De coadjuvantes a protagonistas: cenas da história e da memória de mulheres em biografias de Ana Arruda Callado

Abstract

The presence of women in biographical production in Brazil in the 20th century, their importance as authors and protagonists is the central theme of this thesis, which presents as a corpus four biographies produced by the writer Ana Arruda Callado: Dona Maria José: retrato de uma cidadã brasileira (1995), Maria Martins: uma biografia (2004), Lygia: a recordista. A biographical sketch (2009) and Berta Ribeiro: to the Indians, with love. A Biography (2016). This thesis points out that it is possible to observe how these texts act as revisers of silences and omissions about the importance of women's role and presence in Brazilian historiography and indicates how they need to be incorporated into the repertoire of productions that agency subjectivity policies about women. The analytical path of this work on part of Callado's biographical production highlights the importance of identifying the correspondences between gender studies (Scott, 1997), women's history and biographical criticism (Varikas, 1988; Perrot, 1989; Del Priore, 2020). The study goes on to analyze thematic axes such as attributes of the private and the public, under the aegis of gender relations (Aboim, 2012; Ota, 2013; Okim, 2008; Benhabib, 1987; Pateman, 2013, 1996), observing their recurrence in approaches to biography and women; it explores the infamous relationships and tensions between the factual and the fictional in biographical production, under the focus of integrating the biographical and the historical as a whole. observing their recurrence in approaches to biography and women; it explores the infamous relationships and tensions between the factual and the fictional in biographical production, focusing on the integration of the biographical and the historical as the foundation of their writing project (Loriga, 1998; Bourdieu, 2006; Revel, 2010; Saer, 2012). Finally, it examines the concepts of “empathic relationship” (Soihet, 2003), “relationship of intersubjectivity” (Varikas, 2015), (Arfuch, 2009) and “relationship of reciprocity” (Rago, 2001), in order to verify the foundations of the strategic use of this writing by and about women as a tool for self-representation, analysis and criticism of the systems, institutions and values in Brazilian society. This thesis helps to make Ana Arruda Callado visible as Brazilian writer to have produced the most biographies women, points out the still timid critical fortune on her work and informs how much and how she has contributed to expanding the repertoire of these texts and bringing more references and approaches to gender studies and biographical criticism.