The Masters And The Slaves by Gilberto Freyre

These works assume, in the context in which they are produced, an imaginary character: they seek to “invent” culture to legitimize the “invention” of national identity. In other words, the authors seek answers to the question: after all, what country is this? The texts are marked by the need to discuss the problem of formation, characteristics of the intellectual production of the regions of recent national constitution. I found in these essays two main elements – the question of culture and the search for national identity – as elements that give them unity.

These debates became even more intense during the first decades of the 20 th century, a period in which essayism is used as an intellectual tool for Brazil’s interpretative process. The numerous and significant social transformations that took place throughout the 19 th century – including the arrival of the Portuguese royal family (1808), the independence of Portugal (1822), the abolition of slavery (1888) and the end of the empire and the beginning of the republic (1889) – will unfold in important questions for Brazilian intellectuals of the 20 th century, who even though they did not possess exactly the same guiding questions on their horizons ( Botelho, 2010), they carried out an intense problematization at that moment especially around national identity. Palavras-chave: estudos brasileiros, relações raciais, miscigenação, estudos latino-Americanos, pensamento social brasileiro, Gilberto Freyre.īrazil is undoubtedly a great intellectual enigma, continuously analyzed from various social, political and cultural aspects. Passados Trinta anos de sua morte, procuro nesse artigo analisar a atualidade de seu pensamento, buscando apontar quais questões que ele nos lança que ainda nos são relevantes para pensar o Brasil. Suas obras, com destaque para Casa-Grande & Senzala (1933), são continuamente revisitadas através de inúmeros balanços críticos, especialmente no que tange à questão das relações raciais no Brasil. O trabalho de Gilberto Freyre (1900-1987) é reconhecido como um dos mais originais e relevantes de interpretação do Brasil. Keywords: Brazilian studies, racial relations, miscegenation, Latin American studies, Brazilian social thought, Gilberto Freyre. Thirty years after his death, I seek in this article to analyze the actuality of his thought, seeking to point out which issues he throws at us that are still relevant to think about Brazil. His works, notably The Masters and the Slaves (1933), are continually revisited through countless critical balances, especially with regard to the issue of race relations in Brazil. The work of Gilberto Freyre (1900-1987) is recognized as one of the most original and relevant interpretations of Brazil.

The Masters And The Slaves by Gilberto Freyre