The planes of historicity of Sergio Buarque de Holanda's interpretation of Brazil

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to identify the fundamental temporal mechanisms of Sérgio Buarque de Holanda’s interpretation of Brazil, focusing on his texts published over a decade – from Raízes do Brasil (1948) to Visão do Paraíso (1958), including Caminhos e Fronteiras (1957) and the posthumous manuscript conceived in the early 1950s, Capítulos de Literatura Colonial. My intention is to show the relationship between the process of specialization and professionalization experienced by the author as a historian, which took place following the publication of Raízes do Brasil (1936), and the outline of a peculiar mechanism of articulation of the historical time in his texts. This mechanism is not only related to the articulation of past and future in protention and retention, but is also arranged in an analogic or figural scheme. The result is a combination of a technical-historiographical horizon and a political horizon, typical of Sérgio Buarque de Holanda’s interpretation of Brazil.