Entre o poder de agência dos atores sociais e a estrutura: uma análise sobre o papel do negro na historiografia recente da escravidão brasileira

Abstract

The historiography of black slavery that occurred in Brazil is the subject of this thesis. The object of study is recent historiography, later than the years 2010. The research aimed to understand how recent historiography has operationalized a theoretical issue that is very important to produce historical knowledge: the relationship between agency and structure. Critical reflection on historiography was made operational in connection with methodological principles of intellectual history. As a result, the context of enunciation and reception of theoretical frameworks, in addition to a view of the historical process, were heuristic keys used in the analysis of selected doctoral theses, with a view to understanding how the researchers appropriate or refute other references. theoretical. Therefore, the presentation of the thesis occurs in a historical perspective, in order to make clear both the continuities and the changes in the history of the subject's historiography. As a starting point, a grid of historical intelligibility was built based on the researcher's reading experience and academic trajectory, which made it possible to create an analysis reference guide for the recently selected theses. As a result, it was possible to insert them in the classic debates on the theme, questioning their affiliations and their theoretical criticisms. It was observed, in the selected theses on the theme, a dispute between research linked to the new historiography of slavery post-1980 and works that are based on the concept of second slavery. Those criticized, substantially, a structural theoretical view that removed the subjects from history, while the latter emphatically replaced the structure as an important reference to communicate with the subject's actions. At the center of these theoretical disputes are the agency and the structure leading a classic dilemma that guides the construction of historical knowledge to the present day. In view of the reading of the sources, three considerations are exposed as results of the research: (i) there is, since the new historiography of slavery after 1980, an increasing diversification of knowledge strategies on the theme of slavery; (ii) in the 21st century, a theoretical proposal based on the concept of second slavery emerged, whose research suggestion is to study 19th century slavery in constant communication with changes in the world economy; (iii) the slave agency remains, in a striking way, as an achievement of the new post-1980 historiography of slavery, but, in the current context, the agency has been requalified because there are stronger articulation requirements with structured totalities. This thesis identifies, therefore, that we are living in a new moment in the historiography of slavery. This is an indication left by this research so that others can expand our knowledge about the current scenario, in order to think better about this topic so important and so burning for our life.