"Os homens e as coisas do Cariri": os escritos de Raimundo de Oliveira Borges e a construção do espaço regional

Abstract

This thesis investigates how the writings and work of Raimundo de Oliveira Borges (1907-2010) - jurist, memoirist, historian, professor and founding member of the Instituto Cultural do Cariri (ICC) - contributed to the construction and perpetuation of the regional space of Cariri in Ceará. His writings published between the 1950s and 2010 (in newspapers, magazines, books and pamphlets) are analyzed, focusing on two intertwined axes: 1) the elaboration of a writing of himself, in which Borges forged his identity as a “regional” intellectual; and 2) the (re)construction of the regional in Cariri, Ceará, through memorialistic and historiographical narratives. To respond to the proposed problem, a diverse corpus of sources was mobilized, including publications, personal documents (letters, speeches, photographs), as well as iconographic records. This object was analyzed from the field of Intellectual History and the History of Historiography, examining how its historical and memorialistic works fit into the historiographical culture of its time, with emphasis on the methods and epistemic positions that guided its production. The analyses demonstrated that his self-writing and performance operated as elements reinforcing the symbolic borders of the region by presenting himself as a “regional writer”. Regarding the social place of his production, it is worth highlighting that his writings were guided by a specific historiographical culture, which took the city of Crato as an epistemological organizer of analysis, responsible for tensioning a spatial inequality in the construction of a “regional history”. To this end, he developed his narratives based on: 1) the topos of history magistra vitae; 2) the desire for truth and justice (highlighting the dialogue between Law and History); and 3) the model of (auto)biographical writing, by narrating lives to write history.