Você sabe o que é o fogo da vida? Narrativas de crianças sobre o Museu Nacional

Abstract

The research aimed to investigate children´s memory stories about the National Museum. The main interest was to understand how children describe the National Museum and which memories they have about the institution. The study started from reports produced by children during school visits to the Museum and from descriptions produced after the fire that broke out on the night of September 02nd, 2018. This research started before the fire that caused the loss of great part of the collection of the institution, considering its incommensurable value and original architecture. After the fire, the Museum received a large amount of letters and drawings done by children from different places in Brazil. The arrival of these letters helped to configure the object of this research that sought to rebuild the memory of the bicentenary institution from the perspective of the children. Therefore, I used these letters and drawings as corpora, including magazines done by kids, from 4 to 12 years old, who were familiar with the Museum, such as public servant children and students who took part in cultural activities promoted by the Teaching Assistance Section, the Educational Sector of the National Museum. In order to carry out this research, 73 productions (29 letters and 44 drawings) were sent to the Museum by schools from the state of Rio de Janeiro, Pernambuco and São Paulo. The selection criteria was the diversity of theme and material. I intended to collect letters and drawings produced by kids from different places and ages who could describe their perspectives about the Museum. Besides diversity, I focused on letters in which kids sounded more independent showing their authorial process in writing productions. The main theoretical reference of this research is the German philosopher Walter Benjamin and his concepts about history, memory and narratives, such as contributions on childhood studies. On his concepts about history, Benjamin introduces the idea of history as a narrative construction. And this construction can´t disregard children´s contributions. A historical narrative without considering the children´s point of view would be incomplete. It is necessary to investigate the history about the social place occupied by children in their production of knowledge about the world. The National Museum means to them as a house of dream and memory house where historical and scientific knowledge join to the kids´ imaginary influenced by the different media and childhood culture. The memories produced by children are related to their experiences, which they really had, but also imagined about the Museum.