narratives’ feedback divulged by Reis. Based on the use of the historiographical operation (CERTEAU, 2015 [1975]) in a transversal way, the existence of a narrative pattern was measured, consisting of the sharing of narrative strategies, theoretical references, and documentary typologies, which together contribute to the consolidation of the historiography of slavery that has been developed since the 1980s.