Brazilian Historical Perspectives and the Rupture with “Past Malaise”

Abstract

This paper aims at recovering a particular trend of Brazilianhistoriographic criticism which inaugurated a new way of workingwith the history of the Brazilian republican period. One importantdimension of this new historiographic perspective, which began at the turn of the 1960’s-1970’s, concerns the breakthrough it brought aboutin relation to certain academic representations that valued the myths ofnational identity, of bourgeois incompleteness, the Weberian ideal types,of middle classes ethos, as well as models of economic development.This trend also inaugurated a new manner of making history. Thenew theoretical approaches not only opened up a spectrum of thoughton political representations and enunciations, as well as enhanced aconsiderable amount of studies grounded on dense empirical researchwhich enabled the analysis of discourse and action.de Brasil4.